New hired hands

If they are outside cats, mistake number 1, don't feed at the house. Feed where you want them to stay. I am not a cat person, but I would rather feed a cat than a rat.
Yeah, we just fed them when they first got home there to distract them while they got used to us, their feeding spot will be out by the garage. I'm keeping them in the garage overnight for now since we're still staying at an rv park north of here until next week.

I'm wondering if they were dumped by someone, they are very people friendly, not skittish at all. Both try to dart inside the house when the door opens, but they won't be house cats. I'm keeping a spray bottle by the door to squirt them whenever they start to come in, seems to be helping, they're starting to pause when I just say "no" now.
 
Any idea on genders? Should really help with the rodent population. The "Feral" cat I caught a few years ago that we tamed did find a couple mice when he first got let loose in the house. Haven't seen any since, so he must be doing his job, lol.
 
We would need mousers that were willing to live under the house.... Dianne claims to hear mice in the walls and under the floors all the time.... must be some there, I tossed a few cubes of rate poison under the house and for about a week smelled rate/mouse de-comp.
 
Any idea on genders? Should really help with the rodent population. The "Feral" cat I caught a few years ago that we tamed did find a couple mice when he first got let loose in the house. Haven't seen any since, so he must be doing his job, lol.
They are both male, brothers. They found their way into the little green house and basement area today and were sleeping. I walked out with the sprayer a little bit ago and both backed away from the door, so they are quick learners. :)
 
We would need mousers that were willing to live under the house.... Dianne claims to hear mice in the walls and under the floors all the time.... must be some there, I tossed a few cubes of rate poison under the house and for about a week smelled rate/mouse de-comp.
I use D-con poison, it actually causes the rodents to get dehydrated so after they die they don't decompose cause there mummified. Never have the smell.
 
We would need mousers that were willing to live under the house.... Dianne claims to hear mice in the walls and under the floors all the time.... must be some there, I tossed a few cubes of rate poison under the house and for about a week smelled rate/mouse de-comp.
Yeah, We had some that were living in our attic. Before we moved in I'm sure this house was vacant for long periods of time. The amount of rat/mouse droppings in the attic and crawl space is kind of, um, disgusting. I've got a couple jobs I need to do in the crawlspace and I just keep putting it off.

I usually suit up in coveralls, gloves, mask, etc. before going down there. It's the exact wrong height for crawling. Too low to get up on your knees, so it's really more of a belly squirm. Ooof.
 
I use D-con poison, it actually causes the rodents to get dehydrated so after they die they don't decompose cause there mummified. Never have the smell.
I think it was D-Con I tossed under the house, may have been another brand, but fortunately the smell dissipated after a few days.
Yeah, We had some that were living in our attic. Before we moved in I'm sure this house was vacant for long periods of time. The amount of rat/mouse droppings in the attic and crawl space is kind of, um, disgusting. I've got a couple jobs I need to do in the crawlspace and I just keep putting it off.

I usually suit up in coveralls, gloves, mask, etc. before going down there. It's the exact wrong height for crawling. Too low to get up on your knees, so it's really more of a belly squirm. Ooof.
Our crawl space is about like that... it's down on the belly to get through the doorway, then at that end you can do a crawl on your knees, but to get to the other end of the house, it's down on your belly or flat on your back and wiggle under the cross beams.... we live in a modular double wide so we have steel I-beams and all the AC ducting under there.... when we first moved here I went under a number of times to fix leaks in the water lines.... I've reach my octogenarian numbers, and it's too hard to get up and down after I've been under.... I call plumbers to fix leaks now.
 
The female cats are the best hunters. Once the males are fed regularly, they tend to just watch the mice go by. A female cat always seems to have the instinct to hunt to provide for their kittens, whether they have any or not.

We have always had a cat or three around most of my life. At present, we have none, but the next one we come across with the right personality will likely be offered free room and board. My last was a Maine Coon" that just showed up one day, walked in when my wife opened the door, rubbed on our Alaskan Malamute putting her in shock, and then climbed up on the sofa and went to sleep. It was like "This is my house now. You can all stay if you want". He lived 17 years with us, took care of two recently adopted kittens after he first arrived, and pretty much ran the house and kept us on schedule for 17 years. There were no mice problems those 17 years either, but the mice seem to have realized that "he's gone" now.

Charley
 
We had a rat to come up from under the house last night for dinner... Ed, my stepson came into the kitchen and saw him at the dog's bowl.... we called Harley, our Australian Silky, into the kitchen and he went after him.... he ran behind the stove, so I had to use a yard stick and shoo him out.... Harley was waiting and made short work of him....guess he wasn't in the mood for the cubes I dropped under the house. :D
 
Warfarin type rat bait makes them very much in need of water and they will take all kinds of chances to seek it out. Usually, but not always, they will head outdoors for a source of water and die somewhere before returning.

Before moving here, my shop was in a former old carriage and stage coach repair shop that was almost 200 years old. A rat lived in there somewhere and was touring my shop every night after I had first moved in, obviously looking for anything that I might have left that he could eat. The first night he consumed two Macintosh apples. After that, I learned not to leave any food, not even a dirty coffee cup in the shop.

Adjacent to my shop was a photo dark room and a pottery shop within the building, and rarely used any more. Upstairs the former hay loft had been converted into a large apartment, but no one was living there. I bought him some warfarin bait and he ate several boxes of it, even tried to take one of the boxes back through a hole in the partition around a heat pipe that led to the photo dark room. He died next to the sink in the dark room. The water faucet on the sink was dripping, and that was likely his source of water. I was hoping that he had left and died outside when he stopped eating the bait, but a few days later he was changing the smell of my shop and I had to go find him. A shovel took care of removing and planting him. He was big, the biggest rat that I had ever seen, and had to weigh about 3 pounds. When he emptied several of the bait boxes before dying, I was beginning to imagine that he was dog sized, but he was more like an adult rabbit in size when I found him. Still, he was very big for a rat. After he was gone, I had my shop there for several more years before moving and never had a mouse or even another rat leave any evidence of them being in my shop. Maybe they were all afraid that he might still be there.

Charley
 
I used those bait blocks in my shop one spring, I was seeing mice and rats every time I turned my head. I opened the pool that week as well. I must have netted over 40 of them out of it in the next couple of weeks. There were a few in the fish pond and I’m sure the neighbors pond behind the shop had some as well. Didn’t see any of them for a few years after that. I did keep the blocks out and they’d disappear from time to time though.
 
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