A couple of years ago, my brother came to visit one night. My wife had gone into the bedroom and closed the door. When I asked why, she said she had seen a mouse in the house and didn’t want it coming into the room.
I told her I would take care of it, so my brother and I went out to get some mouse traps. It was about 22:00 so there was no place open near us except for a small convenience store, and they only had the glue traps. I didn’t know where the mouse was, so I bought a package of ten, and set about half of them at various locations, including one right outside the bedroom door...then we figured we would do something else while we waited for the mouse to blunder onto one of them.
We have a yellow cat, but he is an indoor cat and a completely inept hunter. I wasn’t worried about him messing around with the traps, because if something smells or looks weird, he might sniff or stare at it, but he won’t touch it. That’s just the way he is.
My brother and I went into a room to work on a computer problem, and had completely forgotten about all this, when we heard thumping, smashing, things being knocked over followed by the sound of running up the hallway at full speed, then the cat door to the garage flopping.
We peered from our seats out the door to the room at the hallway, then looked at each other in confusion exclaiming “WTF was that?” and before we could move, we heard the whole noisy sequence of events in reverse, the cat door flap-a-flapping, the crazed running, things being knocked over and broken, then silence again.
This whole sequence with sound and commotion from one end of the house, into the garage, and back again in a whirlwind, probably took no more than 10-15 seconds.
We cautiously got up and looked into the hallway...nothing. I looked in the room at the end of the hall, and there was the yellow cat, on the bed, with a glue trap planted firmly on his tail and ass. He was panicked, but completely motionless, as if he was afraid to move.
I walked slowly over, and sat down next to him...his tail was on the trap with a portion of his butt. I tried to see if I could remove it, but it wasn’t going to be peeled off.
It had to be pulled off.
If you have animals, you probably know about talking to them as if they were people. I said “Okay, buddy. I gotta pull this thing off, and it’s gonna hurt.” And then I just yanked it.
It had to hurt like hell, but honestly, he didn’t even flinch! Just amazing. The glue trap was full of cat fur pulled out by the roots.
Apparently, with the bedroom door closed and my wife inside, the cat wanted to get in. (She is kind of a deity for him. He likes me, but worships her) Anyway, he went outside the door to settle in and wait until it opened so he could go to sleep on top of her, and he sat right in the trap.
When he ran in panic, he must have glanced back and seen this terrible rectangular monster following closely behind him, increasing his panic, making him run faster, and smash into more things until he simply didn’t know what to do. Every time he looked back, he couldn’t shake it!
Ever see the Pixar movie “Cars”? They have a scene in it where one of the cars gets tangled in barbed wire and ends up wrapping it around a statue of an old car and dragging it behind him. Every time he looks back, thinking he is outrunning the ghost of a car, it seems to be gaining on him, causing him to panic even more!
Same dynamic!
I set up some traps around the outside of the house in winter (Seattle area - rats love to try to get inside). I block the traps and cover them so my dog can't stick his nose in them.
Also - I use heavy fishing line and tie the Victor traps to something solid. Years ago I had a mouse trap in the house that went missing. Moving a couple years later the trap and desiccated remains of a mouse were found under a piece of furniture.
“So THAT’s what that smell was!”
ROFL! I’m going to put some glue traps inside my cabinets, so the same thing won’t happen to our cat.