Some other sites you might like:

• My Cat Center featuring the encyclopedia of cats.
• Wonders of Animal Life, Volume 1

Monkey, a rare Rhodopian cat from Bulgaria, studies her favorite pet, a female mantis named Ms. Feng Shui. Ms. Shui is shown dining on a juicy cricket.
Monkey is somewhat jealous, she likes to get the crickets for herself. It is difficult when feeding Ms. Shui to keep Monkey out of Ms. Shui's home. If a bag of crickets is kept for feeding Ms. Shui, the bag has to be locked up in a secure place. If it is placed on any shelf of the bookcase, Monkey will find a way during the night to climb the bookcase to get at the bag of crickets and release them for a fun hunt around the house.

Preying mantis are said by the Chinese and Japanese to be a very lucky insect to keep in the home. A popular hobby in China and Japan is to make a small houses and leashes for the preying mantis that they find.

Ms. Shui, a native california preying mantis, enjoys a meal of a cricket. She can finish her meal of a cricket in about 5 minutes. Unlike some spiders that merely masticate their prey, and then discard the husk, Ms. Shui finishes the entire cricket and does not leave any pieces.

She is able to eat two or three crickets a day, and easily a dozen a week.

You can tell that she is a female preying mantis by counting the number of bands on her abdomen. Later, over a period of several weeks she laid 3 egg sacks attached to the top of her home.

This picture was only taken a few minutes after the previous picture. She is finished and is climbing to the top of the aquarium to rest after her meal.

Preying mantis do not startle easily. Once a mantis is well used to it's home, it is possible to feed a mantis by hand. To hand feed a mantis, hold a live cricket by it's back legs with your thumb and forefinger, and offer it near the preying mantis. After a few seconds of studying your offering and making sure it is a live cricket, a hungry mantis will take the cricket from your fingers.

In this picture of a Preying Mantis, you can see the "teeth" on her forelegs. These teeth help to securely hold any insect that she can catch.

Just like other predators, a mantis will thoroughly clean it's forelegs after dining on it's meal.

Here you can also see the interlocking teeth on her legs that help her capture and hold passing insects.

These pictures were taken with a Sony F707 5 megapixel camera. The originals have been reduced in size using PaintShop Pro for posting on the web. These are the best picture, but let me know if you would like me to post some more of the pictures from this photo shoot of a cat and her preying mantis.