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To: hellbender

That makes sense, and neither of ours did. Our fat cat is the son of a pampered pedigreed Maine Coon show cat and we got him at four months old; he’s never had to deal with mice until this year (he’s 8). Our skinny cat is also a Maine Coon but he was rescued from a breeder who got overwhelmed and ended up with 30+ cats; he was low cat on the totem pole and had very little socialization. We got him at 11 months and he didn’t even have a name, hadn’t been groomed or fixed, and had lost his tail when a door got slammed on it. They’re both great cats, very sweet and loving in that offbeat Maine Coon way, but they were never trained as mousers; they go by sheer kitty instinct about catching a mouse, but once they do, they tend to slowly beat it to death playing with it instead of killing it quickly.

}:-)4


97 posted on 06/07/2011 11:09:34 AM PDT by Moose4 ("By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!")
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To: Moose4
I recommend the books by Temple Grandin, an animal behavior specialist but not a sentimentalist; she actually designs slaughterhouses so they will be more humane to animals. Apparently predators (like both dogs and cats) have an instinct to chase down prey, but they don't learn how to kill unless their mothers teach them. Many house pets never got those lessons.

Grandin is amazing. She is a high-functioning autistic person who has derived many insights into human and animal behavior from her condition.

105 posted on 06/07/2011 11:20:36 AM PDT by hellbender
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