This isn't a gripe, but a story that I never would have expected.
Beginning midsummer, I would occasionally see a black & white cat wandering through the cul-de-sac. I didn't think much of it, at first I thought the new neighbors (longtime neighbors sold their house in the spring) brought a cat with them and let it spend it's time outside.
About two weeks ago I stopped home for lunch and saw the cat running away when it saw my car. I thought nothing of it at the time. A couple days later, also at lunchtime I saw a dead chipmunk where the common driveway meets my driveway & the grass. I figured I'd need to get the shovel and dispose of it, but it was gone when I got back outside after eating lunch.
The next morning walking from my back deck to my car I saw a kitten that looked a lot like the cat start running to the bushes, followed by two other kittens.
Obviously the cat that had been wandering for a while had a litter and as there are some critters in the area, the chipmunk that I saw was most likely food for the kittens.
A couple days later, when I got home the four cats were by my back deck, the kittens ran quickly behind the mother, who started hissing at me. When she realized I wasn't going towards them she turned back to her kittens.
The next day, near where I saw them, I noticed a long bone that obviously was a rabbits hind leg, stripped of all meat except a little more than half of the foot with fur on it (i did slso have rabbits roaming the area).
While rabbits have little means of protecting themselves, those in my neighborhood are considerably larger than the cat. I can see how the cat was able to catch the rabbit but I am very curious as to how she killed it.
There have been no critters in my yard for more than a week and the cats have been gone for the same amount of time (likely moved on to new hunting grounds).