Look what the cat drug in!

I am concerned about the cat's recent slaughter spree. It was one thing when he brought in the odd mole, mouse, chipmunk or sparrow. But he's honing his mad 'lite predating skills, and he caught a rabbit last weekend. (Dean got him to drop it and it stopped screaming and ran away.) Then this morning, we let him out for a minute and he came back in with this full-grown male quail. It's stiff, cold, and dead and although I'm no Crime Scene Investigator, I posit that it was a found object rather than one of Midnight's victims. But still.

After calling my lifeline (thank you, Cynthia!), we've decided to bury the quail in the yard. I can't just lob it into the neighbor's bushes like the baby mouse, and Wildcare San Rafael doesn't want it because it's not orphaned, injured or rare. But as it's the California State Bird, we don't just want to put it out with the trash -- we feel that a little ceremony may be called for.

My bigger though less immediate question is, should we keep the cats inside? They're thriving with this indoor/outdoor lifestyle. Smoky is happy and rolls around on the gravel and in the dust, eating grass. Midnight is sleek and lithe and is so very pleased with himself and happy to be giving us presents. But what if he drags a baby skunk into our living room, or a fawn? And what is our obligation to not further decimate the songbird population of northern California? How many moles are enough moles out there, and is it OK for us to use these cats as mouse-and-rat-proofing machines?

I don't have answers to these questions. I'll probably settle on inaction-as-action, like with most of my parenting: let the cats out because they like it and because if they don't get to go out, they'll drive us crazy with their meowing and try to kill us by tying our shoelaces together as we walk. So if we get anything else really interesting brought into the house, I'll post another picture.