Good point. I also knew they didn't truly eat mice, they just play with them. Well, their way of playing with them is kill them obviously, lol, but they don't eat them thereafter. So this myth is quite wrongly propagated, haha.
I think mice are kind of cute, so I would be too much of a softie to offer them to my cat as a sacrifice. I'd rather just buy my pet food in boxes and cans. I'm sure animals die to make pet food and human food, but I can deal with that because at least I'm not directly killing the animals.
I don't think that's a great idea. I have heard more evidence on the side of the fact cats don't actually eat mice too. I like my cats to be outside anyways! If they want to eat a mouse they can just go and find one =)
This reminds me of our first dog who was a rodent killer. She was named Jedi in honor of the Star Wars character. Jedi has the temerity and patience to watch over a mouse hiding in the cabinet. She would wait until the mouse loses its patience to hide. Jedi had killed about a dozen mice inside our house and an equal number of rats in the backyard.
Think about it this way, a cat will often present a dead mouse to you as an offering, it never actually eats the thing. In any case, I'm sure that the cost of bulk-buying a decent comprehensive feed for your cat would be roughly the same cost as breeding mice.
It would be a good idea to breed mice to feed animals of commercial value to offset the costs of doing so. Cats are not heavy feeders and some meat scraps, milk and other types of food normally taken at supper should suffice. In my place, rats have been troubling me and breeding additional ones is a talk order.
Breeding mice for uour house cat? Really? I have never considered this and don't know anyone who is doing this. However, I don't have to breed mice to feed cats naturally. I live in a farm and rats and mice are over populated here. One of the reasons why I am rearing a cat is to control mice and rats.
Well, cats never really eat mice, they just want to kill them as well as other animals like lizards or cockroach. If you really want to save on feeds for your cats, you can ask your local supermarket for left over chicken meat cuts or soup pack. They're quite cheap at 10% to 25% of regular chicken meat. That's even cheaper than breeding mice. I've always associated rats with leptospirosis. This is a potentially fatal bacterial infection that you can get through contact with water contaminated by urine of animals like rats or mice. Having them around would increase your home's exposure to this bacteria.
No, I do not like feeding my cats live animals, and I pity the poor mice that will be fed to them, so I will just feed them human food or cat food. It's also gross to pet your cat and he just ate something disgusting, don't you think?
Cats are actually like dogs that are domesticated. They eat decent food and not live animals. Isn't it yucky to think that your pet will kill a mouse to eat? Are you serious? There are cheap foods for the pet like fish from the market that you can cook. And cooked food is the most practical feed for your pet if you cannot afford commercial cat food.
What a great idea! Unless of course you want the mice to nibble at all your things and destroy them. I would instead prefer that the cats go out and do what they are designed to do, be natural predators and hunt for whatever creatures they want to. I once owned a cat who liked to hunt down lizards and play around with it for hours and hours. Once she got tired of playing, she used to kill it and put it somewhere for us to find and dispose off! I don't want to find dead mice in my home now!
Absolutely not! For starters, you are introducing disease vectors into your home. This is unwise as cats are unusually susceptible to a wide variety of illnesses and don't recover from them very well. Another concern is that of tiny bones being swallowed which can cause choking and intestinal distress. Furthermore, mice will not contain the appropriate nutrition your cat needs. Cats have very complex nutritional needs, which is why they evolved to prey on a wide variety of animals (more on that later). Home made cat food must be nutritionally enriched to fulfill a cat's needs. The cruelty factor alone is enough to negate all of these concerns. We do not need to feed cats live prey. It is wonderful that you wish to do what is best for their health in feeding them as they would naturally eat. The problem with this argument, however, is that cats are not an animal that evolved to prey upon just one or two food sources. The reason you find cats on every habitable continent, and in virtually every biome on the planet is because they are capable of ingesting a very wide variety of foodstuffs. They do not require mice, least of all live mice, for their nutrition to be solid. If you want to feed your cat better there are only two things you really need to consider. Use fresh, cooked meat which has been enriched with the vitamins and minerals they need. Do not search online for this. Speak to a vet. There are too many people blogging about things they know nothing about. Cats can easily go into haptic crisis or develop thyroid disorders if they are missing key nutrients. The second thing is to avoid grains. Cats are predators with only the slightest omnivorous bent. They certainly did not evolve to process cereal grains, which tend to be the chief ingredients in cheap cat foods. If this all sounds like a lot of work, well, it is. Fortunately, there are now lots of grain free cat foods of much higher quality than the old brands produced. Read your labels and look for meat as the first ingredient. Carbohydrate sources like yams and peas are okay. Just avoid the cereal grains, such as rice, corn, and wheat. And by all means, do not torture poor small mice on some false premise that it's what's best for your cat! That is abhorrent.
Well I do not like the sound of that, and I am not sure that is a good idea in any way you look at it. That said, thugh, I would not be surprised to see it as a practice somewhere.
