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I rent a garage that is part of a converted chicken coop. Because of this, it has a bad mouse problem. I do not want to use traps as my work scheadule can see me days between visits, but I cannot use poison because the landlady has cats that roam free during the day.
If I were to leave a dish of antifreeze out, would the mice ingesting it hurt the cats the way poison would?
In reply to mad_machine:
The cats will drink the antifreeze.
In reply to mad_machine:
Ask your landlady if you can seal the area, that should stop the cats from getting to the poisoned mice...
lock cats in with the car. No mice then.
In reply to canzus:
I think he's concerned about the cats' welfare if they eat a mouse poisoned by the anti-freeze.
But, I got no answers for that......
I'm not sure if eating a mouse that drank antifreeze will harm a cat, but I wouldn't chance it. I live in an apartment complex with stray cats, and every time I add coolant, I clean any spills thoroughly. Also, with cold weather coming on, I'd advise everyone to check underhood before starting the car--cats sometimes like to crawl into a nice warm engine compartment to sleep.
i inadvertenly killed my neighbors cat about 12yrs ago doing this (using poison). Please dont...
I hear you can mix oatmeal with paris of plaster and the mice eat it and . . .
I don't know if a cat would eat it oat meal but I don't think so, I wouldn't mess with anti-freeze because animals like it.
yes, the cats do not get into the garage.. But the mise do. I will look into the plaster/ oatmeal mix
Mouse poison contains warfarin which causes massive dehydration. In the case of rodents (which eat many times their own weight in a short time) they can't vomit/metabolize it fast enough and they die. In the case of larger omnivores like cats there is a good chance that they will just vomit it up, drink a ton of water, and be fine. That's not to say its OK for them to eat it directly, but the amount of warfarin a cat would get from eating a mouse that ingested warfarin wouldn't damage the cat.
The other thing to consider is that killing mice in a chicken coop is kinda like hanging fly paper at a landfill. There is an endless supply of other mice to take the place of the ones you kill.
The problem with anti-freeze is that the cats will drink it but the mice won't.
Use a bucket trap on the mice. Then you don't have to worry about the cats. It's a very effective kill trap.
What's a bucket trap?
There's only one solution:
Try to make it look like an accident.
Woody wrote:What's a bucket trap?
http://www.frugal-living-freedom.com/mouse-traps.html
we use poison in our house where we have a cat and havent seen any problems though. we would trap and trap and keep seeing them (and hearing them at night) and we started poisoning and havent seen/heard them in quite awhile.
we had some at one time many many yrs ago and I thought my little sister was going to move out (she was ~10) a few days later we got our first cat (kitten actually) within a month there were no more sounds of the mice in the attic.... guess the idea of the kitten growing up scared them away 
Honda coolant works wonders 
Spray cat pee all over the shop floor. Mice smell cat pee, mice leave.
The bucket thing works well but if you don't want to kill them use a large trash can and take them to a farm in the country.
theres an old gardeners trick that also may work, though have no idea if its effective on mice.
when local wildlife figures out there's a vegetable garden around and start feasting, spreading dog hair around the perimeter will deter the critters, works very well from what i understand.
Id bet the same thing would work with cat hair and mice, though tabby might not appreciate the haircut...
Put a corn snake in the coop.
Barn cats and barn snakes seem to take care of things down here in TX.........and heard that the water trap mentioned above will help too -- just have to hope that all of the mice have a sweet tooth for peanut butter 
work on sealing up the coop to kep out the mice.
footinmouth wrote:The bucket thing works well but if you don't want to kill them use a large trash can and take them to a farm in the country.
or to a local chicken coop, I think it was turned into a garage or something.
The bucket trick does work, I've done this with an old wrapping paper tube and a bucket - although filling with water is a nice sadistic twist I hadn't thought of. Mouse goes up tube, into bucket and can't get out. Dispose of mouse in field far from home - or give to a friend with a snake.
footinmouth wrote:The bucket thing works well but if you don't want to kill them use a large trash can and take them to a farm in the country.
I caught someone doing that with 'coons. He and a whole string of children were "releasing them to the wild" IN MY YARD. He thought he was Father Nature. I told him "Now I'm just gonna haf ta KILL 'EM." If you can't stomach killing them yourself, hire it out. It's what our political leaders do.
I'm also a No Vote on the poison. 2 problems: 1: Mouse eats poison. Cat eats mouse. Cat dies. 2. Mouse eats poison, crawls away somewhere and dies. Stinks for 6 months. You'll soon learn what "The Smell Of Death" is. Plain mouse traps work wonders. For the classic design, you have to bend the trigger sear until it's a hair trigger. The big yellow plastic flapper kind work well too. A dab of peanut butter works wonders.
Oh, and Warfarin does not kill by dehydration. It kills by knocking out Vitamin K, which is used in the coagulation cascade. No coagulation and suddenly you bleed from everywhere, eyes, fingers, gut, etc. Then, with no blood, you die.
