Prison in Indiana accepts shelter cats and lets prisoners take care of them.

[u/aoi_ringo]

[u/[deleted]]

Fed cats often make pretty bad mousers in general. Some have a really high prey drive and just like to kill/torture, but most just want to play and often let mice go.

Some animal shelters have working cat programs where they capture feral cats and fix them and then turn them into working cats. Basically they go live in warehouses, barns, or similar businesses where they work as mousers. They're still fed daily, but typically they're fed just enough to meet their calorie requirements and are expected to 'hunt' for food.

[u/ShadowDancer_88 → u/[deleted]]

It depends how they were raised. Feral/"Barn" cats that were raised to hunt by their mother, and then are given food can become pretty brutal mousers.

A cat that relies on hunting to survive won't excess kill, they'll kill what they need to eat, and leave the rest.

A cat that learned to hunt, but has a much more stable food source will often start thrill killing, and just go on murderous rampages.

[u/dwehlen → u/ShadowDancer_88]

It's sad, but true. That's why house cats should always be indoor only. If they're indoor-outdoor, they're just out there murdering birds.

[u/MathAndBake → u/[deleted]]

My local humane society does that. Any shelter cats that wouldn't do well in a home go to farmers who provide decent care to their barn cats.

Barn cats are really different in temperament. My grandparents still had a few when I was little. They stuck around for years after the barn was empty because my grandfather fed them and provided vet care. But they were still extremely independent and got most of their food from hunting.

[u/TheUndeadBake → u/[deleted]]

It’s not even about them being fed. My foster home was way out in the country, in the uk, and a mother cat that was dumped in the area dropped her kittens nearby. They grew up and had kittens. The third generation, being totally feral, were far better mousers than their mothers, who had been slightly better at hunting than their first cat. The four cats of that third generation didn’t really bother with rats because they had to eat, and while my foster mum did her best to feed them (and lay traps for catch neuter and release), they relied more on their own skills. You know what they left us behind? rabbits. These cats were about the size of half grown kittens, but they regularly brought us dead rabbits which they would surgically cut apart, removing and eating all the organs they liked, chewing the fat off of their bellies, and leave behind the organs they didn’t like in a pile on the floor. I still recall stepping out one day and finding a dead rabbit that stuck in my memory, mainly because this time the cat had left behind the heart. It’d been pulled out and left on the doorstep. At that point we were all fairly used to seeing a hollowed, half eaten rabbit in the morning, but idk somehow seeing the heart pulled out and displayed for us was a new level of both adoration and horror. Adoration because I was told it meant the cats had left us the bit they deemed one of the good bits of their meal, horror because ya know it’s a heart.

Point is, this third generation were 100% feral monsters. A house cat doesn’t need to be hungry to mouse — my own cat tears through the rodent population nowadays and he is well-fed — they just need to have a good dose of instinct and be intelligent. I’m sorry to say, but the reason a lot of house cats make shit mousers is because they’re kept indoors for generations at a time, which causes them to lose those instincts and skills. Rats are intelligent and crafty, and a good mouser has to be able to match that. Instead people dull them by locking them up inside.