The following is not for the faint of heart, the timid, or those with delicate sensibilities. In fact, it's only for the extra stalwart. Let's put it this way: are you comfortable with a little mouse blood? If yes, proceed.
First a point of information: cats are not born knowing how to catch and eat mice. I know this may come as a shock to you. (Also I have living proof that not all dogs know how to swim.) Mother cats teach their kittens about it in a very orderly and methodical way. When the kittens are ready to eat solid food, the mother brings them a delicious fully-dead mouse. They can eat that at their leisure. Then, the mother cat brings a half-dead mouse for the kittens to play with, torture, and then eat. Finally when they've gotten the idea, the mother cat brings them a fully live mouse and sets it loose among them. You get the point. The kittens do too, and soon they are skilled enough to hunt on their own.
Now in the case of Bagheera, one of his key tasks in our house is catching mice. But in speaking with his foster mother (as she tearfully filled my arms with toys and his favorite foods), I learned that he missed the whole mouse-lesson business from his mother. They were separated early and he lived only with his human mother throughout his formative weeks. So… naturally I wanted to make sure he got some basic facts set into his head early on.
We have a tin cat live trap, and although I'm a chair-jumper by nature I've gotten very comfortable with dealing with live mice, when contained in secure tin boxes. Also I have quite a steady supply of mice. So I caught one and put the trap (which has a clear top) near Bagheera's cage until he noticed the mouse. The mouse, bless his heart, didn't want to be noticed so this took half a day. But finally when Bagheera was aware of the furry morsel inside the trap, I brought the whole entourage into the kitchen. My idea was to open the trap and let the cat chase the mouse. If he caught and ate it, bonus. If it got away, well, so be it. I can always catch it again, and that way the cat would see which way it went (under the stove, dishwasher, etc.). So naturally I stood on a chair and opened the trap with a broom. Bagheera leapt into action and began to chase the mouse all around the room, and I ran away as fast as I could, shaking like a leaf from the ordeal. I sat in the other room for five minutes or so, overcoming a severe attack of the willies.
Then I crept, not to the kitchen (eew) but to the top of the stairs where I could see how the mouse class was proceeding from a safe distance. What I saw was that the mouse had gotten away and Bagheera was in a state trying to find him. In effect, though, this was a success, because a cat on patrol in the kitchen is exactly what I want.
So, lesson two the next day… I caught a mouse again that morning, possibly the self-same mouse as the day before. I brought it to Bagheera and opened the trap. However the mouse had no interest in playing tag this time and wedged himself into the little space under the little see-saw that lets him in but not out. Okay, so Bagheera dutifully went to work trying to extract him with his paw. No luck. The tail was sticking out, so he took the tail between his teeth and gave it a series of firm yanks. No luck. I began to wonder whether in fact the mouse had died in there of fright or his injuries. I closed the trap and vigorously banged it against the floor to dislodge the mouse. No luck. So I left it for a while, figuring something would have to give eventually. But no, I came back some hours later and found that Bagheera had sampled the tail. Indeed, the tail was sitting there in a sticky smear of blood. But the mouse had not moved. I decided then that it really must be dead. Isaac came bounding by and said cheerfully, "It must be in agony!" and skipped away. I said, "Well, I hope not. I really think it's dead."
I tried the tipping and banging trick some more and then became convinced that it was dead and its obese little body had gotten wedged in there somehow. Not wanting to throw away the whole trap (this didn't occur to me but I sort of wish it had), I decided I needed to get the mouse out. I could throw it away or give it to Bagheera or whatever, but having a dead mouse in the live mouse trap makes no sense. But damned if I could. I wasn't at all willing to touch it, so I went and found a needle nosed pliers and some rubber gloves and set about firmly pulling its tail. The mouse emerged so that its rump was showing and I thought that I could dump it out from there. But… people… when I let go of the pliers it scurried back in!
That is to say, it was holding on by its fingernails while sitting there and having its tail eaten and various parties trying to pull it out.
So once I realized it was alive and cognizant I took it outside to let it go. Still, of course, I couldn't dislodge it. After a while I just left the trap to its own devices. I returned very tentatively three days later and found it empty, only a brown smear remaining where the tail had been nibbled.
Okay. So that was all pretty horrible. Maybe that's enough mouse training for Bagheera. He did learn two critical facts: 1) there are mice in the kitchen; 2) they are delicious. I hope that will be enough to set the ball rolling.
Overall, he's doing wonderfully in integrating into the household. Lena spent the first few days sitting beside his crate round the clock and watching he every move. She growled at him occasionally, and whined at me as if to say, "It's not like I'm asking to eat the whole cat, but can't I at least eat the ears?" Now he's out and about and sometimes she bothers him, but mostly he lives his life and she lives hers. Meanwhile, he's actively trying to bring Zane Grey out of her shell. I heard the sweetest little "brrrt, brrrrt" chirping noise in the other room the other day. It was persistent so I came in to see what it was. And there I found Zane Grey, sitting on the top of the stairs, and Bagheera on the bottom step, speaking to her soothingly and trying to coax her down. It's slow work, but he's making progress with her. After initially hissing and running from him, she's getting comfortable sitting ten feet away from him and watching his doings. Who knows, maybe he'll even teach her how to catch mice.