Do Cats Keep Mice Away?

Typically, cats will do a great job at keeping mice away in main areas of the home. However, this doesn’t mean the mice are gone for good and they will usually require professional rodent extermination. They typically nest in hidden areas of the home that cats don’t have access to such as basements, attics, or inside the walls. Once they realize there is a cat nearby, they can easily remain hidden and travel through the walls instead.

In this video, you will see that the owner of this home had two cats and a mouse infestation!

Do Cats Prevent Mice or Rats from Entering a Home?

Cats do not prevent mice or rats from entering the house. Mice know that cats can smell them when they enter their house. Cats emit chemicals that scare mice away from home because these chemicals are found in the saliva of their pets and trigger sensory organs in mice that spread fear and terror. So, why do they not stop them from entering a home? Mice will simply go where no cat can go!

Does Cat Urine Keep Mice Away?

When mice smell cat urine, they are more likely to leave the area to avoid predators. However, when mice are exposed at a young age to compounds in cat urine, they react later to the same smell and not the way most would wish. Mice that have been exposed to the chemical composition of cat pee throughout their lives are less likely to shy away from the smell of the cat. No, cat urine does not keep mice away.

Some Cats Don’t Hunt

Every cat has a unique personality. While many of them love to hunt, there are some who won’t bat an eye if they see a mouse – some are even afraid of rodents. In these cases, adopting a cat won’t be the best house mouse control method. Unless you already have a cat that you know loves to hunt, it can be hard to tell if a new cat will be a hunter until you get it home.

Do some cats ignore mice?

Cats, sometimes, ignore mice when they live indoors and are not exposed to any kind of hunting, game or toys. Stereotypes of cats being professional mice hunters are from the truth. Cats that live inside of a home are mostly well-fed and will only chase mice for sport. Some cats are afraid of mice and others regard mice as toys.

Cats Can Make the Problem Worse

In rare cases, cats can make your mouse problem worse. Many outdoor cats like to bring their prey home as a trophy or something to play with (sometimes when it’s still alive). If you live near a field or similar area with mice and have an outdoor cat that likes to hunt, you could be setting yourself up for disaster. They could bring a mouse infestation into your home if they let their prey loose. Most cats hunt at night, so you will likely be sleeping if this were to happen.

Mice Reproduce Fast

Even if your cat is able to catch mice every so often, it’s very unlikely it will catch them all. Not only will most of the mice hide from the cat in walls, but they also reproduce quickly. Female mice can have litters of 4–10 mice every 3 weeks and babies are able to mate just 6 weeks after they are born. This is why it’s important to eliminate the infestation right away.

Can mice, rats and other rodents be a danger to my cat?

Mice, rats and other rodents, can transmit dangerous diseases and can be a danger to your cat’s health. It’s no secret that rats can carry all sorts of diseases and will bite when attacked, especially when their offspring are threatened.  Rodents carry diseases like HPS or Lyme Disease that they can easily spread to cats, then to humans. Cats can also get fleas, ticks, and other parasites from mice. Even if these aren’t life-threatening to your feline, it can result in a hefty vet bill.

Tips for Keeping Mice Away

Luckily, cats aren’t your only hope for deterring mice.  Here are 3 Tips for Keeping Mice Away.

Seal Cracks & Holes

Even if your cat does a good job at catching mice, this doesn’t fix the source of the problem. How are they getting inside? One significant way to make sure mice don’t enter your home is to remove their entry points. Make sure to seal any cracks and holes you can find in your walls. In addition, seal any gaps beneath doors.

Remove Clutter

Mice like to make nests in cluttered areas. To discourage them from nesting anywhere in or around your home, it’s important to keep everything clutter-free. Keep your landscaping clean and move any piles of wood, bricks, stones, or leaves away from your home. Do the same for your garage, basement, attics, and any other hidden areas in the home where mice may nest. On a side note, keep your kitchen clean of crumbs and any easily accessible food sources that mice may come looking for.

Does the smell of cats keep mice away? Can mice sense a cat in the house?

Yes, to some extent, however, mice will simply go where the cats cannot!

• Any room your cat doesn’t have access to
• Storage rooms, especially with loose paper, fabric, and other clutter
• Rooms on the first floor or in the basement
• Any room in winter
• Rooms that often have crumbs and other loose food
• Insulation in your walls, attic and basement

Professional Extermination

If you have a current mouse problem, professional rodent proofing company is the only real effective way to eliminate mice in the home. Mice Hunters is a great choice due to our eco-friendly pest control services rodent free guarantee. If a pest we eliminate comes back, we will too (for free)! While many other companies only focus on your current pest problem, we also focus on taking measures to keep the infestation away for good.

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Mice are creatures that have lived on this earth for a long time.  Despite man’s attempts to rid ourselves of these unwanted creatures from our homes, they just keep coming back.  The funny part about this is that when a mouse is in your home, they are not going to leave unless you absolutely shut the door on them!  There is not any validity to the claim that mice will leave your home if you use peppermint oil for mice! They just aren’t going to leave!  We go to people’s homes every week where they have attempted to use all sorts of silly things to make them leave.

There are many companies on Google that are selling peppermint oil for mice, but the truth is that it simply does not work to rid your home of mice!  Even in this photo, there is the question raised… Does Irish Spring Soap Repel Mice?  No! Irish Soap does not repel mice! Not even the strongest peppermint oil for mice will work!

Why does peppermint oil not work to repel mice?

Peppermint oil is an essential oil and much like a perfume that you’d use on your body, after some time, the effectiveness of the oil wears off as the oils and chemicals inside of the peppermint spray breaks down. Mice will simply avoid it, but it will not deter them from accessing your home. Wherever there’s warmth and food, they’ll be there. They’ll just avoid the areas you have sprayed. There are more places in your home that you could never access that mice will find to live in than you could ever imagine.  Not even the strongest peppermint oil for mice will work.  There’s not one on the market that you could buy to rid your home of mice!

In this video, you will see that peppermint oil for mice will work, however, once the peppermint oil smell erodes, the mice will be sure to return.  Also, the practicality of placing mint oil all around your home becomes silly to even consider.  What this video does not do is test the peppermint oil for mice effectiveness over time and you will see a link in the video’s description to Amazon where the video reviewer will make a commission.  With the video having 1.8 million views. we’re sure that they’ve made some good money.  In fact, the video reviewer wants their test to work.

Why are people trying to get you to buy peppermint oil for mice when it doesn’t work?

There are too many essential oil snake salesmen out there that will try to sell you anything and everything, so do not buy peppermint oil for mice.  When you do see an article that tells you that peppermint oil for mice works, they will then create a link to a product on Amazon that is their affiliate link.  When you click on that link and then buy the peppermint oil, they earn a commission.  Here’s what to look for…

When you click a link like this, the person that wrote the blog earns a commission. West Point Military Academy has a little credo that we at Mice Hunters live by as well, “We will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those that do.” This is why we are exposing the peppermint oil for mice lie!

If Peppermint Oil for Mice Does Not Work, then What?

There’s only one real way to get rid of mice in your home. Mice are no different than a burglar in your home. If you leave the front door open, they’ll get in. Unfortunately, your home has many openings that are large enough for the common mouse to enter through. Mice only need an opening the size of a dime to enter your home. As your home ages, it will begin to settle and move and with it, your home will provide these openings. Often it’s just way too obvious to us as to how the mice get in your home. Electric, cable and gas lines running into your home are often easy routes for mice to gain access to your home.  Sometimes, mice create a hole in your home and it’s actually not obvious at all.  The problem with the big box rodent control companies is that they don’t look for these uncommon routes that a mouse will take to enter your home, nor will they find them or seal them out.  It’s always the ones you cannot see that lead most of our customers to call us.  The common phone call will go a little something like this, “I’ve tried peppermint oil, mothballs, sonic rodent repellers, a Big Box Unnamed Rodent Control Company and nothing has worked, that’s why I’m calling you! There’s only one real way to get rid of mice, by mouse-proofing the entire exterior of your home!

How to get rid of mice in your home

1. Lay down baits for mice
2. Mouse-proof your home

It seems pretty simple, and we’d like to say it is, however not everyone actually has the knowledge to mouse proof their own home or access to a company that can do it. The bottom line is that there are not many companies that actually can mouse-proof your home. Many companies, like Orkin or Terminex, will simply lay down mouse poison and place steel wool in areas. We’ve even seen another “pest control company” put duck tape on the roof where the mice were getting in! That was a really funny one! We were there to actually fix the mouse problem they had! We do have the photos to prove it!  Steel wool and duck tape will not stop the mice from getting into your home!

Jason, from Mice Hunters, was at the home where mice were still present despite another company that had been there to “take care of the mice problem”. Jason inspected the roof of the home and found duck tape covering one of the holes where mice had been entering. We were able to stop the mice from entering this home by mouse proofing it. This being an older home, is more susceptible to openings for mice to enter as the home continues to settle and shift through the years. Jason has over 15 years of homebuilding and construction knowledge to be able to spot weaknesses in homes, like this one, and devise a strategy to eliminate any and all openings for mice to enter a home.

How do I mouse-proof my home?

There are many DIY Mouse Proofing videos out there and we encourage you to see for yourself. We’ve been mouse-proofing homes for nearly 20 years now and there is no situation that we have not seen where the homeowner had hired a pest control company or tried to mouse-proof their home on their own. To mouse-proof your home, it often requires extensive knowledge of home-building techniques and engineering.
If you have this experience, the tools, ladders, chemicals, time and knowledge you may be able to mouse-proof your home.

Call a mouse-proofing and mice extermination professional!

• • We are home mice-proofing professionals and know all of the weaknesses in a home and where mice will attempt to make their way in.
  • We give you a 24 Month Rodent-Free Guarantee

If a rodent exterminator cannot give you a 12-month rodent-free guarantee, they do not believe in their own work. We do!

If you are living in the Chicagoland area and need a reliable rodent or mouse exterminator, give us a call. If you are not in the Chicagoland area, give us a call and we will refer you to a company that we trust!

Call us today! 847-499-1008

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