Cats have been known to kill mice even long ago, when both cats and humans discovered that they could eat better when their food did not contain mice. Also, in some cartoons like “Tom and Jerry”, cats and mice continue their roles as hunters and prey, respectively. Although your cat may knock a toy mouse on the carpet to please you, he is not easily fooled, as a cat’s instinct makes him want something real.
Certainly, mice are not the only food source for feral cats. A feral cat is not that hard to please, so they can also hunt birds, rabbits, and other rodents. However, it is easy for a cat to catch mice. Their diminutive size prevents them from making a counterattack (bringing the expression “fight like a cornered rat” to life) and they cannot escape like birds in flight. Therefore, cats are known to love to chase mice.
Hunting is a cat’s survival instinct. Compared to other animals like dogs, a cat’s body does not produce enough taurine. Taurine is needed to build more protein. Animals cannot live for long without this vital amino acid, so cats must include it in their diet to compensate for taurine deficiency. Meat is the only food source that provides the proper amount of taurine for a cat to survive; this makes a cat an “obligatory carnivore,” according to biologists. Keep in mind that while dogs can live on a vegetarian diet, cats can’t. They have to kill to live. Or, that the humans help them, which is the same.
Cats are born to hunt. From 4 to 6 weeks of age, kittens begin to stalk and jump on their food bowl. Later, his mother’s quivering tail turns into a surrogate mouse. Her mother carefully monitors her hunting skills to further refine them. The kittens watch and mimic what their mother and siblings do, and the mother will hunt live prey so they can practice. For this reason, wild and feral cats often bite the neck of their prey to kill it immediately. However, kittens that failed to learn such a skill “play” with their prey in their growing years, but fail to kill it cleanly. Some more reasons for the “game” are explained below. A mother cat personally trains her kittens, and this is one of the reasons why an older cat bringing home live prey shows below average hunting skills.
However, learning only enhances a normal part of a kitten’s instincts. Experiments show that even when kittens were given no stimulation or play in their first few weeks after birth, they turned out to be good hunters as adults, meaning cats have some instinctive and perhaps genetically encoded hunting skills. They generally continue to learn their hunting skills as they grow older, whether it’s stalking people passing by, attacking their feet, or catching a toy or live mouse inside or outside the house.
Unfortunately, it’s a misconception that cats actively hunt when they’re hungry. Most farmers have found that cats that are full are even better at controlling pests. Cats love to hunt.