Viewers have been left in stitches after a hunting cat arrived home with an unexpected prize—the neighbor’s dinner.
Instead of the usual birds or mice, Jojo the cat appeared proudly in the backyard with a fully cooked chicken, much to his owner’s shock.
In a clip on TikTok with more than 147,000 views, cat owner Cas Smith from Sussex, southern U.K., shared the moment she caught Jojo with the cooked meat.
Despite her shock in the video, Smith told Newsweek that this wasn’t an isolated incident. “He does [this often],” she said. “He brought home a rack of ribs once.”
In the video, Jojo is tucking in, thrilled with his catch. While chicken is a great way for cats to get some essential nutrients, it is important to remove bones before giving it to your pet as these can be a choking hazard.
“Hopefully, my neighbor wasn’t looking forward to their chicken dinner tonight,” Smith wrote, alongside the caption: “He was just practicing his hunting skills.”
While she wasn’t completely sure where Jojo’s chicken meal came from, Smith said she had a pretty good idea: “I think it was one of my neighbors as I heard shouting as he jumped the fence with it,” she added.
On TikTok, the video sparked a wave of similar stories from other pet owners. One commenter, Jade, wrote: “My old cat brought back a cooked steak once,” while another, Lucky, posted: “One time my next-door neighbors were resting their beef joint for Sunday dinner … cooked and all, and yep, my cat stole it.”
However, viewers were also quick to applaud the cat’s “hard-earned” meal. One TikTok user, Tiff, commented: “That boy’s eating his hard-earned chicken! He probably had to go into someone’s house for that!”
Why Do Cats Hunt?
While Jojo bringing home the neighbor’s dinner may seem purely mischievous, there are deeper reasons behind such behavior. A study published in Current Biology in 2021, conducted by researchers at the University of Exeter in the U.K., explored the hunting habits of domestic cats and revealed some key motivations for their predatory instincts.
The study identified two primary reasons that even well-fed house cats like to hunt. Firstly, it is in their instinct: despite being domesticated, felines retain a strong evolutionary drive to hunt. Their ancestors, like wildcats, were natural-born predators, and this instinct persists even in household pets.
The second reason is boredom, cats may hunt simply for entertainment or mental stimulation. When bored, cats often seek out prey—or, in some cases, a neighbor’s meal—as a form of enrichment.
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