For those that are not familiar with outdoor & indoor cats – they love to bring gifts to their owners.Ours brings lizards and roaches. The feral cat we had before these two always was bringing us dead birds.
And if you don’t accept your gift right away, it gets torn up into shreds and you had a real mess in your house! This is one of the only downsides to owning cats.
Before cats were associated with humans, mother cats used brought dead animals for their young kittens to practice with. Older kittens got wounded animals to practice hunting with.
This behavior was selected for when cats associated with humans. Leaving a dead rodent for the humans is like a timecard. Throughout history, humans have been more likely to feed the cats that were effective at preventing rodents from eating the human food. Leaving a few dead mice uneaten is a small sacrifice short term sacrifice for a cat, one that sometimes leads to free cat food year round.
That’s pretty smooth actually…smart little buggers I have here.