...Dare I say, watching her hunt squirrels would be even more fun than doing it myself. I envy the opportunity you have to see her hunt.
You’d be fascinated to watch her hunt. When she stalks a squirrel or rabbit, she waits until she figures the prey animal is not looking then takes a series of lightning fast steps towards the animal then freezes and studies the prey animal. Her head quickly tilts a few degrees side to side, concentrating fully on her intended prey, never taking her eyes off of it. All the while she aims her ears in other directions, so she’s paying attention to her surroundings using sound. She’s probably sniffing the air too, but I can’t observe that. She’s aware of everything around her. Once she’s again convinced that her prey animal is not aware of her, she’ll repeat a few more lightning fast steps, until she’s within striking distance. If she can maneuver to put a large tree between herself and the quarry, she will, then she closes the distance with the tree between them. On one approach last year towards two squirrels that were low in a tree she did her usual approach, and as she got close one of the squirrels spotted her and started squawking. The cat knew she had been made, the stalk wasn’t going to work, and she simply stood up in a normal pose and walked away. No sense in wasting time or energy. Once she’s on her prey animal, she’s just a blur of motion as she maneuvers her and/or the prey animal so she can deliver a quick killing bite to the back of the neck.
Those are a couple of her stalking strategies for approaching prey using my yard that is grass and is quiet to walk on; I imagine she has strategies that she uses in the woods with noisy leaf covered ground, or in snow. Last September I’d see her with one nearly full grown kitten at a time, I imagine she takes them out individually to teach them to hunt. As I thought about that when I observed it, she would have to do that - imagine trying to teach 4 kittens at once to hunt - it wouldn’t go well. Two years ago she had a bad limp for a couple weeks, bad enough that I had my doubts about her surviving, but she obviously made it through. Fascinating animal that works so hard to survive. If only she could talk, the stories she could tell about close calls, injuries, hunting, etc etc.
