I have heard of this...

When cats play with toys they are "practicing a kill". Have you noticed any of your cats, after a play session going to the food bowl? We had one cat Tippy who recently passed who did that very often. Play and then have to eat.

Weezie does it to some extent.

But Oreo...who really catches and then EATS her real mouse or chipmunk does NOT go to the food bowl.

I think the instinct is to stimulate appetite when "catching" or playing and then their body tells them to eat. In this case, she is taking the pretend food to the food place as part of that. It might be that more feral cats do this than very domestic ones. None of our cats take a toy mouse to the dish, but I've seen some posts here in that describe this or something similar.

Both Oreo and Weez bring in kills and "stash" them if they can. We found 3 dead things including a rabbit's foot, under the other bed upNorth, when getting ready for my son's visit. They were all still fresh, and we saw Weez bring in the 3rd! This was new and from that moment on...it was "out out"...or closing the door, so they couldn't come in. Some cats will stash prey like they do toys... which is not something I can accept.

I read about this in a book called Twisted Whiskers, or the sequeal whose name I can't recall now. In one of those books, the author described a cat who stashed animal prey in a mattress in an unused bedroom, and created a huge stink problem!

this is the author and book:

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Sorry I can't recall the other book she wrote...I found them both at our library years ago! Very interesting read! About the weird things cats do when kept indoors!