Pets naturally want to bring us found treasures
How many of you have a lethargic housecat, the size of Montana, that still hunts and proudly brings you mouse trophies it has hunted?
How many of you big dog owners have them rush to greet you with an assortment of backyard bric-a-brac proudly protruding from their mouths as an offering to their human master?
Let’s examine this “pet offering” phenomenon from the microcosm of the Becker pets at home in Idaho.
Our two domestic shorthair indoor/outdoor cats, Scrat and Varmit, are great hunters and have plenty of targets in and around our North Idaho barn. At least once a week, when we go up to the barn, they have either strategically placed a dead mouse or gopher in front of the tack room door or they proudly come running to greet us with a decapitated or disemboweled creature hanging from their mouths.
Gosh, do they seem proud. You can almost see ancient Egypt in their swagger as they mimic high priests strutting to the alter to make an offering to the gods (although in this case, the only incense is the smell of digested horse food wafting from the corral).
Well the kitties are certainly not hunting because of hunger, their bowl brimming with Science Diet Ocean Fish formula and nightly bedtime snacks. Perhaps they hunt to keep their natural skills in order, but why do they bring us greasy, grimy gopher guts and chopped up little birdies feet?
Yeeeck!
As with any hunter, returning with the spoils of the hunt is your cat’s way of proudly bringing you back a furry or feathered present.
Desmond Morris in Catwatching says that housecats present prey to their owners in an effort to introduce them to the concept of hunting. Normally, cats see us as a parent figure, but when they present us with their prey, they see us as their kittens.
While I’ve never seen myself as a 200-pound kitten, I try to consider this a compliment and then just throw the offering away when they’re not looking, because I don’t want to act ungrateful and hurt their feelings.
Look on the good side: At least they don’t expect me to eat it!
Now to dogs.
Big dogs don’t generally consider you their puppies; they just have an oral fixation and a big desire to share their good fortune with their family.
Take our beloved Labrador retriever, Sirloin, who passed away a couple of years ago. Having personally had Labs for my lifetime, I can attest that they are perpetual toddlers with peculiar pacifiers constantly in their mouths.
Oral offerings are like oxygen to a retriever.
They CAN’T be walking around or running toward you in that unique, asynchronous orbits of body parts that they display (if you have a lab you’ll know instantly what I mean) without an offering in their mouths. It must be one of the Ten Commandments of Retrieverdom: Thou must present gift with greeting.
Now with 18-month-old golden retriever, Shakira, our yard must look like the canine version of the pot at the end of the rainbow. It’s always filled with treasure: sticks, stones, bones, toys, trash, and other unmentionable tasty tidbits, including — you guessed it — disemboweled rodents, courtesy of the cats.
When Shakira hears us coming, she frantically searches the ground for just the perfect gift to fetch for us. Like we can’t wait to receive in our lap a decades-old deer skull she dug up in the woods this morning or a slobber-slick tennis ball dropped on your shoes.
So you pick up the offering, toss it for a few rounds of fetch and then try to throw it so far, or so deep into the weeds that she can’t find it until you get back inside the house or into the car without having to face that disappointed retriever look that says, “Waaah! I don’t want the game to be over yet!”
It never works. Bred to bring things that fall out of the sky back to you, Shakira ALWAYS finds it too fast, and then it’s time for more retriever games until:
a) The dog is distracted by the need to bark at an imaginary threat;
b) A chipmunk shows up to taunt; or
c) She decides that it’s time for a snack and a nap.
My final words: Don’t look a gift dog in the mouth.