If you let your cat wander outside, they may come home with an unpleasant surprise, like a dead bird or rodent, in its jaws. This may be bewildering to pet owners. After all, why would your cat kill an animal without the need to eat it and then give it to you as a “gift”?
It isn’t because you aren’t feeding Fluffy enough. Instead, it lies in your kitty’s evolutionary history. “Cats are predatory by nature,” said Dr. Stephanie Liff domesticated over 10,000 years ago modern domestic cats have generally retained their instinct to catch prey. This means that they have a drive to hunt.
There are a couple of hypotheses for why cats bring their catch home, Emmanuelle Baudry
But that doesn’t mean your pet is insulting you. To the contrary: “It’s somewhat of a compliment,” Liff told Live Science. “They feel comfortable in their home. They consider you part of their family.
Another theory, she said, is that cats may feel safer eating their prey at home rather than in the outside world. In this case, cats see your home as a place of refuge, where they can have their privacy, stash their cache, or eat their meal in peace.
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Although some cats hunt constantly, others rarely do. Researchers have long noted this discrepancy among domestic cats. There are three main factors that seem to affect whether a cat is a frequent hunter: its personality, the surrounding environment and how owners manage their cats, Baudry said.
In a 2023 study in the journal Ecology and Evolution
The study, as well as other research
There are some steps you can take to reduce the number of unsightly gifts from your cat. “Just restricting what they’re able to find to kill can limit the behavior,” Liff said. This means keeping your cat indoors or taking down bird feeders near your home. However, Liff noted that a cat’s drive to hunt needs to be satisfied in other ways, such as giving them toys they can chase and pounce on.
Reducing the number of animals pet cats catch and kill is also good for nature. Cats are one of the leading causes of declines of wildlife populations; they kill billions of birds and mammals every year like avian flu . It’s also helpful to get your cat vaccinated against these threats.
So the next time your cat brings you a dead animal, know that it’s a natural instinct and a potential form of affection and that there are ways to prevent these unwanted presents. “If you don’t want to see the behavior, you have to limit their access to do it,” Liff said.
