Cats act as if they’re bringing you a present, except the gift is a recently hunted rodent, usually of the mouse variety. Cats love to track down small animals and show off their hunting prowess, whether it’s a mouse, mole, or even a bird. So it begs the question: why does an animal that loves kibble still bring you their recently hunted victims?

Cat Hunting Instincts

No matter how domesticated a cat is, their hunting instinct is still very strong, says Mikel Maria Delgado, an animal behavior psychologist and author of Play With Your Cat. Cats don’t scavenge like some other predators, but they will bring a mouse that they hunted and killed in the wild.

“It could be that they’re not ready to consume the prey or they’re carrying it to somewhere where they feel safer to consume it,” says Delgado. “It’s kind of like take-out, you bring it back home, you don’t eat it in the car.” Cats, whether they’re indoor cats or those that live mostly outdoors, are less likely to want to eat their prey at the kill site.

Delgado says that cats prefer smaller rodents and are much less likely to kill an animal that might be able to fight back, like a rat, for example. In fact, some research shows that cats are particularly bad at killing rats and controlling their populations in cities like New York.

Read More: 10 Things You Have Always Wanted to Know About Cats

Why Cats Hunt

Cats will still hunt even if they’re not hungry because their hunting instinct is so strong. They may eat what they hunt, but not always. 

“The drive to hunt is very strong because even though we have domesticated them, they still have this strong drive to take care of themselves,” says Delgado. They’re still going through the motions of hunting, carrying the prey away from the kill site, and then eating it or not.

Part of the reason that cats often hunt and dogs don’t is that while the animals are both commonly domesticated pets, their purpose for domestication was much different. A study in PNAS shows archeological evidence of cats living with humans 9,500 years ago. These were African wildcats, which are about the same size and look very similar to what we would expect from a domesticated house cat.

Different Selection Pressures

“The selection pressures we put on cats are very different from what we put on dogs,” says Delgado. Fewer cat breeds exist, and therefore, there have been fewer changes to the breeds. They look and act similar to what we would have seen in the African wildcats they evolved from. Even today, when you see them hunting on the African safari, they look almost exactly like a cat that you would have in your home today.

We’ve allowed cats to remain mostly what they are. For example, it wasn’t until 1947 that kitty litter was invented, and cats started to go to the bathroom inside. Before that, they rarely lived in the home and were mostly used to control pests, a task that they’ve always been very skilled at doing.

All we’ve really asked them to do is be friendly to humans and exist around other cats in the neighborhood, says Delgado. Dogs, on the other hand, often have specific jobs like retrieving prey when we’re hunting, guarding, and herding, all of which they’ve been bred to do.

In the end, cats have remained much the same, with the exception of kitty litter and sitting on their owners’ laps from time to time. Hunting, whether or not they plan to eat kibble, is still a driving force, but often times, they aren’t hungry enough to eat. So instead, they bring it back home, much to the dismay of their owner.

Read More: Be Careful What You Say — Your Cat May Be Listening

Article Sources

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Sara Novak is a science journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing for Discover, her work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, and many more. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. She’s also a candidate for a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University (expected graduation 2023).