Your mouse also needs cardboard boxes or similar objects to hide and sleep in, and a block of untreated wood to chew. You can also give him old pieces of towels to use for sleeping material. Your mouse's enclosure should never smell. Clean it regularly, and disinfect it with a rabbit or rat cage cleaner.
Every young person should have a pet of some kind and the small mammals are extra cute because they reward us with friendly affection. But every pet calls for care and responsibility. The owner of a pet mouse must be prepared to safeguard both the mouse and the neighborhood.
The pink eyed mouse in a pet shop is usually white or white with black patches or blotches of caramel brown. His neat fur is usually soft and short. Some of the blotchy types have longer, rather fluffy fur. In any case, you will want a p8ir of the frisky little charmers, male and female. One pet mouse will tend to pine away and perish from lonely solitude. Naturally, the small couple need care and responsibility. But in this case, you have a greater responsibility that comes first.
Pet mice are fancy strains of the ordinary house mouse. And the house mouse is a destructive and a dangerous pest. He and his relatives eat and foul up countless tons of our grains and stored food materials every year. They also carry diseases from house to house and one of these dread diseases is poliomyelitis. Your captive pet mice, however, are safe enough so long as they are captives. But the little rascals may be visited by their brown house mouse relatives or get free to join them.
Your first responsibility must be to see that this does not happen. The box in which you keep them must have holes, of course, for fresh air. But there must be no holes or netting wide enough for a house mouse to squeeze in and breed with them, and no hole big enough for your mice to wriggle out arid add to the menacing mouse population of the neighborhood. The box for a pair of pet mice should have walls about two feet wide and two feet high.
The small breathing holes may be in the walls and the tightly fitting roof. One wall should be glass with a sliding panel. Strew the floor with sand or torn paper, hang a mouse sized trapeze from the ceiling and provide a bony bit of very hard wood for your pets to exercise their rodent gnawing teeth. Clean the box thoroughly at least once a week. Your thirsty pets need a shallow bowl of water, freshly changed every day.
They thrive on a side assortment of foods, especially crisp and crunchy items. But, strange to sity, cheese should never be on their menu. Neither should salt or sugary foods. They like chewy cereals, cracked corn and uncooked grains of rice. They consider a few sun flower seeds a special treat. Each meal may include a bit of crusty bread, the drier the better. They enjoy small dog biscuits, and a slice of crunchy apple makes a suitable dessert. As a rule, they are content to drink only water. But once in a while a saucer of skimmed milk is good for them and much appreciated.
Pet mice are sassy little smarties, full of playful tricks and friendly affection. They will perform amazing and amusing acrobatics on their hanging trapeze. And their strict captivity does not bother them. After all, it is for their own good also. Certain house hold pets, meaning cats, are famous for being fond of mouse meat. So keep this in mind also when planning your mouse security measures.
Sooner or later your mice will want a family usually sooner. Set a small, straw lined box in their mouse house and they will use it as a nest. The youngsters arrive too often for you to keep them all and soon you will have mice to give away. Choose their new owners very, very carefully. And never bestow them on a friend who has not been informed of the proper security measures required for keeping pet mice.
Mice are entertaining indoor pets. They're easy to take care of because they create few demands. You can quickly train them to be disciplined and how to handle food while they are still young.
Owning and caring for mice can be very rewarding. Mice usually live for about three years, so it's a fairly long-term commitment and it's worth having a good read of what it takes to care for a mouse before you decide to buy one.
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