Mouse taken over

[cloudbusting12]

Our cat brought a live mouse in last week which managed to escape into the house.

I have put multiple humane mouse traps down and it is avoiding them all. I’ve tried peanut butter, chocolate, seeds and fruit to attract it.

I spent 3 hours cleaning out our living room last week and found a nest it had made by chewing up the kids teddy but no sign of the actual mouse.

Last night I realised it had moved into our front room as the reindeer food the kids have made has been tucked into. I then caught a sighting of it on the sofa. It has chewed a hole in the bottom of the sofa and also ruined the curtains.

I have moved the mouse traps into this room and have put the cat in there this morning who is doing absolutely sod all to help.

it is driving me mad, does anyone have any tips on how to catch this mouse. When we have managed to corner it it’s so fast it’s impossible to catch. It’s obviously clever to as it’s avoiding the traps.

I have cleaned out both rooms thoroughly and there is no food crumbs in any of the rooms.

Any advice please! It’s getting desperate!

Sounds like that mouse is having a great time ! Sorry 😂

If you touch mouse traps with your bare hands they will smell of human and mouse will avoid. You need to put on new protective gloves and not handle the trap at all - new trap straight out of packaging and with gloves on

Where have you put the traps? They need to be by the skirting board as they will keep to the edges of the room.

Try Nutella as bait, when we had them in our old house they went mad for that. Any food in the room needs to be in plastic boxes.

Is it possible it’s too light for the traps? We had to replace our first trap with a more sensitive one and as soon as we did caught a mouse a night for three nights. Or stick a 5p coin on the trigger to make it more sensitive.

We’ve used a humane trap successfully multiple times and never used gloves.

I've never had any luck with humane traps...I either put the snap traps somewhere the cat can't reach or lock the cat in the room with the mouse overnight....or I have been known to put out food and sit quietly and catch them myself. You do need to make sure they have no food source to do that though.

We catch the mice our cat brings in with a kids’ fishing net.

We've caught three recently in humane traps. We used peanut butter. Sorry just re-read and saw you've tried this.

@cloudbusting12 oops.

is it taking the bait from
the humane traps or just ignoring them?

sorry to say but you may just be better off with a bog standard neck snapper trap.

galaxy chocolate for mice peanut butter for rats

Mice can be incredibly quick once they settle in, so the best approach is usually to limit their movement. Try closing off every gap in that one room, remove anything they can hide under, and keep just one humane trap along their usual running path rather than spreading several around. A little flour on the floor can also help you see their tracks and know where they’re entering from.
I’ve worked with small pets while writing about hamster behaviour, and although wild mice cause chaos, hamsters are genuinely lovely animals when kept properly. Understanding how these little creatures think makes it much easier to catch them safely.