4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[BeckyBoo]

Frank, the fearsome and fearles tabby tiger, aka Fatcat, has just brought in a a mouse. Whcih is still alive. Which he only seems to do whenever OH is out Any ideas how to catch it? I hate to sound like a complete wuss, but I'm always worried they're going to bite me if I try to pick it up. Only Frank, also known as maleveolent mouse manipulator, will bat it round the kitchen without killing it for hours on end. The last few have made it under the washing machine - last time I was icing a birthday cake at about midnight one kept popping out to eat bits of icing then legging it back under the machine. You know when there's one there as Frank will sit and stare intently at apparently nothing for hours just in case it comes back out. I love cats but they are HORRID!

 

Mrs B

[Egluntyne]

What about one of those humane traps.

 

They are quite good....but you will have to release it away from home or it will come back.

[gooner.girl]

Mice are cute - i can't believe how some people are scared of them! I used to have 3 as pets - named after "Ooops, word censored!"nal players.

 

Alfie our ginger cats never caught anything more then a butterfly, Bess - his sister catches mice but hasn't bought any in the house (so far...) but i did have this problem when we were babysitting for my sister in law once and their cat bought in a live one. I tried to catch it but it ran up curtains and everything so only thing i can suggest Mrs Bertie which kinda works for us (i presume you have removed cat from the vicinity?) is try to steer/herd said mouse towards an open door and hopefully it will have common sense to make a run for it...

 

Good luck!

 

(cats are horrible that way aren't they - i keep telly DH - MY dog would never do what YOUR cats have just done when bess kills another!)

[BeckyBoo]

In fact crisis over, Frank the awful great big fat mouser has let it go and it is currently somewhere in the kitchen. Which is nice I was thinking more of "how can I catch it tonight" but now it's hiding it can be OH's problem when he gets home - well, he's got to be good for something Here's the cuplrit

 

 

 

Mrs Bertie

[gooner.girl]

He looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!

[Olly]

Frank looks remarkably similar to Welly, the FFB, or Fat Furry Blighter. (I sometimes use another word, but this is a family forum after all!) He caught two last week, brought them in and then let them go. I didn't know there was one loose in the house on Friday, until I caught him doing that patient staring thing, and then - BANG - he shot into the corner and caught it. I couldn't get it off him unfortunately.

 

I use a humane mousetrap, baited with peanut butter, and have had good results (since they only come in via the cat-flap, I don't worry about releasing them a long way away. They won't be coming back in, I'm pretty sure!)

 

My niece who is much braver than me, puts a plastic bag on her hand and picks the mouse up! I can't do it, but she says she and her husband have perfected the technique, because it's the only chance you get before it disappears under the dresser.

 

Someone at work tells me they prop a casserole dish up on a thimble, put bait inside the thimble - mouse squeezes under the casserole dish, sticks its nose in the thimble, dislodges it, dish falls - humane mousetrap. I'm not convinced by this one!

 

Or you could just shut Frank in the kitchen and let him catch it again.

[superjules]

Someone at work tells me they prop a casserole dish up on a thimble, put bait inside the thimble - mouse squeezes under the casserole dish, sticks its nose in the thimble, dislodges it, dish falls - humane mousetrap. I'm not convinced by this one!

 

Or you could just shut Frank in the kitchen and let him catch it again.

 

You might break your casserole dish more to the point!

 

Did you see it off Mrs B?

[rachel19]

My mum has chased one around before - they tire out pretty quickly and it ended up just sitting there whilst she picked it up and put it outside as it was so tired bless it!

[rachel19]

Oh and if you want a good bait recipe here's one we used to use in Africa to catch mice and shrews in humane traps - just mix oats with rasperry or similar cordial to make it moldable into balls......fairly high in energy so if they are stuck in there for a while they have plenty to keep them going and it works!

[missuscluck]

They love Mars Bar.

 

They do come straght back apparently.

A friend told me that he caught one in a humane trap and took it right down to the bottom of his very long garden to the field at the bottom and let it go.

It beat him back to the house.

 

Just a thought. (this may make me unpopular ) If you are willing to let your cat eat it, why worry about humane traps.

 

My cat eats our mice. Its just the way it goes.

 

I love animals but we do have ordinary mouse traps in our garage. Loaded with Mars bar!!

Please dont hang me out to dry for this thought.

[Ana's flock]

He's a handsome boy, your cat. I've got a soft spot for tabbies since we had Roland (RIP).

 

At least your 'present' was alive... Cleo used to bring me little decapitated gifts

 

charming...

[The Dogmother]

I have a similar Fat Boy too, in fact both my cats are brilliant hunters, sometimes the prey is dead, sometimes it's alive, and others, it's splatted all over the kitchen floor!

 

Catching the little blighters is a real pain, isn't it? Their usual refuge is under my cooker, so I have a permanently baited trap under there

 

Here's Biscuit - my Fat Boy (when he was little):

[Ana's flock]

What a cute kitten!

 

I don't know how to put photos in here... I tried the photobucket thing but couldn't work it out. (I'm on a Mac, if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it).

 

On another subject: although I understand people putting little bells on cats' collars so that they don't hunt little birds/mice etc, it's not a very good thing for the cat.

 

Because their very acute sense of hearing and sensitive ears, it would be the equivalent of us continuously walking around with a huge cow's bell around our neck going 'clonk clonk!' every time we moved... not very pleasant.

 

It's your choice, not the cat's though... and it depends of how many dead creatures you're being 'given'...

[The Dogmother]

Mine both now have so much bling round their necks that they look like yardie pimps, but it certainly does limit their hunting. I was getting well and truly fed up with the amount of mice, birds, newts and frogs I was getting.

[redbug]

Claret what's the little black box around your cats neck?

[chickencam]

Frank looks very like our Ziggy, I am sure she would flutter her eyelashes at him

[Louise]

This technique really works well I can usually catch the mouse quicker than the cat without getting bitten

 

Put your hand on the ground in front of the mouse as it is running along the edge of the wall towards you in a sort of cup shape so they see it as a dark refuge point they actually are daft enough to run into your hand then move your hand flat down onto the back of the mouse is is now imobilised by your hand and pinch the skin behind the neck so you have its scruff and it can be safely carried like that outside and if done properly the beast can't swing round and bite you

 

This is all done one handed

[ajm200]

We had one in the garage that was very tame and could be caught by simply putting a flower pot over it and then slipping card under the pot before turnng the whole thing over. I caught it like this repeatedly and kept releasing it outside but it found it way back each time.

 

Eventually, I caught it, put it in a large match box and released it 2 miles away at the local nature reserve.

 

The one that is in there at the moment isn't so tame and so far has ignored the humane trap that we put out. I've been given one more week to try and catch it then my hubby is going to poison it

[Tessa the Duchess]

I was very successful at catching mice in a humane trap a couple of years ago, I used sultanas as bait. The instructions said to release them at least a quarter of a mile away, so I drove them one by one to the local park and they never returned, unless I was just catching the same one over and over?

 

Tessa

[Ziggy]

We bought a very cheap humane mouse trap from homebase, worked wonders, caught around 8 mice in it at the time (that's before we had the cats)... it was a simple black square tunnel with a bend in the middle, we baited it with nutella (mice loved it), and the idea was to place it down with the entrance half flat, then the mouse would go in, make the other half go down with its weight and the little door would snap shut... then they can be released by opening the little door and tilting the little box down...

 

Our cats do still get mice, and we have perfected a technique for catching traumatised chased mice too... it goes something like this :

- call 8 year old animal loving daughter, shouting to her to get a teacup and saucer, while holding cats at bay from said traumatised mouse.

- shout again cause 8 year old is ignoring the shouting in favour of the tv

- finally get 8 year old there with tea cup, and encourage her to climb behind plant pots / under cooker/ wherever mouse is, and put cup over mouse

- gently slide cup on floor so as to not damage mouse, and very carefully lift one side a tiny bit so as to slide saucer underneath cup... mouse will naturally climb from floor onto saucer as it glides under cup. If mouse is very small, make sure you don't use a very thick saucer or mouse might escape in gap as you slide it under

- get 8 year old to open garden door as you hold saucer and cup

- get 8 year old to find peaceful sheltered spot in garden to release mouse into

- if you dont have an 8 year old, take anyone else that happens to be around (not feline), or manage by yourself

- put cup and saucer in dishwasher

 

We got really good at this over the years!!

 

[BeckyBoo]

I would let Frank catch it again but he just bats them around - if he killed them quickly at least it would be fairly humane. When we were in Australia we were travelling in an old converted bus and there was one day when I, rather pregnant with DD2, with DD1 in her makeshift car seat behind me and OH in the passenger seat was driving barefoot through yet more interminable desert. Suddenly DD1 stares at my feet with her eyes popping out of her head. OH says, "Oh" in that, "Oh look one of Australias most poisonous snakes is there" or "Oh look at that enormous huntsman spider in the bus" type of voice. As I start to career wildly across the carriageway, (which is just a very rough dusty track by the way) He finally manages to point out to me that in fact all it was, was a mouse sitting on the brake pedal. I managed to drive nearly 100 miles to Port Augusta with just my tippy tippy toe on the accelerator! Do you know we stripped the bus (red dust gets EVERYWHERE!) completely but we never found it. We used to hear it in the laundry bag at night and we found the corners of the cereal boxes chewed. Eventually it decamped just north of Perth which wasn't bad as it had come from a campsite near Uluru, so that's one travelled mouse

 

 

Mrs Bertie

Mrs Bertie

[The Dogmother]

Claret what's the little black box around your cats neck?

 

It's the magnet that triggers our cat flap - we had lots of problems with strange cats coming in, terrorising the cats and peeing all over the place - this was the last resort and it works very well.

 

I am forever taking little meeces down to hide in the woodpile

[Paola]

I think we have a mouse in the kitchen at the mo I went to give the dog a biscuit from a new box and it was empty It must be one very fat mouse I have loaded a humane trap with chocolate