Cats killing stuff

Lily caught a bird this morning - a starling I think, half alive, its beak pathetically - bathetically? - soundlessly opening and shutting.

I screamed (definitely pathetically) for, I think, the first time in my life (I used to have nightmares about not being able to scream, so I suppose this was progress) which at least made Lily run away with it. Although not in the right direction. She trotted upstairs, Basil close behind, and I sat holed up in the sitting room not knowing what to do. Or rather knowing what to do, but being too afraid to do it.

Anyway, in the end, I summoned up the nerve to open the sitting room door. Basil had stolen it off her (a pattern developing here – that’s what happened with the last mouse that he found the morning after Lily caught it – he ate it and promptly regurgitated it – obviously not fresh enough - leaving a stain on the otherwise rather nice wooden kitchen floor.) When I finally summoned up the courage to open the sitting room door in order to go upstairs, he was in the kitchen and Lily was sprawled on the floor in the hall. Basil was growling over the plunder he had stolen from his sister. She didn’t seem to care. In fact she looked extremely pleased with herself, stretched out, blood on her chin and neck. The smugness didn’t entirely go after I shouted at her and plonked her in the kitchen with Basil. He was still there – just tinged with a hint of resentfulness.
I didn’t know what to do then. The bird was dead at least, but I really didn’t feel like scooping it up, even though not doing so would potentially mean another stain on the floorboards. So I just shut them in there and tried to calm down.
I know. Cats. Dead things. It comes with the territory, but usually if the things are alive we can save them and this was their first bird (that I know of.) It's their nature, I realize, but I'd rather they didn't bring it (their nature and the bird) into the house.
I did feel somewhat proud bizarrely though, and utterly wrongly for a vegetarian, but mainly shaken.