With my previous cat Zoey, I became well-acquainted with her distinctive mrrr-RRRR when she was bringing prey into the house.
Our mighty huntress [total mouse kills to date: Sato 17, Stojko 3, Skye and Frenchy 0, and 2 unknown] growls when she has a mouse in hand, or nearby. Her normal meow is very high-pitched, so it's very funny to suddenly hear this low throaty "grrr... this is MY mouse... grrr... YOU get your OWN mouse" sound coming out of her.
This makes me glad to no longer have an outdoor cat. That, plus the fact that they are safer. Our poor Zoey got hit by a car, in the parking lot just outside our home.
Yeah :( . I grew up in the country with my dad insisting that the cats had to be outside because it's "natural", and two of my favorite cats were both killed by cars. Now, we do have a fenced-in back yard, but since a certain cat can still escape by shinnying up an 8 foot fencepost like a lumberjack on speed...
Zoey was a fierce and terrible huntress. In the 8 or so years that she lived with me, she brought in many mice, voles and birds (both alive and dead), a rat (dead), a squirrel (dead), a chipmunk (alive), a snake (live), a bat (dead), and a frog (found dessicated under the bed). She would growl menacingly if you tried to take to take the prey away from her (much to her dismay). The mrrr-RRRR -- muffled-sounding due to the prey held in her jaws -- was simply her way of announcing, "Look what I've got! Aren't you proud of me?"
I'm sorry to hear that you've lost some cats to cars, as well. We got Mocha (previous icon) only a month or two after we lost Zoey. She came to us as a declawed, indoor kitty, so it was easy to decide not to let her out. Minikin (this icon) was a stray who we found outside our house. She doesn't seem to mind being kept indoors. Zoey would never have let us do that, though. She was determined to be an outdoor kitty, and would have been miserable if we hadn't let her go outside.
(no subject)
Our mighty huntress [total mouse kills to date: Sato 17, Stojko 3, Skye and Frenchy 0, and 2 unknown] growls when she has a mouse in hand, or nearby. Her normal meow is very high-pitched, so it's very funny to suddenly hear this low throaty "grrr... this is MY mouse... grrr... YOU get your OWN mouse" sound coming out of her.
This makes me glad to no longer have an outdoor cat. That, plus the fact that they are safer. Our poor Zoey got hit by a car, in the parking lot just outside our home.
Yeah :( . I grew up in the country with my dad insisting that the cats had to be outside because it's "natural", and two of my favorite cats were both killed by cars. Now, we do have a fenced-in back yard, but since a certain cat can still escape by shinnying up an 8 foot fencepost like a lumberjack on speed...
(no subject)
I'm sorry to hear that you've lost some cats to cars, as well. We got Mocha (previous icon) only a month or two after we lost Zoey. She came to us as a declawed, indoor kitty, so it was easy to decide not to let her out. Minikin (this icon) was a stray who we found outside our house. She doesn't seem to mind being kept indoors. Zoey would never have let us do that, though. She was determined to be an outdoor kitty, and would have been miserable if we hadn't let her go outside.