Mice in the house!

Mice- I have mice! Or more correctly I had mice! That was my holiday season!

Opening the linen drawer in my kitchen one morning I discovered- shaved pepper? No! All over my tea-towels- ughhhhh!

Glancing down at my 8-year-old pure black (ex) tomcat I was a tad dismayed to find out for certain he was not earning his high-end no ‘no-name brand’ cat food! This is the cat- my now ex-husband advised me to get years ago when I had a mouse problem as he- my ex- worked out of town and was in no way one to be counted on to empty mouse-traps.
“ Get a cat. Not a kitten. Go to the SPCA and get a old tom-cat” He was not one to say ‘an old tom-cat’. “Not some stupid kitten that ‘ill take months to work – a old tom-cat- used to eating from garbage cans.”
So- I did. A scraggly medium hair- matted black eight-month-old tomcat. A stray and not from the high-end part of town from the looks of it! Well as the song goes ‘Uptown came downtown for me’ or something of the sort.
The scraggly ‘ex’ tom-cat—now has the most luxurious long mane of pure black hair- will not eat anything that does not carry a brand name and comes out of a vacuum packed pouch! The last I checked live mice do not come in vacuum packed pouches and I have seen my cat ‘play’ with mice in the backyard in the summer- so that says it all!
I have mice- mouse- or mouses! Not sure about the plural part- but one for sure!

Since the cat does not work- and my dogs are both scared of mice- think-think- think. What to do?
Poison? Not a good idea. I have two small dogs plus the cat if they eat a poisoned mouse I will have a vet bill- if I am lucky-and I don’t need that on top of everything else. Plus- what if the mouse ‘passes away’ somewhere like behind my fridge? Ughhhh- nope!
Okay- traps. Great idea. Who is going to empty them? ME? Not very likely and my wonderful 80 something year old neighbor I could not think of asking him again. (He did offer the first time around when I got the cat)
So- more solutions……? I know ask the ‘Elf’. I am lucky I have an elf that is great for most everything- my mother.
Around wine one night my mother, a couple of her neighbours, and I thought about the mice problem.
“There are these great traps- the mouse goes in- stays in- like a little box then you can just throw out the whole thing,” Offered one friend.
I was ‘in’ for the super- duper make a better mousetrap!
So- ‘Elf’ goes shopping (I actually hate shopping) and can’t find the ‘super-duper make a better mouse trap’.
Elf: “ I have these things – they give of a high sound thing and scare the mice away. Want to try one?”
Me: “Sure”
That night I find time to drop by my mother’s after work (they do have secrets to get us to go see them) and pick up magic electronic mouse device.
Reading the directions we discover this magic device works best when used ‘with’ mousetraps’. Yikes!
I bring the ‘magic device' home, plug it into the outlet closest to the linen drawer and ‘Elf’ goes out the next day to buy traps.
Now, I have traps in all the secret places – like my linen drawer--- have caught no mice and it appears I have no mice!
Seems like the magic electronic ‘mice keeper- awayer’ device works!
Now on to better things- like renovating that bathroom! Or maybe I need new kitchen cupboards--- and linen drawers first?