Owners of hunter cats - I need your opinion!

[Pascha]

What do you do when your cat brings a mouse home and lets the bastard loose indoors and then loses interest? Are you an exterminator or humane catch and releaser? Assuming you can't get it straight away how do you go about catching it?

And if you become aware of said fucker only because you've spotted a tail diving behind the fridge/heard a scratching sound in the fireplace/observed your cats interested staring at one spot but being too stupid to corner and catch it again, what is your go-to plan of action and equipment?

We've had 3 incidents in the last 2 weeks and I'm getting quite fed up with it. My cats are useless once it arrives indoors.

All sugfeations welcomed with open arms...

I have a Mousing Glass which is a glass with a lid JUST for catching mice.

Once mouse is inside, shut cat in another room.

Chase mouse around room with DH forming Pincer Move. Shove glass on mouse. Put lid on glass.

sometimes I grab mouse by the tail briefly to get into the glass.

Any injuries and I exterminate (shove in bag and stomp with boot).

Perfectly healthy and I release some distance away.

Most often they are
no longer living (rip) but when they are, corner, catch in a box, slip card under box, release at the far end of community garden. The fat lump seems to forget that he has brought them in for a while then goes looking again.

I normally catch them and release outside (similar technique to 'mousing glass', great term by the way! above) but had one last week that completely disappeared after it got in.
No sign of after 6 days - hopefully a cat has dispatched it...

We give it 24hrs with a humane trap. If that doesn't work, we go for a snap trap.

Sometimes depends where we think the mouse is though - if it's downstairs it's not so easy to set a snap trap because we're all open plan, so we can't isolate a room from the cat (and the trap).

Ours is very good at bringing them in and losing interest, but sometimes regains interest in a day or so though, so quite a few mice that have been allowed to escape do eventually get caught by the cat eventually. My DH is also a very good mouser, so plenty get caught that way too!

If you are setting traps, it's worth putting some conkers near them, to tempt the mouse out. We discovered that mice are very keen on conkers so we use them as pre-trap bait.

We have a Mousing Pot which serves the same purpose. This mornings effort involved cornering it with cushions and having to disconnect and move the TV. Even when cornered it still got as far as the stairs while one cat watched from halfway up with wide eyes. Didn't do anything to help though.

Gratuitous photo fee paid 🐈‍⬛

We do have a horse chestnut nearby so come autumn I will consider the conkers.

No longer living is easy. Dedicated dustpan and a strong flick into the hedgerow solves that. Also live birds get themselves out given the opportunity. It's just the field mice and the occasional shrew which cause the stress.

You need feline back up. When we had a cat flap, DBroCat used to like to bring mice in to play with. Eventually, we assumed he got bored and walked off, leaving the mouse alive in our house for some time! DSisCat is a determined hunter, who does not play about with her prey and she spent hours watching for the mouse. Sooner or later, she did catch it and leave for our delectation!

When we had a new door, we didn’t get another cat flap!

I use cat food boxes to catch them oh, the irony!

Mice like to run along edges of a room so line up a couple of boxes , chase mouse out and they usually run into one fairly quickly.

Then I send DH out to release them in the nearby woods to give them a fighting chance!

I use a humane mouse trap and then release it outside. Sometimes it works and sometimes I have no idea where the mouse went! It’s horrible. Putting out bird food really brings the mice into the garden . It’s a difficult choice. Deal with mouse entrails or live mice in the house or don’t feed the birds..
Our cat also catches birds despite having two large bells on her collar. So there’s that.

Sorts itself.

Critter is caught by people or a cat, eventually.

Sometimes we find a fossilised thing indoors, so presumably some crawl off to die. It's dry inside so they desecate rather than rot in a smelly way.

We live rurally, right next to a field currently growing wheat. There's no avoiding the mice and my cats are prolific hunters. We are well-versed in locking the flap but this time of year windows and doors are open a lot and it's almost impossible to police.

Do those humane traps work any better than a Mousing Pot?

yes. I once flicked some desiccated mouse corpses out from under the fridge towards my face, when trying to retrieve something else from under there. It was quite the shock.

@Upsizer

Any injuries and I exterminate (shove in bag and stomp with boot).

Me too. Always have. Husband and son: Oh God! How can you do that? Daughter: Can I do the next one?

My cats gets 99% of mice in late evening night time so I shut all the doors when he's out (living room, bedrooms). When he come in he releases the mouse in the hallway or on the stairs, as there's no else open to him. This avoids the mice hiding under sofas and cupboards etc. I shut the cat in a room and it's easy to catch the mouse in the hallway. I have tupperware food container and just put it over the mouse, carefully slide the lid underneath. I then walk the mouse down the road a bit and release it. Would never kill it! They usually look healthy and lively.

We have a humane mouse trap permanently set up in the living room for this very reason 😂

@SallyWD

Would never kill it!

Normally we don't. Only the ones that are so mauled they are at death's door.

I will often spend a good hour pulling the fridge and washing machine and tumble dryer out, removing the kick boards etc etc. Often I do catch them, I just use my hands and chuck out the back door. Sometimes I close all the doors to adjoining rooms and sweep them out the front door.

If they evade collection, that's their loss, and I use snap traps bated with Nutella. Never fails.

That's the kindest thing to do, I know. Our mice are usually fine. When I do find an injured one I don't have the stomach to kill it. I feel awful about that!

You've never had one die somewhere in the oven then. Turned it on and the smell was indescribable.

It's really Important that anything cat caught has antibiotics
Often people give things a quick look over and it looks fine so release. Any form of teeth puncture or nail puncture (which you're unlikely to be able to see) will need antibiotics to stop fatal infections.

It seems kind to release them back out immediately but there's a large percentage that die horribly from infection.

Any that you can get should be shipped off to the vet or wildlife rehab

You're not seriously suggesting taking injured mice to the vet? I'd be bankrupt within the month if I did that!

Errrr..... No.

My cat never does this with mices. He catches, he kills...and then eats! The whole damn thing. He does sometimes puke up a neat little pile of gristle later..
I have tried belling him to warn the poor little buggers but he is a master at wriggling out of collars.
He is basically a feral beast all day long and then comes in in the evening for cuddles acting like butter wouldn't melt.

Yes this is all very good in theory but I'd end up taking about two mice to the vets each day! I can't afford to spend about £200 a day on vets trips and medication for mice. You know that many people deliberately kill any mice they have in the house?