My old dog was fascinated with little critters in the ground, and spent a lot of time snuffling and digging. She managed to nail a few moles and mice, and ate some of them.
I realize that attempting to domesticate a wolf without a nontrivial period of genetic tinkering is a bad plan; but I can definitely understand why we decided to try anyway, persistently enough for that genetic tinkering to occur.
“OK, I’ve caught one… Now what?”
“Let me have it!”
“Hey, no, catch your own! […] Look, if I set it down, then I can catch it again!”
“Did Mama say what we were supposed to do once we’d caught one?”
“Um, no? Maybe she thought it was obvious?”
“Mama thinks a lot of things are obvious that just aren’t.”
Depends.
I once knew an anti-foxhunting clergyman whose wife discovered a pair of fox cubs whose mother had presumably been killed by a hunt. She brought them home and they were “adopted” by the family cat.
In a spirit of pure evil they invited the MFH and his wife to tea and waited till they suddenly realised what the two “kittens” who were sleeping by the fire with their surrogate mother actually were. They grew up to behave like domestic cats.
The canidae seem to have enough behavioural flexibility to adapt to quite a range of environments.
The original squeak toys.
That perfect mix of sweet and horrifying.
Horrilent™
That is true; and I’ve heard stories of modestly successful wolf-puppy adoptions, if done early enough; though the result apparently tends toward the Challenging Dog, Probably Not For Kids, end of the range once it gets a bit older.
or Exible. what’s the order? excellent -> exilent -> horrilent -> horrible or should we switch places in the middle?
So do they hork up the fur and the bones after a while like cats do?
@kupfernigk: I’m squeeing sooo hard right now over the prospect of foxy catdogs.
My old cat would carefully eat around all the fur and bones and internal organs, leaving us gross little mice carpets for us to find.
Biggest floofiest softy in the world, but he was a mouser until his 15th year. 
My only hunting cat would leave mice, and the back half of rabbits, always the back half. He never bothered with or was even mildly interested in birds though and I would have totally given him a pass if he just killed one out of spite for all the hassle the jays would give him regularly.
On topic yep wolves eat little vermin mouse rat things. Mother nature is a cruel mistress.
I remember watching a short documentary once that stated the “instinct” cats (and dogs/wolves?) have to pounce on small moving creatures is innate, but knowing what to do with the creature after that point has to be taught by mama…which is why it can seem like they’re just “playing with their food” or being outright cruel.
Interesting! We had a cat that caught rabbits but would leave us the front half!
Once our cat “stretched” a mouse: front half, 50 cm of unreeled intestines, back half.
Very cute, but too dog like. I want the red fox that acts like a kitteh. Therein lies my squee.
Red fox pups are the most adorable.
Where one of my kids lives, in Lewisham, SE London, it’s often hard to be sure at night whether you’re seeing a cat or a fox. At one time they had a family of foxes under the garden shed; when our dog went out in the garden they just watched it and vanished under the shed if it came too close.
There is evidence, however, that unnatural selection (i.e. for an urban environment) is resulting in more intelligent and more social foxes. Down here in the South-west if a fox crossed my path it would exit rapidly; there, it would just keep on going because they know from experience that people are harmless.
