Cats, Dogs and Micespace
My house has been taken over by an army of mice. I became aware of the invasion at one o’clock last Wednesday morning when a brave young soldier decided to take the battle to my bedroom.
Myself and my girlfriend (Pauline) were falling asleep when I became convinced I was hearing noises; something was moving in the room. I got up, turned on the lights and went back to bed again three times because I couldn’t see anything. I have a terrible track record of tripping out and thinking there is something in the room so my girlfriend ignored my paranoia. Sometimes I don’t properly wake from dreams and I think there are things moving around my bed. Or I do weird **** like fling the duvet or the pillows to the ground thinking they are explosive devices. To be fair, this almost always happens the day after drinking while I am still stuck in that parallel universe between dreams and reality.
Anyway, eventually Pauline started to hear it too and we figured the noise was coming from my wardrobe. I half-emptied it but couldn’t find anything. I then stopped searching when I heard some scratching. I stood in silence for a few minutes until a mouse decided to poke his head out from between my shirts to say, “How’s it going?”
I laughed my ass off and Pauline freaked out.
So I started emptying the wardrobe and the room trying to remove any hiding places for the mouse. I opened a window to let him get out. I didn’t want to splatter his brains all over the carpet, and also I don’t really have anything against mice once they stay out of my house. It took two hours of moving beds and a screaming girlfriend before eventually he had nowhere left to hide. He couldn’t climb the smooth wall up to the window so he just sat under the sill staring at me. I think he had given up the fight not realising I had no interest in killing him. I left my hurley (Irish sports bat) against the wall and he climbed up that and made his leap for freedom.
My hurley and I.
Job done and a happy sheeprustler went to sleep.
The next day I regretted my leniency. Pauline heard another mouse moving in the kitchen as did my dogs who went ape-****, howling and barking. I climbed up on the counter and could see droppings all over the cupboards. ****. I have lived in my current house three years and we have never had a problem with pests; my luck had run out.
I laid five or six traps but this mouse is some sort of Jedi. He has taken the cheese from two traps that didn’t go off. I bought newer, super-sensitive ones and he won’t touch those.
We decided, “**** it, let’s get a cat.” So we got a cat. The cat is cool. His name is Felix and he is definitely one of the most chilled out creatures I have ever interacted with. He sits on the couch all day licking his balls and only moves when he needs to eat or take a crap. In fairness, he also leaps off the couch every time he hears Morris (the mouse) and he has made sure he stays trapped behind our cupboards. Otherwise, he just purrs constantly and generally looks like the cat that got the cream.
Felix the Housecat.
It was a few days after getting to know Morris that I located his mother ship. We have a compost container in the back yard and I found three mice having a good chin wag on top of it. They escaped down their tunnel system after spotting me. The composter, now called Micespace, is essentially a mouse utopia. A moist, warm space where some idiot human comes and tops up the food supply every day. The ****ers are definitely laughing at me.
Micespace
I have a problem in that I can’t lay poison as my dogs or cat may eat the dead mice and in turn be poisoned. I also haven’t been able to let the cat into the back yard yet as Maggie (one of my dogs) hates him. She has tried to take a chunk out of him a few times; although I am pretty sure they will make friends eventually.
Maggie aka Queen Cersei
Until those ass-holes form an alliance, Micespace will continue to be the Promised Land for mouse-kind.
Last edited by sheeprustler; 03-27-2014 at 12:54 PM.