I really, really need some help and advice. Anything would be appreciated, guys.
In our house, we have a small open vent in the kitchen, which helped keep the kitchen aerated and pushed out any smoke. A few weeks ago, we started noticing a buildup of grass on the vent. Some sort of bird had obviously been trying to build a nest. We were a bit amused that it picked this spot but not too bothered. The nest obviously wasn’t even close to done so we cleared away the grass and assumed that was the end of that.
However, by the next day, the bird had brought more grass. We cleaned the vent again…and the bird came back by the next day.
This went on for about a week. We got pretty used to occasionally clearing away the grass from the vent. I was surprised that the bird didnt give up and find a tree instead, but it was very persistent. We didn’t really mind as long as it didn’t lay its eggs there or something.
We caught sight of the bird three or four times. It was small, kind of cute. I’m bad with birds so I dont know what it is, sorry. I would guess at some sort of sparrow.
Last Wednesday, I was in my room when I heard a horrible screeching from the kitchen. When I rushed there, I found that my cat had caught the bird and bitten through its neck.
I pulled Scrawny(my cat) away, but the bird was already dead at that point. We all felt horrible. We’d never expected that something like this would happen, but in retrospect it seemed obvious we should have taken more precautionary measures.
I figured that the bird was dead, anyway, so I let Scrawny eat it. It seemed even more disrespectful to just throw it away, right? Maybe that was my mistake.
After that, we closed off the vent with a net to prevent anything like that happening again. For a couple days, nothing much happened.
Then we started finding grass on the vent again. We were creeped out because the vent was closed off- how did grass even get in there?
After that, no matter how closely we watched the vent, it seemed grass appeared out of nowhere. Nothing we did had any sort of effect. We never found any birds or insects. The grass just kept appearing.
A few days after that, our cat started becoming weird. She started to swipe at thin air, and hiss at nothing. A few times, she would suddenly shriek loud enough to bring us running, only to find her pacing and hissing at nothing.
She became permanently stressed. More often than not, her tail resembled a bottlebrush as her fur stood up in anxiety. When she stopped eating, we started getting really worried.
We took her to the vet, but he can’t find anything wrong with her. Obviously, I’ve combed every page on cat health on google. Nothing seems to fit.
Yesterday, we were eating lunch when our cat shrieked loudly. I rushed outside and found Scrawny bleeding in three places. She had been hale and hearty five minutes ago.
I have no idea what wounds made by birds look like, but all of Scrawny’s wounds are small and deep and seem like what I’d expect from a bird’s beak. There’s nothing else in the compound that can hurt her.
We’ve taken her to the vet and dressed her wounds. Now we have her with us in the house. She refuses to sit still and keeps pacing and yowling for no reason.
None of this is her fault-she was just being a cat. So far, i haven’t been able to help her at all. I know how terrifying some of the posts are on this subreddit, and I know a cat seems pretty small stakes, but please, please help me. I love my cat more than anything and couldn’t stand it if anything happened to her.