# How did you come to love mousies?



## Callisto (May 30, 2010)

So I thought this would be an interesting little conversation. Why do you love your mice? Is it because you had them since you were a child or you got them to feed your reptiles with and started to like them? Well i'd be very interested to know your stories so yeah ^^
And my story is that my cat had one in its mouth and I made him drop it without harming it. It was in shock so I held it in my hand for 5 minutes while it regained itself and then jumped out of my hands and scurried away. Such a cute mousie


----------



## windyhill (Jan 19, 2010)

Ive always been a huge animal lover and growing up I always had a TON of pets, from your everyday dogs/cats to spiders and whatever else I could find.
A friend of mine had some mice she no longer wanted and was going to let them go. I asked if I could have them and she said yes. I had them for alittle over a year before they passed away. I then got my 1st ( & 2nd) rat and had rats for 6 years and have since then went back to mice


----------



## Callisto (May 30, 2010)

I'm a big animal lover too.


----------



## The Boggit keeper (Mar 5, 2010)

That's a good question, I don't really remember a time when I haven't loved mice. I had small furries as pets as a child, I either had a gerbil, rat or mice but the pets I really remember are the mice! Now,I couldn't consider keeping anything other than mice, It's just everything about them, the bigger the ears and the longer the tail the better for my personal tastes and face shape too! Also, I could just sit and watch them for hours and when they're asleep - awwww! Listen to me rambling on- you'd never guess I'm a bit fond of my meeces! :lol: 
The only problem with mice is that they don't live very long and it can be a problem to effectively treat some of their health issues due to their size which I find frustrating, also I'm sure some of my friends /family think I'm barking mad because of how attached I get to my mice, they are part of my family.
So there we go, I don't know why I love them, I just do


----------



## Autumn2005 (Apr 21, 2010)

I've had a snake all my life, the current one I have is my third, and we fed them mice, rats, or goldfish, depending on the size and kind. Last year I had to do some sort of report for animal breeding class, so I got three mice (argente, broken black, poorly marked brindle) and began trying to guess their genetics based on the colors of the babies. Since then I've expanded to nearly 20 breeding mice, the class is long over, but I refuse to give them up! Even thought they're just feeders, I really fell in love with them, and they are great creatures.


----------



## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

My grandmother had two PEW mice when I was very young. They were just her pets, and she kept them in a small cage on top of the TV shelf. I loved them, of course, and was always wanting to play with them.

Then around age 15 or so, I met with a breeder who started teaching me genetics. I learned all the fundamentals of Mendelian inheritance with mice as my "experiments" From there on, I was hooked.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Growing up in a very rural small town, I had access to all kinds of critters. We kept chickens and pigs, and my mom's family were all farmers. My father was a docent for the local wildlife preserve, as well as being a avid hunter and fisherman. He cared for quite a variety of animals at our house. I loved to go into the woods and fields and watch animals, and sometimes would catch one, only to release it later. My half sister stayed with us for about a week once, and she had a ten gallon tank crammed full of hay, with a family of field mice in it. They had tunneled and made nests in the hay, and I was just fascinated with them.

Later, over some holiday, I brought home a PEW my fifth grade class had. At some point I got a little book about mice, which is where I learned that there were other colors, though it never mentioned any of the shaded or marked varieties. It had a picture of a champagne mousie, and from then on I always thought how nice it would be to have one of those. But it had to wait as my mother was extremely phobic about mice, and wasn't too fond of all the other critters I brought home from time to time either.

As an adult, I went on to have the more typical kind of pets, you know, cats and dogs. When my daughter was about 11 she captured a house mouse, and since we had small plastic tank from a chameleon that she brought home at the end of a school year, I agreed that she could keep it. the poor thing was so frantic trying to escape that we let it go after a couple of days, and I agreed to take her to a petstore to find some pet meeces. We came home with a black mousie, a champagne (!) mousie and and uneven marked black.

Later, I decided we should buy a better water bottle, as we had broken two of the cheap glass tube type, and when we went back once more to our local petstore we found a ten gallon tank with about 50 or more mousies, does, bucks, babies...it was a pretty awful scene. Someone had been breeding meeces and had to get rid of them quick. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw all the different colors and markings, and even satin coats. The store had cracked ten gallon tanks for $3.00, so I bought about 18 mousies that day. From that day on I was totally hooked, completely in thrall to the little weirdos. I get so much pleasure and relaxation from handling them, breeding them, watching the babies grow up, that I can't imagine being without mousies in my life.


----------



## Autumn2005 (Apr 21, 2010)

That's a nice story, moustress! I found out by accident that my pet store mice carry long hair. The first time I saw that weird little fuzzball, and realized what it was, I wondered why it couldn't be satin! :lol:


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks!


----------



## zany_toon (Apr 3, 2010)

I have always liked little things and although I was brought up with a a dogs and later cats (which i love to bits) I was always obsessed with itty bitty things. My parents never warmed to the idea though. I gave up all hope but after my dad walked out I seriously started looking into it again because the main obstacle was gone (my mum is a real soft touch ) and researching everything I could. For two years, I asked "can I get a mouse?" everyday (I think my mum was getting ready to kill me) and when that didn't work I started "I am getting a mouse and if you won't let me get one I'm getting a rat" (mum hates the tail on rats - weirdo. ) I was continually told no but crashed my car last year and was so depressed at the death of Smogz (the car ) that mum finally gave in and I got four mice  And the rest is history!


----------



## Neeks (Jun 6, 2010)

I got my lil mouses after my cat brought in a harvest mouse, it seemed like its back legs were broken or something as it was crawling on its front paws only.... but it didn't seem in pain.... I was told i should kill it as it wouldnt live but i couldnt bring myself to do it, and neither could anyone else. I couldn't bear to let it back into the the wild and 'let nature finish it off' as was suggested also. So i kept it and made it as comfortable as it could be.

After about a week, i noticed it was hobbling on 3 legs! It was eating fine and seemed happy... After about another week, it started using its other leg aswell! I kept it alittle long and it seemed to be fine and healthy, so i released it into a friends garden happy and healthy, hopefully its still ok!

I missed having him/her around so i aquired 2 meeces of my own


----------



## jujubee18 (May 21, 2010)

I have always loved animals, or anything that is living :] If i could i would live in a zoo. I have had alot of animals in my life, but i stuck with some in particular because i find them particularly endearing. Ive had guinea pigs, fire toads, salamanders, turtles, dogs, a cat, leopard gecko, raised wild birds who had fallen out of their nest as babies, hermit crabs, fish, and mice. :]
Now i just have two dogs, a cat, fish, and 31 mice [lol] , due to me being soft hearted and taking in a litter of 12...My 5th grade teacher gave me 3 mice, two of which were grey, and one was yellow. The grey ones dies after about a year, but the yellow one, Trix, lived about 2 years. she was a PAIN, always escaping. before christmas of last year i bought two mice from a pet store on a whim...and about two months later i bout 5 more...Unfortunately I grabbed a male by accident. SURPRISE!! But definitely a good one :] I tend to bond better with animals than humans because you can give them all the love you want, and not be afraid they will break your heart. I also think it may be because im quite quiet and shy that i am well suited for mice.


----------



## nuedaimice (May 26, 2010)

It all started with a hamster and Prozac... no really, I was given a hamster by a friend of mine that was going back on Prozac. She was afraid she would space out and forget about the hamster. I went online and started researching hamsters, and I ended up on a mouse website instead. I fell in love with all the colors available.

The next week I bought my first PEW mouse (Avalon) at a pet store, who ended up being pregnant, and I was immediately thrust into the wonderful world of mouse breeding. I was still in high school at the time and my parents had no idea I had mice in my room until I had about 5 of them and 2 litters.

Among my firsts were Avalon, Horatio, Ellis, Survilla, Gabriel, Monster, King, Marty, Fly, and Cookie. I used to spend almost every afternoon hanging out with my Chemistry and Biology teachers discussing mouse genetics. I even wrote my English term paper on Mendelian Theory. I tried out other rodents to see if I liked any better, but the mice just always had the cutest expressions and they are so squishy and lovable.

Now that I have mice again after almost 3 years without, I'm realizing how miserable I was without them. Little squishies...


----------



## matthetherington (Jun 5, 2010)

I started because me and my girlfriend saw a house mouse in the middle of our bathroom one night. We trapped it in a bin then had no idea what to do with it. I didn't want to kill it, also I didn't want it running around the house. So we went to a pet shop to buy a cage for it. When we saw how lovely the mice looked in the shop we ended up coming home with 2. After the doe got pregnant I came on this forum to see how to look after her. And seeing all the varieties of mice decided how much i loved the satins. So i ended up getting some of them.
We have 18 atm ... for some reason i think its just going to keep going up and up!


----------



## miss.understood (Apr 20, 2010)

For me, i love all animals. I used to keep rats and guinea pigs but developed an allergy to them :? so I had to give up on that hobby. I've kept reptiles for 19 years, and initially i bought a pair of mice with the intent to cull the babies to feed to one of my smaller snakes in an attempt to save money and have food here for him on a regular basis.

Thing is, when my Doe had her first litter i, erm... fell in love with the babies :lol: Now i'm a registered breeder, and have not culled a single mouse!!  At the end of the day, i just couldn't do it. I'm too much of a softy. So the only mice my snakes get is either the ones i buy in already dead, or the odd baby that doesn't survive....that said, the snake isn't that lucky on the latter as i have a good success rate with the litters :lol:


----------



## Cillah (May 20, 2010)

I was always a big animal lover. My family had a lot of pets growing up. When I was around ten or so.. I can't remember now.. One Christmas morning I woke up and there was a lot of presents under the tree.. But two mouse balls with ittle mice in them tucked into the tree branches. So.. It was my parents who made me fall in love initially .


----------



## Mymouse (Jul 2, 2010)

When a mouse had babies in our attic (sorry for the spelling) and my parents used killing-traps to catch them  I was so sad to see the CUTE BABIES, I wanted to keep them, that was the first time I saw a mouse up close.
I always had hamsters, dwarf hamsters, gerbils, guneapigs or rabbits but didn´t know that mice were pets until I was 10/12 years old or something like that, then I was in a petstore I had never visited and saw some white mice with black eyes with babies, lots of babies, I was amazed they were SO CUTE and I just fell in love! 
They were so amazingly small, cute and interesting that they could live in groups and climb everywhere, I could never forget them after that. 
I begged for years but my parents didn´t allow me to have mice until I was a teenager then I got my first mice, two white with black eyes and was soooo happy!


----------



## Amelia66 (Jun 12, 2010)

i have always been a animal lover even when i was a young child, my mother on the otherhand hates pets. Me and my brother and 2 sisters begged and begged her for a pet when i was small and she brought us a tabby cat who i spent alot of my time with. The only thing was we lived in the country and she would bring me dead/half alive mice which my mum said i used to sit and stroke in a sad sort of state [eh hem i dont go stroking dead mice now ...] our cat died 9 years ago and i forgot all about the small mice she would bring me and how sweet they were till me and my mum were house sitting and a small field mouse appeared, it was scared of us at first but after a few weeks it would sit on the rug by our feet and get some rays :lol:

Anyways that was a few years ago and i never thought to buy pets thinking my mum still wouldnt allow me pets, untll a few months ago me and my bf visited a pet store and i fell in love with some hamsters. They were chinese hamsters and i thought their little tails were so cute [my bf dissagreed] and so i decided i would buy them weather my mum liked them or not, turns out she loves them. She loves to watch them and thinks their little ways are cute. Well now i knew she would let me have pets i wanted something else i decided on a gecko, but when visiting the store that sold them i found out they sould mice. I watched them for a while as they climbed the waterbottle, tried to escape and generally played together well my mind changed in and instant and after weeks of researching mouse care and buying everything they needed i went back and brought three. They are my first mice and i know already they wont be my last.


----------



## miss.understood (Apr 20, 2010)

For me, i've kept other rodents in the past...guinea pigs, rats etc. I developed an allergy to them so I had to give that up as even the medication didn't work and the rash i got from handling them or being near them was terrible.

I was looking in a pet shop, and saw some little acrobatic mice and thought their ears and little faces and feet were just too cute. So i took a chance and got my first mice - Millie and Danger (broken black tans)....thankfully, my allergy hasn't started at all with mice, just as well as i have around 50 of them at the moment as i have a fair number of babies!

I wouldn't be without them now. xx


----------



## Kallan (Aug 16, 2009)

Callisto said:


> And my story is that my cat had one in its mouth and I made him drop it without harming it. It was in shock so I held it in my hand for 5 minutes while it regained itself and then jumped out of my hands and scurried away. Such a cute mousie


^ Same as my story! I wanted my own mice after that!


----------



## Nemo (Aug 3, 2010)

its so good to meet other mouse lovers.....
i go on and on to my other half about Nemo... (my first mouse - my current mouse) "Nemo did this, or Nemo did that....
Check Nemo out washing his tail, or have you seen him chuck his food out of the bowl, or tear up a piece of toilet roll?, have you seen him clinmb into his hammock? flipping himself over to get in their?" he must be sooooo fed up, so im glad ive come here..... as we can blab all we want without ppl rolling their eyes...and thinking were nutts.

My first experience with mice, is the lil dude i have now. I had Gerbils when i was younger, I loved them but i cant remember feeling quite so attatched in the way i am now.

I walked into the pet store in july,.... just to have a look really..... and Saw Nemo all curled up and asleep in a ball. He was in a tank all on his own, with no toys except food and water.
I loved his markings (black and white - with a white mohecan) anyway i went home without him.... but couldnt stop thinking about him that night......
I went back the next day to see if i felt the same way, and sure enough.... there he was all curled up again..
I was a toss up between him, and a very tame Hamster that was suggested to me while i was there.... but Nemo won!!!
Of all the little furries in there..... he also was the only one that didnt try to bite me. His curiosity got the better of him...he gave me a sniff.....then another........and i thought "you are so the one for me"
So he was bought!!!
I bought him a tank with a cage top..... silent wheel....fluffy tunnel.......lots of toys!

Now......im soooooo glad i bought him! hes been very entertaining to watch.....and his confidence in me is growing all the time.....

Now im hooked on mice!!
Thank you Nemo....xx


----------



## bethmccallister (Mar 5, 2010)

I was a really small little girl of about 5 or 6 when I was "helping" my dad tear the seats out of an old car he was restoring. Inside one of the seats in the foam was a nest of the tiniest little creatures I had ever seen. It was a huge nest of fat little furries that hadn't even had their eyes open yet. Dad let me pick them up and hold them and then he "put them where mom could find them". I worried about them for a long time after but never seen them again. Fast forward about 10 years and now I'm a big nerd and staying after every biology class I could to help my science teacher with his animal lab. He had rodents amoung other things including reptile and amphibians. He then started teaching about genetics and I did an extensive report on breeding mice and their genetics. I had mostly satin reds back then! In college I majored in Zoology in hopes to become a vet...some how I ended up landing a job as a web programmer though and now keep and breed mice as a hobby and hope to improve them enough to win the respect of my peers


----------



## Twotails (Nov 4, 2010)

I remember the first mouse I ever had. She was a little black and white mouse from Petco. I was there with my mom and I saw her and instantly fell in love with her so I convinced my mom to let me get her. I ended up naming her Daisy and two years later she died. A year later I got two more mice, I little brown one and a little black one. They lived for about a year and a half. Then I found out you could get two mice a boy and a girl and get baby mice. I was little so that thought never crossed my mind. When I found that out I asked my mom if I could do that and she said no. When I turned 14 I convinced her to let me get two mice and she let me thinking I was getting two females. I got a male and a female and they had babies! My mom saw the babies and was instantly fine with letting me breed mice :lol: . I found out there was all sorts of different mice when one of the litters had a baby with orange on him. Now I am 15 and I know way more about mice then when I first started breeding! All in all I guess I have always loved mice!


----------



## shadowmouse (Sep 17, 2010)

I had hamsters growing up and most of them were biters. I got my first hamster when I was young, probably 5 or 6. This year my son was turning 4 and we have a very small house. There is not much to do and my horse just passed, so we didn't have a common interest anymore. So, I was thinking about how much fun I had with my hamsters, but didn't want my son getting bit like I did. I found out mice didn't bite like that and that they were more friendly. I knew I didn't want to buy one from petco or petsmart, so I started on a quest to find a breeder. Type wasn't important, but they HAD to be handled from birth. Erica08 was my only option (I hadn't met moustress when I reserved my does) and she was 1 1/2 hrs away. Our original plan was a single male, then we switched to 3 does. But, when we showed up at Erica's house after such a LONG drive... I ended up picking out 6 does.    Got home and had to tell hubby... :? I got all my equipment for free or super cheap. It's been so fun!! Ethan and I have had a blast with our girls.


----------



## george (Aug 24, 2010)

.


----------



## kerryann (Oct 4, 2010)

i was looking for a little pet for my kids and saw a ad on gumtree from someone just down the road from me that was selling baby mice. so i went down to see them and came home with them all  been hooked ever since. now im interested to learn everything there is to know and mabe one day become a good breeder myself and mabe own my own mousery


----------



## katytwinkle (Aug 28, 2010)

apologies for georges dot post!!! my fault!!! i had written a huge post about how i discovered mice, posted it, then realised id done it on georges profile!!!! watered down version is boyf bought me two for birthday -obsessed since!!!


----------



## Wilko (Nov 6, 2010)

I've always loved animals, but my mum wouldn't let me keep anything in a cage. After a year of negiating, my brother and I got two female rats from the local petshop - which we all loved. But they hated being handled (though the petshop had said they were hand raised and people friendly...) and died within a year after both girls ended up going to the vets for different problems ): After Bubble and Squeak passed, I got into tropical fish. The when I got to college, a friend introduced me to Roborovski hamsters (such cute little hyperactive rodents XD) and I adopted 2 brothers from Pets at Home - Feather and Duster (which my family fell in love with eventually). But again, mother said no to any other furry pets, even though I drooled over baby brokens with cute markings.
Since moving out into my boyfriend's house, I've gotten a couple of other pets, but a friend was looking for a good home for their mice. I couldn't say no to the little twitch faces  
But now I want to find a nice broken / chinchilla girl and have cute looking mice babies and try crossing colours and seeing what pops out (I love genetics) :lol:


----------



## thekylie (Mar 6, 2010)

My parents were always very strict about the pets we could have. We had a dog and my sister and I could each have ONE pet/cage in our rooms. I was 10ish years old and had a gerbil who I'm pretty sure was the spawn of the devil. He was HORRID to deal with and would bit for keeps every time you tried to touch him. I managed to talk my grandpa into getting me a mouse because I wanted to do an experiment at the science fair that year to see if a mouse or gerbil could run a maze faster. Really, it was just a con on my part to get a mouse. 

Since my grandpa bought the mouse for me my parents couldn't say no. So I got my Oreo, a little black and white girl. She was the best pet out of all my pets growing up, besides the dog. She would sit on my shoulder or ride around in a pocket. She even lived in my classroom for a few months and I'd take her home on weekends, and we'd take her to the library and even on fire drills lol. I'd spend my recesses inside cleaning her cage or playing with her sometimes. It wasn't because I was lonely or didn't have friends or anything, I just really LOVED this mouse. I will never forget how good she used to smell. I've never had a mouse that smelled quite the same, although I think it's because I kept her on really fluffy pine bedding. 

I didn't have the awesome internet at the time to find out about protein needs and bedding requirements so she ended up getting horrible hot spots and scratched her ears until they were nubs, despite taking her to the vet multiple times (always much to my mom's annoyance). She ended up having to be put down when I was visiting my grandparents (or so my parents said. I found out years later what my dad really did to her and I don't think I'll ever forgive him, even if she did need to be put down because she was in pain). I always feel bad now that I know more about mice that I didn't know these things before to keep her alive, but all I had to go on then was books and they didn't have the best information.

Regardless, she always will hold a special place for me, and she's the reason I got into mice. That's why I have a special place in my heart for pied blacks, even if they aren't really the best choice in my mousery now.


----------



## shadowmouse (Sep 17, 2010)

thekylie said:


> My parents were always very strict about the pets we could have. We had a dog and my sister and I could each have ONE pet/cage in our rooms. I was 10ish years old and had a gerbil who I'm pretty sure was the spawn of the devil. He was HORRID to deal with and would bit for keeps every time you tried to touch him. I managed to talk my grandpa into getting me a mouse because I wanted to do an experiment at the science fair that year to see if a mouse or gerbil could run a maze faster. Really, it was just a con on my part to get a mouse.
> 
> Since my grandpa bought the mouse for me my parents couldn't say no. So I got my Oreo, a little black and white girl. She was the best pet out of all my pets growing up, besides the dog. She would sit on my shoulder or ride around in a pocket. She even lived in my classroom for a few months and I'd take her home on weekends, and we'd take her to the library and even on fire drills lol. I'd spend my recesses inside cleaning her cage or playing with her sometimes. It wasn't because I was lonely or didn't have friends or anything, I just really LOVED this mouse. I will never forget how good she used to smell. I've never had a mouse that smelled quite the same, although I think it's because I kept her on really fluffy pine bedding.
> 
> ...


That is so sweet. Not the part about your dad, but the rest. Of my current six does Dora is my favorite. 










There is just something so addicting about those black and white spots. :lol:


----------



## Wight Isle Stud (May 19, 2010)

ok, well I am a ex builder and ex copper of 20 years. I am not a small person. When I was young, I was in a livestock family (big time showing ). I saw a local news article of a local man that had won a show. I knew at that point they were for me. To this very day, with hands like shovels and skin like leather, when a mouse is in my hand I am at my happiest !!


----------

