Coincidence: Burmese cats again. An article in an English magazine tells how a couple, moving to a country farm, found the attitude to diet of their Burmese cats changed. (These are the lovely, slinky, dark chocolate brown animals.) This pair go through the motions of expecting a tin to be opened for them or a few biscuits to be put into their plate, but they are not really interested; for outside, in the farmyard or paddock, there is the really tasty stuff. Shrews are popular, eaten from the tail onwards. Almost never the mask, and never, ever the whiskers. Young rats, too, which are eaten in a more conservative fashion.
That's nothing, says a local Burmese owner. One of their pair sits, in all weathers, on a fence, "like a kestrel" watching for prey. If necessary it will prowl through the wood nearby. What have been their recent depredations? Field mice, house mice, shrews, rabbits are the norm. Recently, and this causes some disquiet, tits occasionally, once three wrens, also a starling. Bought to amuse a young family, they are very affectionate and like being cuddled, but the owners, getting out of bed in the morning, have to step carefully, for, most of the time, the prey is laid out on the carpet for their approval - before being consumed.
A sign of falling off. One of the cats is tending to enjoy being fed, and this is taken as a sign that her teeth are going. The controversy about the depredation caused among song birds by the magpie has often been met with the charge that most of the songsters fall victims of cats. Just cats. They don't have to be Burmese; these probably differ only in that they like to show off in the home to their owners.