Going away on vacation.

[Hullswife]

Hello all,

I am going to be going to visit family very soon, and my situation is this: I have a regular cat sitter who does a very good job with my cats when I am a way, but is deathly afraid of my dear mantis patty. She has agreed to take care of her, but I think that any sort of handling or crickets feeding is going to be beyond her ability. I don't want her doing anything she is uncomfortable with for fear of harm coming to the mantis or undo suffering to the crickets, or worse mass escape of crickets. So, this is what I was thinking I have heard on the forums that you can feed your mantis cat food when they are debilitated or for a short amount of time. I was wondering if it would be okay to have the sitter simply give patty cat food in her enclosure on a bottle cap? I think that this is something she would be comfortable with since she does handle cat food at my house all the time and she would not have to handle any kind of insect? Is this something that you mantis lovers do? I am open to any other suggestions. The cat food brand is "Wellness formula" and it is grain free and the first ingredient is either beef or salmon depending on what the cats are eating that day (it is also wet food obviously). I will be gone for a week and have patty on an every other day feeding cycle.

 

[ismart]

Feeding it cat food is not going to work unless it's hand fed to the mantis. Mantids react to movement, live prey. They do not scavenge. If your mantis is alrady an adult? Then i would just put 3, or 4 crickets in it's enclosure. If you feed it well before you leave, it should be able to last a week without any food.

 

[Hullswife]

Hummm...Yeah I knew that they did live prey, but I was hoping it would work. No I don't think she is an adult yet, she is only a little over half an inch so she is still a babe, and eats a lot every time I feed her, so I don't think she will survive for more than a couple of days without food. You don't think she will be attracted to the smell. One day when I had run out of crickets suddenly, and unfortunate cat incident, I put some cat food on my finger and she seemed to smell it out and eat it....I guess it was on my live finger and that is why she ate it?

 

[Krissim Klaw]

They might bend to nibble at some cat food should they step in it or antennae sense it if you are holding it up to them, but that is not the same as wandering down to eat some out of a cap on the floor.

I would probably get a few cheap small plastic Tupperware containers, deli cups with lids, or the like. Poke some holes in the lid for air then stick one cricket in each container with a piece of dry dog food and a tiny piece of apple for moisture. All your sitter will have to do is peel the lid and dump the cricket into the cage. You could even cut a slightly larger than cricket size hole in the side and plug it up with foam or a thick paper towel instead so she just has to pull the plug and tap till the cricket falls in to make things even more fool proof. Then there would be no touching of insects. Make a couple extra containers than you need. If she happens to loose a cricket or two, it won't matter.

Really though, a week isn't that long. I would probably give the mantis a big meal right before you pull out of the drive way. Then if all your sitter did was some light mistings for water and to keep the humidity up, your mantis would probably be more than fine for a week.

 

[Hullswife]

Okay, I think I like that the best, I will do that, just because I am a paranoid new mantis momma that I would worry to much about her starving to leave no food. Thanks for all the advise and patience with me!

 

[d17oug18]

they are wild insects, Ive ran out of food and have mantis live TWO weeks without food. In the wild they would have to wait for food no? and flies arent alwaz ALL over place no? mantis are made to wait a very long time without food, they are pouncers not prey. No need to worry really.

 

[Rick]

Mantids eat live insects, not cat food. As Paul said you would have to hand feed the mantis cat food which as I mentioned is a poor choice. It would be easier to just drop in some crickets. You dont' mention the trip length but you said something about a couple days. A couple days is nothing. I've left mine for a week with no issues. Feed daily leading up to your trip to make sure she is nice and fat. Get the substrate a little extra moist and go enjoy your trip.

 

[Malti]

I was gonna suggest leave flies instead of crickets...and some food for the them

 

[hibiscusmile]

Or some fresh blue bottle maggots, order a small order, put in cage a half dozen and they will hatch that week given the two day it would take, no better to have the pupae that is fresh, or if u know when u r going, have me seperate some for you, so u would get say 5 maggots fresh, 5 maggots 2 day old and so on, leave all at bottom of cage and she will have a fresh supply of flies each day.