NOT doing his job!

Merlin is not doing his job! :laughing:

A couple days ago I went to feed him and I carried his bag of cat food from the closet I keep it in, down the hall to his food bowl by the front door. I then looked back and there was a trail of cat food all the way down the hall! I looked at the bottom of the bag, and sure enough...it had a nice little hole chewed through the bottom of it. I went to the closet and took everything off the floor of it (blankets, etc) and there in the back was a HUGE pile of Merlin's food (their stash, obviously) and a heard some noises in a box in the back beside the "stash" so I looked in it and there were 3 small mice in it!
I didn't know what to do so I just grabbed the box before they had a chance to jump out and carried it outside. As soon as I made it out the door, the mice jumped out of the box....one escaped and the other two were quickly pounced on by the outside cats. I felt really really mean, but what else was I to do?????
So then for the past two days I have heard noises and seen mice scurrying about out of the corner of my eye. Tonight I saw another one run by my foot....and where is my precious beloved Merlin???? Sleeping on top of the dining room table, that's where! :laughing:

So I set out two traps about an hour ago and about 15 minutes ago I heard one go off...so I got the mouse out of it by the tail....(would not of done that if it had been alive, but since it's dead it can't exactly turn around and bite me) to show it to Merlin. I said, "Merlin, this house is FULL of mice! You are NOT doing your job!!!" He just looked at me like "Whatever" but then when I dangled the mouse in front of his face, he grabbed it right away and jumped down off the table and started stalking around the house, growling, like HE had caught the dang thing himself!
I put him and the mouse outside so he could do whatever he wanted with it and I wouldn't have to go looking for it somewhere in the house if he didn't eat it. (which I doubt he will)

Living on a farm, and having grain bins outside we generally have one or two mice get in each winter, but usually the cats take care of most of them...this is the first time we have had so many. I think I am feeding those cats too well!!! :laughing:

That is just too funny Debby!!!!

LOL! I have persians and so they are not hunters, in fact my daughters hamster got out and when I got home it looked like the cats where running from the hamster. They looked relieved when I put the bad hamster back in its cage.
Denise

Debby, Scooter is an excellent mouser, would you like to borrow her?

I hope you get your problem taken care of. Mice in the house are soooo frustrating. We used to get them a lot but Scooter always took care of them for us and we rarely set traps.


Kyttin

Peugeot is a bad hunter too. We have a family of birds that come in every day and eat his food. Either he'll sit there and watch them, or if they get rowdy, come running to me for safety...I mean really!
It's not like I want him to murder them, just keep them out of here lol

Oh, Debby, I can send Spawn to your house to give Merlin lessons! She's been on a diet for a year, but hasn't really lost that much weight because she catches mice and eats those when she gets hungry! How am I supposed to regulate her food intake if I can't regulate the mice around here!?!?

The bird thing is hilarious! At least I think Merlin WOULD have a problem with that!!! :laughing: I caught another mouse a little bit ago....Merlin never has come back in, I think maybe that dead mouse put him to shame! :laughing:

Luckily, Peugeot is great at catching flies. Always gets them first leap which is a good thing here in Aus.

Debby, your outside cats must be having a really difficult time controling the mouse population this year.

Poor little Merlin...getting all the blame!!!!! :laughing::laughing: :laughing2:laughing2::laughing2:

That is hilarious Debby!!

I think Nakita would make an excellent hunter, but I've never had to test that theory yet. On the other hand, maybe the mouse would scare her and she would run the other way.

Right now her biggest enemy is the humidifier. She thinks the *glubs* and steam from the humidifier is going to cause great harm to our family and she has to watch it diligently in case it escapes.

I guess they would be afraid IF we didn't have Mystique. She is a DSH that was rescued as a tiny kitten. She RULES the house. We have mice escape from time to time. (We have a snake.) When this happens Mystique is the first to see it and has "shown" the others how to catch them. I pulled one from my blue persians' (Drysi) mouth! It seems that nothing "occurs" to my persians it all has to be taught. Once they learn that is it.. they never forget.
Oh, one last thing... cats eating wild mice can lead to toxiplasmosis. (SP?) This illness is very dangerous to pregnant women.

Sounds like Merlin invited them in with the cat food stash. I guess he is just bored with the whole mousing thing.

Kassandra, that is funny about the humidifier! :laughing:

Teresa, I had to be tested for that when I was pregnant, because I have cats, and I guess if you have already been exposed to it before you get pregnant it won't hurt anything, you can't get it again or something like that, but if you haven't, (which they can tell from the test) then you have to wear gloves and masks while changing the litterpan, or else get someone else to do it for you. I figured as long as we have been on a farm, and around cats who eat mice that i would have already been exposed, but the test came back negative, so I had to be extremely careful with the litterpan and digging in the garden, etc...anyplace I might come in contact with cat feces, because it could have hurt the baby.

Poor Merlin. His job isn't to catch mice it is to look handsome!

Fred and his brother used to hunt together. There was this family of particularly obnoxious mockingbirds that would harrass them unmercifully. One cat would lay on his back sunning his belly, while the other would hide under the car. Whe the bird would come dive bomb the sunning cat, the one under the car would pounce. They moved on after the boys got a couple of them. They were awful birds! They would come after anything or anybody in the yard. Those are the only birds they would go after, so I guess they were defending their yard.

Oh, Debby! I have a suggestion for you and as soon as I stop laughing, I'll tell you. It's bad enough that these guys were getting free meals, but room AND board?

Well, I guess you can't cut Merlin's pay, so I suggest a couple of Riddex. I got mine from QVC. You have to get one for each level of the house, and plug them in on opposite sides of the house. I have had two, one in the basement and one in a bedroom for several years, and haven't seen a mouse, not even in the fall when my husband left the garage door open. They emit some kind of energy that bothers the nervous system of rodents and large spiders, who leave, because they can't stand it. It makes them a nervous wreck. So, send them packing to the neighbor's house. You can use them in any building with electricity. (If you keep any kind of rodent as a pet, don't get them.)