Mice

[kirinm]

Living in a rented house. Had my suspicions about mice very early on but couldn’t see anything and we have a fierce mouser who I thought would scare anything off.

Well, we are now pretty sure there is mice. There’s no evidence of poo / scratching noises etc but the cat is catching them. I assume they are coming in at some point and she’s getting them as soon as they make themselves catchable.

We’ve notified the landlord and sealed up some holes that we’ve found but I’m not sure what else we should be doing now. DP thinks they’re possibly under the floor which the LL said he’d had redone recently. I’ve got no doubt the LL has had a problem before.

Any tips? Sadly moving out immediately isn’t an option.

Use wire wool and expanding foam in almost the holes you can find. If a pencil can fit a mouse can. Check around pipes that go in and out of the house such at the kitchen sink.

Check the outside of the house as well any tiny holes cover . With the outside air vests cover them in really tiny mesh. So a pencil cant go through.

Also Check under the kickboards.

Since you have not seen dropping or heard scratching could it be that your cat is bringing them in ?

I also put a really small amount of used cat litter under the kick board . As the cat wee smell will scare them off. But not enough so we can smell it.

We did think it was her bringing them in but she ‘found’ 3 in a day so I feel like it’s more likely they’re inside.

There are air vents outside and we identified holes around the pipe work behind the fridge. The fridge is wedged in the gap so the LL is going to have to agree to move it as it’s liable to get damaged - and we definitely need to move it to seal the gaps.

I think we need to set our ring cameras so we can see totally rule out the cat bringing them in.

Put a thin layer of talc or flour on the floors near the skirting, if you have mice you can see the little feet marks and tail swishes in the white powder !

The LL has now confirmed that this isn’t a new problem and seems to know exactly where they’re coming from. 😬