There’s a rat in my kitchen cupboard- help!

[Zoflorabore]

Yes I keep singing that stupid song about there being a rat in the kitchen ( what am I gonna do? ) but there really is one in mine.

it started off a week or so ago and i was up in the night on my kindle in the kitchen, I have severe insomnia. Heard rustling sounds/scuttling noises coming from under the sink and was too scared to open it. Told dp and dd (12) in the morning and they both didn’t believe me.

fast forward a week and it’s happened a few more times and when I’ve called dp down in the middle of the night he looked and there was nothing there.
ive since checked under the sink and there’s a hole from the cupboard to the one next to it where I keep plates/dishes etc. I found droppings in there last night completely by accident when looking for an egg cup.

what do I do? I have severe anxiety and cannot settle. Dp said we need to empty the cupboards and disinfect and clean everything. Surely that won’t stop it/them.

kitchen is in the front with a side door to the garden which is open loads to let our husky in and out. I can only presume it’s come in this way.
house is rented via HA. I want to move.

thanks for reading.

I am not really for killing anything but I did once have a mouse in the kitchen and I had tried everything to remove it, it started eating through boxes of cereal and damaging things so I put poison down, it was pretty much gone within a day.

Ring the council. Mice are chargeable but rats should be free. Ring and ask.

Oh and block the hole up with wire wool and something that they can't chew through. Gripfil a piece of metal over it?

Have a look outside to see how they are getting in. Mice can get through gaps that a pencil thickness!
Find gaps and plug with wire wool

Remove any food from cupboards they can get access to pasta rice etc

Clean your toaster too (one died in ours 😱)

Buy traps from Amazon. Humane or snaps.

My cats would bring them in and let them go. Ive seen 2 scuttling along the skirting boards at night. Picked em both up up with a tea towel and chucked them back over the fields opposite.

Mice are actually harder to catch than rats due to size.

Traps or block off any entrances and all access to food.

No need for pest control for one rodent, it will cost a fortune.

If you get humane traps you have to empty out the live animal somewhere and it will get back in. I'm afraid you need to use the snap traps. You will also need to clean and disinfect everywhere as mice leave a constant trail of urine wherever they've been.

Set a trap. It won't come back!

We had rats come into a basement flat once. They leave greasy/shitty smears around the outside of the toilet bowl, door frames, etc.

I killed one with an umbrella - pinned it down by its neck until it was dead.

Good luck.

Aww feel for you OP, every house I've lived in has had rats or mice and it gives me the ick big time. I'd get pest control round asap and get them to put down poison but mostly seal up any visible holes or spaces the mice can get into.

I had this once and I put a trap down before I went to bed, think it was peanut butter I put on it? Next morning it was dead! 💃🏻

And rat poo is more like rice or bigger, mouse poo is tiny little dark brown spots.

I think rat poo is bigger than that but you won't necessarily find it. Mice leave their poo everywhere.

Don't pick up a rat. They bite and carry diseases. Traps are cheap, I think.

Rat poo isn't as big as a jellybean! It's like a grain of rice but bigger and thicker. We had two rats recently and got rid of them via a pest control service. Call them ASAP because it can take time to work out how many there are and if the first batch of poison kills them. Most importantly, block where they're coming in. Ours found a redundant pipe and had to travel a real distance to get to it. I hated knowing they were here and they were filthy. So glad they're gone. Good luck.

I see Friths has posted this now but I wanted to comment on this:

rat dropping are big like jelly beans!
Not necessarily.

I hate writing about this as it was really traumatic at the time but we had a rat issue (in the cavity walls 🤢) and by the time we had evidence in the form of dropping, they were small grain like sizes, matching mouse dropping descriptions.

We therefore tried to resolve ourselves, traps etc.

However, in fact the droppings we found were most likely the rat babies (🤮🤮🤮) hence being small. What really prompted me was hearing them more; and that in one room the smell was awful (rat urine, unfortunately, no other evidence).

I was really upset and more so by the fact it had gone on for weeks as we thought it was 'just' mice. We got a pest controller - best money ever. Sorted in a few days, and they came back a few days later to check traps, reset, work out if issue resolved.

In summary: get professional advice asap.

Mice droppings are really small. We’ve had a recent infestation and caught 8 of them in two little nipper traps.
Rat droppings are about the length of rice but fatter. You can get big nipper traps for rats. The key really is to block all entry points. We had rats in the dry lining and dh had to do quite a bit of work to block the holes!

In the kitchen it'll almost certainly be mice. Mice problems are really common, we usually get a few every winter. Just put out some snap traps with peanut butter in and clear up any crumbs or bits of food every single night. They only really come in over winter so they'll head off soon anyway but if they can't get food they'll soon bugger off. I couldn't get peppermint oil so I put Vicks everywhere around the area where we suspected they were coming in and we've been mouse free for months now (hope I don't jinx myself now!)

We found evidence of mice in the camper van but they obviously just had a look round, didn't find anything to eat, and went away again.

I just had one!
Pest control soon sorted it out though I've never been the same since as still listen out for it

When I had mice you would have thought they had hobnailed boots on & were hacking through wood with pickaxes. They ate through the box over my staircase. Go around the outside of your house & look for holes where cables for tv aerial or Sky cables go through, missing pointing or loose bricks, get these blocked up with wire will until you can get someone to fill them with cement, this is how they get in. Then buy a tub of rat & mouse poison, the blue pellets are the ones that worked for me, put it down all the holes they have chewed from under your kitchen units, if you can get your kickboards off even better, get some snap traps in all your cupboards & around the edge of your kitchen & keep the kitchen door closed.

The one(?) we had years ago had got in a couple of houses along, when we lived in an old terrace. The council had to track along 3 houses to find the entrance. They were then just running under the subfloor and then gnawed their way up via floor boards into my kitchen. The council only left poison traps though, so you could do that yourself. You absolutely must then find out how they/it got in, and block it, eg with mesh over air-bricks.

I don't know how much this will help but I grew up in serious poverty and we had a rat move in to the space under the kitchen sink cupboard, we think he tunnelled in. Never got sick or bit and he was really shy, I think I named him Cheddar George. The HA should help you from what I understand of such things, as it is causing you so much distress you could ask the council for help too?

Ive been in your situation ! Been in my house for 3 months now . Exchanged via H /A.
They have to send someone out when Rats / mice are involved.
Email you need pest control & for what to customer services & they should forward on to that team .
They will come out & do the same . My situation i think the rat came through the back door ( kitchen ) and got stuck under the loose kickboards under oven while the back patio was being done. As was rotten decking before & probably home to them !
had pest control out ( sent by housing ) traps put down & poison .
came back another 2 times and agreed with me that it was a one off. and that i dont have a RAT problem .
Roll forward a month to yesterday & ive been smelling something off in the kitchen , thought it was some food gone off id missed but couldnt find anything , so cleanined like mad ( as i do ) lol.
came in today and the smell was strong !
some thing told me to look under the same kickboard , .. Small DEAD Baby Rat /mouse !? Stinking! 🤢🫣😓.
Now im back to .. kitchen watch duty like a crazy woman !
Feel like pulling all my kitchen units off so i can see if any holes in the walls & pipe work .
I think Its a case of working out how they are getting in ! then blocking off .
So i wish you Good Luck !
( from a pretending to be fine mother of two young kids but dying inside 😂)

Maybe buy a humane trap so you can catch the mouse and release it somewhere outside?

You can tell if it is a rat or a mouse quite easily. Rat poo is much larger than mouse poo, at least half a centimetre in length and much fatter, also rats poo in one place whereas mice poo indiscriminately.