Thanks for all the welcomes!

Ya, if on long island you'll always have an outside rat population. Just to many people and food sources.

Living with a resident snake is a great idea! Wish all people could learn to do so.

And outdoor cats are scientifically show not to reduce rodent numbers. Yes the do eat a lot (but more songbirds than mice) but there are studies that show a increase in the mouse population when there are 'outdoor' cats. You may not see them but they are there and can reproduce far faster than the cat can eat them. I'm also a cat lover and hate how much the 'outdoor' cat suffers. But alas I'll not rant. :P But I wish I had a resident snake...or gecko! That would be cool....but I'd be afraid of stepping on the poor thing (if it was indoors).

Also a great idea for the city to give out rodent proof garbage cans!

I did not know a gecko was big enough to eat a mouse. I guess I have been watching too many Geico commercials.

I wonder what kind of snake would be good. Is there such a thing as a nice snake that minds his own business?

I'm fairly certain my outside cats are not suffering, they are healthy and robust. My unscientific observation is if I don't have barn cats I have mice. If I do have barn cats, not so much. Perhaps in the city this doesn't work as well but it certainly does in a rural setting. I'm of the mindset that animals belong outside most (if not all) of the time. Perhaps that is an old fashioned view in these days of coddling and dressing up pets. But, works for me.

Edited to add: I don't mean to come across as snarky - just offering an alternate opinion re in/out cats based largely on urban/rural differences.

Deb, they have food and they have shelter. That is all they really need. I am sure they are just fine. And cats have been catching mice for thousands of years. Nothing wrong with keeping up with tradition.

We have cats and rat snakes, maybe that's why we've never seen any rats! We do get field mice, but don't have any real problems with them.

My indoor/outdoor cat Toby used to bring in many gifts of dead mice. Then he got older, and I moved to a place with a less interesting neighborhood, but more cats (and my car was afraid of them).

Although I know there are still mice and rats, Toby stopped bringing in mice. I started teasing him about it, with tone of voice and using familiar words that he might know like "mousie" and "Mighty Hunter".

He REALLY doesn't like being teased or taken lightly! And seemingly he does understand at least some words besides "dinnertime".

Anyway, a day or two after I started teasing him for no longer being the "Mighty Hunter", he brought in, for the first time ever, a BIG RAT. At least three times bigger than anything he ever dragged home before.

I guess that showed ME!

I hope you gave him PLENTY of praise!

Oh, yes. And I apologized humbly.

I also learned a phrase in the cat language that day: the combined tail angle and ear flick must have meant "So THERE!"

I had a cat once that not only caught rats and mice but she caught squirrels. It was amazing seeing her drag those squirrels home as they are pretty big next to a cat. And then she would eat them.

RickCorey said:My indoor/outdoor cat Toby used to bring in many gifts of dead mice. Then he got older, and I moved to a place with a less interesting neighborhood, but more cats (and my car was afraid of them).

Although I know there are still mice and rats, Toby stopped bringing in mice. I started teasing him about it, with tone of voice and using familiar words that he might know like "mousie" and "Mighty Hunter".

He REALLY doesn't like being teased or taken lightly! And seemingly he does understand at least some words besides "dinnertime".

Anyway, a day or two after I started teasing him for no longer being the "Mighty Hunter", he brought in, for the first time ever, a BIG RAT. At least three times bigger than anything he ever dragged home before.

I guess that showed ME!

Toby 1, Rick 0

Nice! Our squirrels are MUCH faster than my cat.

And probably smarter.

A friend had a cat (Tony, not Toby) that really WAS a Mighty Hunter, even as a kitten, when we called him Teeny Tiny Tony. we rolled a ball for him to catch, but that wasn't interesting enough. He looked around, then hid behind the corner of a doorway. Then we had to roll the ball past that doorway, so he could leap out from hiding, and pounce upon the ball by surprise.

He grew up really big, so we had to call him Ten Ton Tony.

With my cat, if you dangle a string for him to chase, you have to dangle it NEAR him or it's too much work. And he'll only chase it for 15-20 seconds. Then he flops down on his side and will only chase it as far as he can reach by rolling over once. Any farther than that is too much work.

But if I catch him sitting on the seat of a chair, he will play the lay-down-and-chase-the-string game from the seat of the chair. He never seems to learn that I'm going to make him roll over enough to fall off the chair!

Or maybe he's just indulging me, and tells stories to his cat friends about how he trained me to entertain him by pretending to fall off chairs.

>>>> lay-down-and-chase-the-string

>>>>roll over enough to fall off the chair!


Sigh, you guys are having way too much fun! I love it when a cat tries to surprise a BALL!! You must laugh all day.

I had a Balinese cat, Andy, that outside I am sure would have been a mighty hunter, he used to bring me all sorts of gifts and lay them at my feet or bring them to me in the morning when I was in bed and drop them on my head, one of the things he brought to the bed was my running shoes that he had to carry up a full flight of stairs and all the way down the hallway to the bedroom, we were alway amazed at the strength it must have taken to do that.

My blue point ragdoll, Kaspar, fetches. Drives me mad when I am watching TV. Up he jumps and drops a rolled up paper ball in my lap and I have to throw it. They are not supposed to be hunters but he devoted to trying to catch anything that moves.

Bless their little hearts.

It's been cold lately, and Toby disdains to go outside any longer than he has to. I did see him sitting on the chair on the porch where he likes to soak up the SUMMER sunlight. It was a clear cold day, and he was sitting in that chair, wondering why he was still cold.

I saw him later indoors, lying in little patches of warm sunlight that came through windows or sliding doors, following them when they moved. Phototropic cats!

I guess he got bored, because lately I've seen him stalking rug lint. Sometimes he pounces on it, but mostly he LAYS DOWN and snags it with a claw or shakes it in his teeth.

If that cat ever EXPENDS all the energy he's saved up in the last few years, we wouldn't have to import oil from the Middle East.

He sleeps all night AND he sleeps all day.

I agree with Deb about the difference between a rural setting and an urban setting for an outside cat.

Scamp does not go after birds. In fact, he is quite entertained by them. When the quail come down from the junipers up on the slope to feed on the house pad level, he is usually perched up on the roof watching. He never comes down and goes after any of the birds even when they bring their young down to the garden.

I've seen him watching the birds at the bird bath during the summer months and, again, he just watches.

However, although Scamp is a small cat ... about 5 lbs ... I have seen him stalking deer. He has this silly idea that he is a cougar in disguise.

I also don't think he suffers at all being an outside cat. He's not skinny even tho' I don't put out enough food for one to consider him fed. Like Deb, I haven't had many problems with rodents since Scamp came to live here.

Rick, I love your stories about your cat ..

Smiles,
Lyn

>> Rick, I love your stories about your cat .

Thanks Lyn!

>> I have seen him stalking deer.

I lived for two years in a part of NJ that was so hilly it was not very densely populated. In fact, there was a small private game preserve a few blocks away, and we got visitors - deer and wild turkeys.

Toby was fascinated by the turkey hens - they were so sedate and calm that he wasn't frightened. Soon he discovered that he could get fairly close without their harassing him - in fact, since the lawn was big and they were few, they would drift away from him as he approached.

That really excited him: these half-dozen BIG alien critters would move to avoid HIM, so he must be a big, tough cat after all. So it turned into a dance where would creep towards the cluster of hens, and when they noticed him, they would drift away.

Toby was in Cat Heaven, andyou could see him swagger from his mastery of the situation.

Eventually the tom turkey decided he didn't like anyone but HIM pushing his hens around, so he came wading out from behind the trees and bushes and headed towards Toby. Not hurrying BUT not lookin' friendly, either.

Toby got that message tout suite, but wanted to preserve his new-found dignity and Tough Guy image. So he tied to casually saunter away from Tom Turkey. Just casually, like he had nothing better to do than be somewhere else. I think Tom wanted to say a few words to Mr. Toby, or make a point, because he speeded up.

Toby speeded up.

Pretty soon Toby was "sauntering" about as fast as he could go towards the safety of his cat door, still projecting an image of "I'm not running AWAY ... I'm just running. For exercise, maybe. yeah, that's it."

Tom was satisfied and loafed back into cover, and the hens kept ignoring both of the males, collecting their crunchy bugs and juicy worms and probably chuckling to each other about how impressed with themselves the men were.