Cats bring home prey — bugs, lizards, birds and mice — to feed their kittens, and it may be that your cat thinks you need feeding too. It is also possible that your cat may be bringing you these gifts as thanks for the food you give him.

Our cat Murray was a wonderful gift giver! He would regularly gift us mice. In nearly all cases they were unharmed. That’s when the fun began. Murray would come into the house in the middle of the night and drop the mouse in the middle of the floor and then lie down and watch us try to catch the mouse. I asked him to help, but he ignored me.

Mice are very quick and can hide in tiny places. After numerous failed efforts, we noticed that they tended to run to the edge of the room along the baseboards. Our son had cut out black construction paper what looked like a mouse hole (like in cartoons) and taped it to the baseboard. As the mice would run along the baseboard, they would always stop at the fake opening.

My wife, who would get roses delivered in tube-like corrugated boxes had an idea. She opened one end and taped the other shut and then placed it along the baseboard. It was ready to test. All we had to do was wait for Murray to bring in another mouse to test the idea.

A few nights later, Murray did his part. We chased the mouse and just as planned, the mouse ran into the tube. We quickly picked it up open end up, went outside far from the house and let the mouse escape and wished the mouse a great life.

Imagine what that mouse told his friends . . . “caught by a cat, chased by people, lifted high into the air and then back into the field!” Wonder if they believed him.