This thing about the cat having free access to the house has major drawbacks. Bertie just brought a live mouse in through the terrace doors. The mouse of course ran to hide under the furniture with both Bertie and Natasha chasing him. I don't know how we'll get him out of here if Bertie doesn't catch him again.
I guess the little rodent is Bertie's Bastille Day present to us. Now I've had to close Tasha out of the room, because I don't want her playing with an injured or dead mouse. Cats! They really are wild animals in a way that dogs are not.
Our friend Evelyn says she keeps a butterfly net handy to deal with such situations. I wish I had one right now. E. and L. can catch the live prey that the cat drags in and then release it back outdoors.
P.S. We can see the mouse running around when we move pieces of furniture, but we can't catch him. Now I won't be able to leave any doors open in the morning when Bertie goes out hunting. The cat will just have to stay outside. I don't know what ever possessed me to bring a cat into the household anyway. Phooey.
Walt has now set two baited mousetraps under the sofa. Maybe they will be effective.
Mousetraps are very efficient, because mice can't resist cheese. On the other hand, mice don't do much damage, if any, and are not a danger for anybody.
ReplyDeleteI know they are not a danger. We had them in the house at San Francisco a time or two. We were usually able to catch them in cages and take them back out into the wild, sometimes up to the park on top of Mt. Davidson.
DeleteBertie brought the mouse in for Tasha to play with.... surely. But I know what you mean, it is no joke really...
ReplyDeleteBagger does it here, but I have a load of live traps that I use for catching rodents in the field, so I set one or two of those up and usually am able to let the poor thing go in the morning.... once I've given it a visual check to make sure I'm not releasing it to a slow death.
In our case, it is almost always voles.... and I use SuperU 'snacky-cracky' to bait them.
If you don't mind the drive out, you are welcome to borrow a couple... I haven't the time at the moment to set them out.
If you are using the back-breaker traps, the best bait is some peanut butter on the paddle.
I won't even ask what snacky-cracky means. We have both kinds of traps, and have set up one of each under the sofa. I don't know if Bertie injured the rodent when he caught it. Do voles jump? This rodent did when I tried to grab it.
DeleteSnacky-Cracky is the trade name in the U.K. for what are mini-florentines.... sold here by SuperU as 'Craquant'....so, for a change, it actually isn't one of my "created-out-of-thin-air" words or phrases....
DeleteEww! I feel for you. Keep us posted. Yuck.
ReplyDeleteYou really are more of a dog person, aren't you Ken? I'm more of a cat person. I never think of cats as wild ... unless they grow up being allowed to roam free outdoors. I wonder what a dog would be like that was allowed to roam freely outside? I imagine the dog would be more likely to catch things. I guess it's a different life for them when their outdoor experience is always alongside a loving human, who then brings them back inside for a warm, well-fed existence :)
When I was growing up, we had a couple of dogs at different times and they roamed freely around the neighborhood. I don't remember them bringing home prey. Walt says his collie roamed free when he was growing up too.
DeleteBertie has always been an outdoor cat, even before we took him in. Janet and David let him roam. And he's always been a fighter, terrorizing the neighborhood. At the same time, he's very gentle and tame with us. I don't mind so much when he brings in dead mice, birds, and lizards, or brings them up to the terrace. It's the live rodents that are a problem. We have one cage trap and one spring-loaded trap set up under the sofa. We're listening for the snap.
And I should mention that because of allergies I always had to stay away from cats when I was younger. I'm not so allergic to them any more but sometimes when Bertie climbs up up on my lap and I pet him for a minute or two, my eyes start to tear up and my nasal passages start to swell. So I have to put him outside.
DeleteWhy don't you leave Bertie alone and You go outside ?
DeleteLOL .... my father threatened me with something like that when my wonderful huge long haired cat covered yet another pair of dark slacks belonging to my dad. And look at me now, living with 3 cats ... 2 of them I got on purpose, one I inherited :)
"Why don't you leave Bertie alone and You go outside ?"
DeleteI think that's what my wife said to me when my allergies to our prior indoor cat got really bad.
I say, when the cat starts paying the property taxes, then I'll go outside when I feel the allergies coming on. Until then, out he goes.
DeleteDaisy has brought us many mice, dead, alive or anywhere in between. We've got used to it.
ReplyDeleteWe've learned how to move our furniture to catch them. Throwing a towel over them sometimes works but we now keep a pair of long plastic kitchen tongs handy for grabbing them.
The worst moment was when I accidentally dropped the freezer on one. I had moved the freezer to see if the mouse as underneath, it ran out and startled me so I let go...........
Two mice have disappeared into the nooks and crannies of the house somewhere, never to be seen again.
It would be a shame for Bertie if this incident caused him to lose his position in the household, his freedom to come and go and enjoy being indoors.
I think I just need to keep him out in the early morning hours. That's when he hunts. This morning I fed him and then also gave him some milk, which he consumed with enthusiasm. Then he went outdoors again. A few minutes later he came in with the live mouse. Later in the day, that never happens. So I'll be careful early in the morning (I'm getting up at about 5 nowadays to take Tasha out).
DeleteKen ... Cats hunt. Period. No matter what time .. at least half of it is Being A Cat .. they hunt a stuffed toy !
DeleteHe is a lovely sweet ( to all but mice) cat who deserves praise for helping with the mouse problem and allowed to live where he has been living , in the house with his family. I bet you can't wait for Tasha and her bladder to get just a little older :)
Mice, moles, birds, and lizards. Who knows what other animals he kills? The only mouse problem we have is Bertie bringing live ones into the house. Praise, my eye. Bertie hasn't been living, really, in the house, for the last 7 years. I'm not sure now is the time for him to move in. Family, he couldn't care less about. It's all about food.
DeleteTasha is getting better and better about bladder and bowel, thank goodness.
maybe the mouse was on the way in anyway, heh heh....once my cat brought in a chipmunk (live) and all 3 of them just stood around & watched him run thru the house..i could chase the critter out finally with a broom, but took awhile.....poor Bertie, he was just adjusting to life indoors with new friend.....i hope he can stay there
ReplyDelete.....oh and evidently mild is not good for kitties....gives them the trots
I don't feel sorry for Bertie. He lives a good life. We've never had a mouse in the house except the ones that Bertie has brought in. He is not just now adjusting to life in the house. He wants it both ways — the run of the house and the run of the neighborhood. As for milk, the vet told me it depends on the cat. Some like it and can digest it. Others don't and can't. Bertie does and apparently can.
DeleteWe've always had good luck with mouse traps. Mice just can't resist cheese or peanut butter. On the other hand, while cats love to chase mice, they often seem to be more interested in batting it around and playing with it than killing it. At least our cats did.
ReplyDeleteSo Callie treated the cat the way the cat treats animals smaller than he is. Only Callie never tried to kill and eat the cat, or even bat him around very much. Cat play... seems cruel.
DeleteYes, it can be cruel. But that's just the way cats are. I love cats, but they're strange creatures sometimes. So are people. Look what they did in the US last November.
DeleteStaying out of this one! Good luck with the mouse removal!
ReplyDeleteI love both cats and dogs, but this is one downside to having a cat. At least it's an infrequent occurrence. Years ago when Mitch and I were first together, we had cats that brought live birds into the house, and we'd come home to feathers everywhere. We'd brace ourselves to find the carcass. I've also had to mercy kill a mouse that our cats didn't finish off. It's very hard.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, we've seen Mickey (dog) kill at least 3 squirrels. Dogs kill, they don't play with prey, so that's a difference. Also, I don't have to pick up cat poo several times a day as I do with dogs. To me, that's a big downside of having dogs. Cats bury their own. Walking with a bag of dog crap until you can dispose of it is not my favorite thing. And yet these are the things we put up with as pet owners. I hope you catch that mouse soon.
None of our dogs has ever killed any other animal. I remember Collette bringing us birds and even a baby opossum one time, but they were alive and the dog just dropped them and let them go. Callie never did anything like that, and never killed anything. Tasha is too young.
DeleteHaving the cat has always been a problem. The only reason we have Bertie here is that he was going to be abandoned by the people who owned him. At least that was a distinct possibility. The SPCA wouldn't take him or any more cats because they had no more room. So I said we'd take him in and try to learn to live with both a cat and a dog. Callie was three years old, and Bertie was four. They never had a good relationship. Bertie, too, fought with other neighborhood cats (I almost said they fought like cats and dogs) and still does. He's been injured I don't know how many times. Sometimes he's had wounds that looked like they'd been inflicted by humans — like maybe he'd been hit with a stick. He has scratched two neighbors badly and they've had to go to the pharmacy for antiseptics and bandages. He's spent a few nights closed up in neighbors' houses or garages, and once a neighbor who had planned to be away for more than a week just happened to come back in two or three days and found Bertie locked up in his workshop. I don't know if the cat would have survived the whole week in there without food or water. We had looked everywhere for him and had just about given up hope when he suddenly came back. I don't feel sorry for Bert. He has a good place to live, regular food and water, and a bed in the garage. I really don't want a house cat, though.
We don't have the dog poop issues because we live out here in the country. With Tasha, we do pick up poop in the yard every few days, but she's learning to do her business when we're out walking, and we can just leave it there because we are about the only people who walk out in the vineyard on a regular basis. Sun dries it up and rain washes it away.
The mouse is probably trying to find a way out of there, and will spread the word to avoid a house that has both a cat and a dog. Oddly enough, having a dog in-house is also a mouse deterrent, or that's been my experience.
ReplyDeleteWe'll check the mousetraps this morning and see if the creature has been caught. If he's in the cage trap, we'll release him outdoors.
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