Hello I'm Simon welcome to Simon's Cat
Logic we'll be finding out from a cat
expert why cats behave the way they do
today we're talking about 'Hunting'
A lot of my ideas aren't from my cats now they
actually come back from the cats I've
had all my life. My first cat when I was
nine
her name was Shelley and we used to have an old
apple tree in the garden and my earliest
memory of her is climbing up the tree
and actually in sitting on top of the
Blue Tit box listening to them inside.
But of course that was very bad and I used to sort of
try to get her down, but that's always
stayed in my mind it's quite a graphic image
of that cat sitting on to bird box.
So for this the idea, I just thought
it's such a classic kind of cat
thing, but how would how would the birds get
their own back.
Cats are perfectly adapted to hunting, they
have excellent eyesight, and they can see
low light levels and they have really
good hearing, for hearing tiny little squeaks
of their prey species, they're very very fast
and agile and they have an excellent
sense of balance. Hunting drive is separate
the hunger drive this is why cats that
really well-fed will still feel the need
or instinct to hunt. Owners often wonder
what that sort of strange chattering noise
is that cats make when they're at the window
and they have spotted a bird
there's many different theories for it
some people think that maybe they're
practicing like a kill bite whereas I
think it's just shows a sign of like
arousal or how excited they are they've
seen the bird and cats also share this
behaviour whether they're inside or
outside.
The average hunting success of and African Wildcat is about one in four
the average Mouse is about 30 calories
African Wildcat's need about 270 calories
a day.
Even kittens that have never experienced pray or hunting behaviour
can grow up to be proficient hunters bit
like Lorenzo here with this fishing
rod toy. However other cats seem to
struggle to catch anything
Well I looked out the window and saw
Teddy running really quickly down the
garden
I mean I've never seen him run quicker I
thought what's he going for now and of
course going even faster than Teddy, was a
squirrel, which surprised me because
squirrels can get quite big and this is
a big grey squirrel and seeing Teddy run
after this squirrel, that made it up
the tree and Teddy went up the tree
after him
I thought I've got to do an idea about
the cat chasing a squirrel and what can happen,
Here we see Simon's Cat looking
very angry
and here we have the squirrel, with it's tiny ears
these big cheeks
He's got an even bigger tail than the cats
he's dropped, he's droped one of his acorns
There he is, there's Simon's Cat chasing that
squirrel.