ABSTRACT: For a die hard cat lover it would seem strange that I would have a mouse, but I did years ago, and here is his story
CONTENT: (©Oct 26, 2008~Ciao-originally published at Ciao under my pen-name of pyewacket)
While I may have grown up in a rather dysfunctional family upbringing, there were some great blessings in being raised by my grandmother and mother, and that was they never taught me to fear any type of animal. To this day, I have an enormous respect and appreciation for all living creatures, which is probably why I'm for the most part, one of those animal rights activists.
Ever since I was five and a half years old, I've had cats, and as of this moment at age 53 I have two cats. In all those years of having cats though, I never thought that for a brief time in my life I would have another member of the animal world being a part of my household of pets...a mouse. Now for some people, the mere word mouse can give one the creepy crawlies, and if a person see a mouse in their home might go a bit ballistic. Not so with me, in fact, I rather think mice are rather cute.
My grandmother, mother and I had been living in the same apartment since 1961 and never, ever had the usual pest problems, then about a year after my grandmother died in 1986, all of a sudden we began having a mouse problem, not extensive but there nonetheless. Now most people would race to get some kind of mousetraps, but being the person I am, didn't like the idea of those glue traps, or those spring-like mouse traps...in other words I just plain didn't like the idea of killing them. My feeling was, well, they're not really bothering us or being destructive, so both my mother and I had the attitude of just letting them be.
For the most part, the little family of mice, and no it was never that many, stayed put in one section of the kitchen, that is behind the sink area. However, once in a blue moon, one or two would become brazen enough to venture out from behind the sink, and bingo, one of our cats would catch and instantly kill it. At least with our cats killing the mice, it was more in the natural order of things, rather than those mouse glue traps that would have made a mouse die a long, lingering demise, a thought I just didn't like.
With time the mouse population in our apartment greatly diminished, thanks to our "mousers". In fact, for a long time, it looked as though we no longer had any mice at all. I no longer heard the high pitched squeaks indicating we had mice. They seemed to have disappeared. Then something happened.
It was Christmas night in 1987 and I was in the kitchen washing up all the dishes from our Christmas dinner. My mother was sitting on the sofa relaxing, when all of a sudden she said, "Sachi's got one". Right away I knew what meant, that Sachiko, our black and white cat had caught a mouse. Somehow the mouse managed to run right passed me from the kitchen and into the living room, a first which had never happened before, and I hadn't even noticed.
I dashed out of the kitchen to where Sachiko was sitting proudly gripping the mouse in her mouth in triumph. Okay, so this might sound kooky, but I felt sorry for it, and gently took the mouse out of her mouth and held it in my hand. The poor thing was half dead, bleeding from it's mouth, signaling possible internal injuries. I took the half dead mouse back into the kitchen and dug up a small plastic container, lined the bottom of it with a paper towel, and laid the mouse inside.
Then a weird inspiration came to me. Since as part of our Christmas dinner that night I had prepared a traditional Plum Pudding which I had made, which meant as part of the ingredient for it, I had used Brandy. I grabbed it and poured a bit on my right index finger and gently sprinkled some of it near the mouse's mouth. Don't ask why I thought of this, but I had always remembered my great-grandmother always having Brandy around the house for "medicinal" purposes.
Well, the Brandy no doubt worked, as in about fifteen minutes, that half dead mouse "revived" and was moving all around the small plastic container. But now I had a sort of dilemma in my hands. I didn't want to release the mouse with the risk of it being caught again by our cats. So with some screening I had leftover from an old window screen, I cut part of it large enough to cover the top of the container. Before I did cover it though, I dropped some pieces of food that I thought the mouse would like, such as small cubes of bread, and dropped a few kernels of frozen corn. I placed the container with the mouse in it, inside the cabinet area under the sink temporarily as it was the only place I could think of to keep the mouse safe from the cats. To be honest, despite it's obvious recovery, I wasn't expecting the mouse to really live. I was wrong.
The next morning I woke up, opened the cabinet under the sink, and peeked into the container to be greeted by two little beady brown eyes looking right at me. He had survived and lived. Later that day, I decided that the container he was in was way too small, and went to our local pet shop to get a larger plastic type aquarium that had it's own cover, the type one might keep a small turtle in. I also stocked up on litter bedding that is used for small rodents and even bought pellet food.
Then I realized I needed a better place to keep this little mouse friend of mine rather than under the sink cabinet. At the time, I had a large metal entertainment center where my stereo turnable, receiver and speakers where, plus a huge selection of record albums. I cleared one section of the shelving where the albums were, large enough to store the aquarium, and for extra safety, placed a window screen securely in front, making it cat proof. Now the mouse had a safe place to live without my worrying about my cats getting to him. I decided to give my little rodent friend a name...Brandy.
Wanting to make Brandy as comfortable as possible and wanting to learn more about the care of keeping a mouse, I started reading up about mice. I learned that mice didn't live very long, at most maybe three years. From the size of him, I was guessing Brandy was a rather young mouse, practically a baby as he was so small. But with time, and with the care I gave him, he soon filled out to a fat, chubby mouse.
I began to have a routine each day, as I would remove the screening, take the aquarium out and take it into the bathroom, shut the door to keep the cats out, so I could completely clean out Brandy's "home". Now this might gross some people out, but in order for me to clean out his aquarium I placed it in the bathtub, removed the aquarium top and reached in and cupped him in my hands and released him in the bathtub. I did this as I didn't know if there were any small holes in the walls of the bathroom, particularly near the pole radiator, and I just didn't want to chance him finding it and dodging into it...that would be the last I would see of him then. So while I was busy cleaning out his aquarium, placing nice fresh litter bedding, and refilling his food containers, he was free to run around like a lunatic in the tub.
I must say, Brandy became rather spoiled. He didn't care for the food pellets I had bought, but had a preference for a bird seed mixture, and fresh kernels of corn. And no, mice as I was to discover, really don't care for cheese, and where this idea came from I have no idea. In another very, very small metal container, actually the top of one of my film developer tanks, I filled it with water. To keep him busy and amused I had bought him a little swing that he could climb up and down, would place the tubing of a roll of toilet paper and one of his favorite type of hiding places to go into was a small bathroom sized Dixie cup.
One of the things that might turn a person off about a mouse, is the idea that they can bite, and yes they have extremely sharp, pointed teeth, but never, not once did Brandy ever bite me. In fact, when I would let him out of his aquarium in the bathroom, I would often cup him in my hand, him sitting in my palm, nibbling away at his food with contentment. Also, and this is true whether a mouse is a common House mouse like Brandy was, or a pet mouse one can buy in a pet shop, mice are fastidiously clean creatures, always cleaning themselves, even more than a cat would. As for my cats, you can bet for a good long time they were fascinated watching him run around in his aquarium, but I guess after awhile their fascination waned, and they tended to ignore him.
If you never had anything but a "regular" type pet, that is a dog or cat, and of course you're opened minded and not afraid of the idea of owning a pet mouse, do so. They are fascinating and sometimes comical to watch, and are relatively easy to care for. And yes, do clean their environment often...I cleaned Brandy's out every day and would replace the bedding lining everyday as well as give fresh food and water.
Brandy, as it turned out, lived longer than the usual three years--he lived five, but maybe due to my faithful and loving care of him. Since I've had cats ever since I was a young girl, I've had many deaths in the "family" and each saddened me no end. But the saddest day of my life was the day, when I reached in to take his aquarium out of his safety area where I had kept him to clean it out, only to notice his still body...he had gone to Rainbow Bridge. Don't ask the buckets I cried over my little rodent friend who was no more. Who would have thought I would have loved a little mouse so much...a mouse that came into my life on Christmas so many, many years ago.
IMAGE SOURCE~©MELANIE NEER~Photo of Brandy the mouse
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