Ask Melissa About Rats

March 16th, 2009

Ask Melissa Anything!

Dear Melissa,

I own seven house cats who are very good hunters. Each one of them have killed a mouse each, totaling seven so far. These mice are terrible, each have eaten seven ounces of rice a day. I could have used each ounce to make seven rice cakes. It turned out that there’s one mouse left still running around my house, but all my cats are full! I can’t imagine how many rice cakes it’s going to ruin in seven days. Where can I get a good humane mouse trap so I don’t have to resort to rat poison?

Yours,

Suki Suki

Dear Suki Suki,

This sounds like you’re in quite a terrible predicament! In seven days that one little mouse will have ruined 343 rice cakes and we simply just cannot have that happen. Since you are clearly a cat lady whose seven cats are obviously full from a total of 49 ounces of rice, it is certainly not wise to use rat poison, even as a last resort, for that will be harmful to the health of your felines.

I recommend a selection of humane traps that would help catch your little friend. If you’re interested in seeing the mouse alive with intent of releasing him back into the wild, then I’d suggest the Tomcat Single-Mouse Live Trap, shown here.

You can buy this at any hardware store or Walmart for about $5.

If you’d rather kill the mouse, or if you have more than one mouse in your apartment, then I’d recommend the slightly pricier Victor Electronic Mouse Trap shown here.

It’s large enough for rats or multiple mice, and the moment they enter the chamber, they get zapped, much like a stun gun, which renders them unconscious, and die humanely.

If that doesn’t work, you can always borrow one of my cats. They like rice cakes.