Kitten has developed into quite the hunter. Not the typical cat hunting of birds and squirrels ( I haven’t seen a squirrel on Okinawa) but house geckos, lizards, frogs and giant grasshoppers. she is averaging 3 captures a day. If she is hunting early in the evening, she sometimes gets intercepted on the way to the stairs and her prey is liberated. Otherwise, we have to be careful walking down the stairs in the morning, because that is where she leaves the remains of whatever she caught. So, at least for awhile, we’ll try to keep count of what she brings in, and what gets released( last night a frog and a lizard were rescued, but the lizard was so fast we couldn’t catch it and it is still somewhere in the house!), and what ends up on the stairs.
house geckos Killed 2
lizards Killed 1 released 1
frogs Killed 2 released 2
grasshoppers
others
5/29/08
Kitten is on to us! After the first posting of the kill count, she had 2 nights in a row of empty stairs. I guess she didn’t appreciate me liberating her catch. But then Catie and I were playing in the back yard yesterday and found a dead lizard and a dead house gecko.
house geckos Killed 3
lizards Killed 2 released 1
frogs Killed 2 released 2
grasshoppers
others
May 30, 2008
Did you know that frogs squeal? Well they do, especially when Kitten is torturing them in the middle of the night. We found a dead one before we went to bed, but at 4 AM heard a squealling coming from Sean’s room, and we knew it wasn’t Sean. Jeff got up to check, came back to bed and announced that Kitten had something in Sean’s room. Duh, and the squealing continued. So I got up, with Jeff following, and separated Kitten from the frog, and put her in our room. We tried to catch the frog, but man, can these big tree frogs jump(they are a healthy 3 inches long). It was under the train table, then behind the curtains, then we lost it. We looked and looked (Sean was awake by now) and couldn’t find it, even with the light on, and Sean’s room in pretty clean.
This morning, I kept hearing the miniblinds by the front door make little pings, but didn’t pay attention, until Kitten paid attention. There was her frog! She was locked in the bathroom and the frog was caught. I squeal to when picking up frogs. The frog was released to the jungle and our day went on.
OH, and that lizard from the other day went scampering out the back slider when I opened it yesterday morning.
House geckos Killed 3
lizards Killed 2 released 1
frogs Killed 3 released 3
grasshoppers
others
May 31, 2008
House geckos Killed 3
lizards Killed 2 released 2
frogs Killed 3 released 3
grasshoppers
others
June 3, 2008
House geckos Killed 3
lizards Killed 2 released 2
frogs Killed 3 released 3
grasshoppers
others 1 (small shrew or mouse)
June 5, 2008
House geckos Killed 3 released 1
lizards Killed 2 released 2
frogs Killed 3 released 3
grasshoppers
others 2 (small shrew or mouse)
June 6, 2008
House geckos Killed 3 released 1
lizards Killed 3 released 2
frogs Killed 3 released 3
grasshoppers
others 2 (small shrew or mouse)
Kitten is catching on to me. 2 nights ago she came in the house with a little shrew, and I chased her, trying to get her to take it back outside, but in the end she dropped it and it got away. In the morning there was a small (dead) shrew on the stairs, so I am really hoping it is the same one. Todays kill was found outside. It may have had a previous run in with Kitten, it’s tail was missing, but had started to grow back.
June 9, 2008
Kitten has been busy, and has found a way to get back at me.
House geckos Killed 3 released 1
lizards Killed 3 released 2
frogs Killed 4 released 5
grasshoppers 2
others 3 (small shrew or mouse)
Saturday night, about 10 min after I got into bed, I heard some slapping on the stairs. Not sure what it was, but Kitten meowed as Spook started coming up the stairs. I sat up and saw Kitten rushing into our closet. I turned on a light and rescued a big tree frog from her. Now I had a squirmy frog in my hands and wasn’t exactly appropriately dressed to release it into the jungle. So I grabbed some shorts with my feet and dragged them into the kids bathroom. I shut the door, got dressed, then had to re-catch the squirmy, slightly slimy frog without squealing loud enough to wake the kids. Then we made our way out. Of course, Jeff had locked the doors before leaving that night, so I had to open the door while keeping the frog safely in my 2 hands.
The night before, Jeff and I had been sitting in the living room, and saw Kitten making multiple attempts to nudge her way through the dog door. Once she made it in, we saw 2 things dangling from her mouth as she raced across the living room. Jeff thought it was a worm, but I said she hasn’t been interested in worms in a while. So we followed her upstairs, into our closet, and rescued a small frog from her. Apparently it’s back legs had been what was hanging out of her mouth. The following day, I found a dead frog in the closet, but it appeared to be a different one.
Last night, I heard a high pitched squeaking in the middle of the night. I got up and found Kitten had a small shrew on the landing of the stairs. Later I heard a squeaking coming from the bathroom in my room. I got up and looked and she was playing with it in the shower stall. I left her to her prey, since I didn’t want to chase her off and have her abandon it. She went back and forth between the shower and the landing playing with it. This morning, I was greeted by a dead shrew in the shower.
June 10, 2008
Bad night for geckos, 3 found on the back patio in the morning
House geckos Killed 6 released 1
lizards Killed 3 released 2
frogs Killed 4 released 5
grasshoppers 2
others 3 (small shrew or mouse)
June 11, 2008
House geckos Killed 7 released 2
lizards Killed 3 released 2
frogs Killed 4 released 5
grasshoppers 4
others 3 (small shrew or mouse)
June 12, 2008
House geckos Killed 8 released 2
lizards Killed 3 released 2
frogs Killed 4 released 6
grasshoppers 4
others 3 (small shrew or mouse)
Today’s gecko only had 3 legs when we found him, but was still moving (ugh!) After a few hours, I finally got up the courage to flush him, and he was no longer trying to get away. Sean thought the frog was dead, because it didn’t move at all, but when I picked him up, I felt a little resistance in his body, and by the time I walked it across the street to the jungle, it was more than happy to leap out of my hands
June 17, 2008
Just catching up the count…
House geckos Killed 8 released 3
lizards Killed 5 released 2
frogs Killed 4 released 6
grasshoppers 6
others 3 (small shrew or mouse)
June 21,2008
House geckos Killed 10 released 4
lizards Killed 7 released 2
frogs Killed 4 released 7
grasshoppers 8
others 3 (small shrew or mouse)
I always wondered where Kitten went to catch her frogs. I ran into our neighbor the other night, and as we were talking about Kitten who was also out with us, she mentioned that she and her husband had been admiring a huge frog that was on their back sliding glass door screen. The all of a sudden, Kitten comes out of nowhere and is clinging to the screen with the frog in her mouth, then she takes off. I asked ‘was that around 11-11:30″ and she said it probably was. 11:30 the night before, I was awakened to Kitten playing with something in the stairwell. I went to check if it was anything saveable. She was sitting on the landing my herself and meowed at me. I looked up and at the merge of the wall and the ceiling was the biggest frog she had brought in yet. A good 4 inches long. I went down stairs and grabbed a camera to take pictures, but they didn’t come out to well because of how much I had to zoom. As I was going downstairs to get my other camera, the frog take a flying leap and lands on the third stair from the bottom, then leaps it way behind the book case next to the door. Kitten is following of course. I grabbed her and locked her in the bathroom, then start searching for frog. I move the bookcase, then start going through the papers that had fallen behind it. Finally I find it sticking to one of those stamp maps the kids made at the dream center. I carry the frog on the paper outside ( how thoughtful of the frog, because carrying those squirming frogs in my hands makes me squirm and sometimes squeal. (Admitting that will make Jeff happy.) As we get across the street, he leaps off the paper and hunkers down in the grass, not even making it to the refuge of the jungle.
June 22,2008
House geckos Killed 10 released 4
lizards Killed 10 released 2
frogs Killed 4 released 7
grasshoppers 8
others 3 (small shrew or mouse)
Kitten was busy last night, 1 little lizard dead in the bathroom before I went to bed, and 2 more greeted us in the morning.
June 26 2008
Oh, I have really fallen behind in the kill count, I’ll do the best I can to update it now. There are always dead things in the house, and sometimes live things too…
House geckos Killed 10 released 4
lizards Killed 15 released 3
frogs Killed 4 released 8
grasshoppers 10
shrews 4
big bugs- too many body pieces to count!ugh!
A few nights ago Kitten had been busy, I was up for 3 captures of her, one of them being a shrew. I have no interest in saving shrews, so I let her continue with her business. I got up at 5 for Catie crying and Kitten was curled up sleeping on the bathroom floor with a dead gecko, the legs of a grasshopper and the shrew was in the tub. I thought it was dead too. Later that morning as I’m downstairs, I hear the darn thing squeeking as she finally finishes it off. Today, as I’m walking into the bathroom to get the tub ready for a bath, I find a very live lizard( they are actually just a different form of gecko, as opposed to our house geckos) on the toilet, I capture it and have Sean open the front door so I can take it out to release it. I end up walking over to our new neighbors, and since their kids were still our playing, show it to them, and they took it to play with. I’m sure that gecko was wishing the cat had just killed it. I go back in to get the tub ready. As I look in the tub, there is a dead gecko and some grasshopper legs. As I move the tub toys out of the way, out jumps a little tree frog. Apparently Kitten has decided that the tub is a good place for saving her captures for later play. I take the frog outside to show to the neighbors, their dad is saying No!!! They’ll want to keep it too! As I go to release it into the jungle, their son comes with me, and I give it to him to release it. He got such a kick over how far such a little frog could jump. I bet the frog would have jumped even farther if he knew what the gecko was going through!