Rodent adventures...
We have a problem. We installed a cat door so the cats can go in and out in the winter without me having to open a full size door and let out a lot of heat. It's working well, but... Pip (we think) is apparently catching mice and voles outside and bringing them in the house, alive, to play with ( Read more... )
In my experience there is unfortunately no way to bring your cat to leave the prey outside. But we've reached an acceptable compromise by now. Whatever the cats bring in and I can catch right away (sometimes the alive prey plays dead, very practical) gets brought outside again, or any kind of reptile. If I don't catch it, I leave them to it. Once the novelty of catching something inside is over they get used to it and know how to do it in the best way; you might want to secure fragile items on the floor, though, or protect sensible areas like a computer area or so with chicken wire frames in strategic places. (Or you install them in a way they won't suffer from feline intervention.) Whatever gets away first goes hiding somewhere and doesn't do any damage within the first night or so, we've found. Either some of the brood takes care of it until the next morning (they work best when no interfering humans with mouse-bothering noises are around in my experience ;o) ), otherwise we put up the life trap which is our best friend. We use Nutella on a piece of hard bread or bread crust, this has proven to be the most efficient. Shrews don't go into life traps but don't need any, as the poor things won't outlive a night and a day without food anyway, and they only eat insects.
We even had a mouse living in our living room for several days under the sofa, but all damage she did was leaving some stains on the extra bed which was under the sofa, where she likely has rested and slept. Most escaped rodents were injured and died (hopefully peacefully) in some corner, where I eventually find them in any kind of state and discard of them.
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If this continues at this pace, I probably will get live traps to set here and there. The trouble is that I don't think either of our cats would actually kill the rodents once they're inside. Pip doesn't have the kill instinct... she just plays with them until she gets bored and then leaves them to either run and hide in the depths of the house somewhere or for me to find and carry outside. Pepper does have the kill instinct but she apparently switches it off once she's inside.
Ah well. Part and parcel of pet ownership. It does make for unexpected adventures. :)
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