<p>OP, do you own the house or are you renting? If you are renting, you should call the landlord; they’ll want to deal with this immediately. One (there’s always more than one, they’re quite social) cute little mouse can become about 300 mice in a few months. Each female breeds about 10 times a year and they have litters up to 14, so imagine that if all of the females start breeding after about a month, you’ll have a big crowd. They chew at wires, inhabit appliances and drop feces throughout the house. Eventually, they’ll get into your food - check out an image of mouse droppings online so that you can recognize what mouse poop looks like when you see something that looks like black rice on your kitchen counter. </p>
<p>If you don’t want to get another cat, you should consider setting traps. Scented, pre-baited traps work well. Otherwise, I would suggest using poison in containers that cannot be accessed by other animals. We have a lot of field mice in our area and we place baited traps outside around the property. It reduces the population so that they are less likely to try to enter the house.</p>
<p>Much more likely to be the latter. The house mouse is an Old World import whose scientific name, Mus musculus, means “Mouse (that is a) little mouse.” But in the US field mice are usually North American natives (several species).</p>
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<p>Depends on the dog. We have a miniature pinscher - a breed that was bred as ratters. And she is obsessed with the idea of wiping out all small rodents. Woe to the mouse that dares venture onto her turf.</p>
<p>If you want to get rid of the mice but don’t care to buy a miniature pinscher, get some standard mouse traps and bait them peanut butter. You will have to deal with series of mouse corpses, but you will get rid of most if not all of the mice.</p>
<p>I guess I’ll hope my Boston Terrier nabs it, but I’m getting one live trap and some poison. My mom lives on a farm and she says the poison is the way to go too. She says it makes them thirsty so they go in search of water and don’t normally die in the house.</p>
<p>GAK! I have the cockroaches, too! I am posting and never coming back :(</p>
<p>A long time ago, a friend had a mouse in her apartment. Her brother set a trap, caught the mouse, figured, eh, I’ll set another one just in case. He caught 17 mice before it was all over with. Yuck, I’ve gotta go. Those cockroaches are making my skin crawl :eek:</p>
<p>I think the cockroaches are hilarious! The high point of my day. (I used to have a cat that loved to eat cockroaches. Good thing, because that apartment was pretty bad.)</p>
<p>Our beagle/border mix would herd the mice into one place, and then cower in fear, but wouldn’t dare kill them. We’ve had mice take the food right from her bowl if it’s left out overnight. Found it in a nice little pile in the china cabinet, next to a shredded dish towel. Shoulda charged rent.</p>
<p>Tried the glue trap once and it was pitiful. We have traps by Intruder, Inc. that capture the mouse and kill it about half the time. S2 says that if it survives the trap, it gets a new lease on life, and he takes the little critter down the street to release it.</p>
<p>To the OP, so sorry for the loss of your cat. I remember us exchanging cat threads when I first joined CC. I had a rat fall in when I opened my door one day. Sneaky bugger was sitting on top of the storm door, just waiting for me to open it. I managed to confine him to the laundry room. We put out a trap, which caught him just by the tail, doing no mortal damage. I scooped him up with the dust pan and used a shovel to free him from the trap outside. So relieved to have him out of the house, but still unharmed. Of course, two hours later, I looked out the window to see that my outside cat was making a good meal out of him.</p>
<p>Mickey just ran across the dining room floor from the pocket door to the tiniest sliver in the door jam on the other side of the room. I took faithful Boston Terrier over to investigate but Mickey was long gone. He is very bold and taunting me.</p>
<p>Edited to add - I looked back at the old cat thread and saw the post about my cat who carried around the purple haired doll. That was the brother to the cat who died 2 weeks ago. Her brother died many years ago - when he was only 2. He was the healthy one who died of a heart condition at age two. She was the sickly one who lived to be almost 15.</p>
<p>^Actually, Mickey Mouse was originally based on a real live species of North American mouse: the Deer Mouse, known for its large round ears that are still depicted in the highly-stylized cartoon Mickey we see today. In recent years the Deer Mouse has become more (in)famous as the primary carrier and spreader of the deadly hantavirus.</p>
<p>I have a picture of him. He’s sitting next to the ottoman in my den. He’s so tiny, you have to know he’s there. I don’t know why I call it a “he”. It could be Minnie. It could be Minnie and Mickey, Jerry, Speedy, Mighty, Remi, Cinderella’s mice.</p>
<p>I’ve had lots of experience with mice and my cats have not been very helpful…</p>
<p>One day I was working at home; the cats nearby chilling on the bed. I had that feeling of someone watching me, and sure enough a little mouse was in the room. The cats were completely oblivious. Well, I grabbed a Weight Watchers magazine and one quick slam of the magazine and that was the end of the mouse. I have since off’d about 2 more mice with a WW magazine. </p>
<p>Now, if anyone has a method for getting rid of raccoons, please let me know.</p>
<p>BB - I was thinking of the character in Ratatoiulle. I thought the mouse was Remy. There are lots of too cute mice in the cartoon world. It is a conspiracy to make it more difficult to off them when they come into your house.</p>
<p>Ugh…I have dealt with mice in my cat filled house on more than one occassion. I am not a fan and don’t fall for the cuteness factor. They are vile , filthy, disease carrying , wire chewing unwelcome guests.
I don’t think the catch and release method works if you let them out of your own house…they just get back in ( as witnessed by my husband and former exterminator )
As far as the food…we forgot about a large bag of peanuts that someone gave us and we stored …it served as a " miracle grow "
When we were getting little results with traps , I had the exterminator put poison in the places they seemed to hide…A few days later , we had found about 70 dead mice around the property ( who knows how many were in places we couldn’t see ) </p>
<p>Everyone laughed that we had five cats and a mouse problem , but indoor cats that have never been exposed to the hunt by their mothers , don’t have the same drive as regular indoor / outdoor cats.</p>
<p>We just had a mouse incident a few weeks ago…now my daughter refuses to go up to the third floor. Our deaf cat pounced on it, brought it downstairs and let it loose.It was a comedy of errors , but my husband managed to get it…I don’t think any mouse lovers here want to know what happened to the furry little guy ;)</p>
<p>So I thought as well. Additionally, my cat is minus her front claws. Still, she managed to kill a very large mouse (not quite a rat-or maybe a small rat) at our lake house. Unfortunately for me, she carried it up to her usual perch on the sofa and dropped in down between some of the many pillows. I was watching tv there and kept smelling something gross-even accused my husband of fouling the air (he had the nerve to act offended, give me a break). It was really disgusting to lean forward, pull the pillow back, and see kitty’s trophy. Not one of my better memories.</p>
![http://www.termiguardusa.com/Deer-Mouse.jpg[/url]](http://www.termiguardusa.com/Deer-Mouse.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
![http://www.kwantlenpark.ca/animals/deer_mouse.jpg[/url]](http://www.kwantlenpark.ca/animals/deer_mouse.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
