Will mouse traps snap on cats?

Why not use a humane mouse trap? You can let it loose in a field somewhere. You won’t need to worry about your cats, and you can spare the little bugger’s life.

I believe Lucky Guy had posted why mice will find their way back to food source. I will alert him to this q so he can update.

so hop on a train and and release them far away.

I’ll have to look up which university did the study (University of Montana?) but it showed mice will return to the same place after being dropped off 1900 ft away! My neighbor used HavAhart traps to catch a mouse that was running around in on the third floor his 1920s era home. He let the mouse go in the park about 1200 ft away . the next day he caught another mouse. and let it go. But this time the mouse did not seem spooked by the trap. My neighbor suspected it was the same mouse so when he caught it again he painted it with a streak of nail polish. The mouse returned within 24 hours. He named him Boomer for boomerang.
In many states it is illegal to trap and relocate nuisance animals.
From the DEC website: “Relocating an animal can create problems for neighbors, can move diseases like rabies or ticks and can cause unnecessary stress to the animal, so please leave this task to a trained professional.”

It can snap on anything that trips its trigger.

Only once.

I did not perform a controlled study but I do have some data for you. When I was expanding the mouse free perimeter around my house, I used Victor snap traps. I would have 6 to 8 set at any time. I’d often find 2 or 3 sprung and near the original locations, meaning the animal that tripped it was not caught.. Occasionally,(estimating 10% of the time) I’d find the trap moved about 3 feet away, meaning the animal got caught and managed to “wipe the trap off” I never saw blood nor heard complaints ffom my neighbor who owned the cats.

We may pretend to care for human life, but we really don’t ,so why do we worry about an over populated disease spreading vermin such as mice??
My late step moms sister lost her youngest son, a very strong 18 year old working as a farm hand, contacted some kind of virus that mice spread while cleaning out a barn that had been over run by the little bastards,so sorry if I have no pity for a fucking mouse.
If it gets in your house kill it, sic the cat on it,but to get all mushy over it makes me want to chuck my cookies.
Now to your question a regular spring loaded trap could snap on a cat,if the cat triggered it,and could hurt the cat,cripple or kill the cat,probably not but hurt it yes.

and this is why humanity must be exterminated

@SQUEEKY2 You’re wrong there. Many of us care not only for human lives, but also for those of (assorted) animals.

^^In your opinion^^

And @longgone I care a lot more for assorted animals than I do for humans.
Lately except for the mice thing ,I am beginning to see where @ragingloli is coming from with her great dislike for the human race.

It is funny, really.
Humans destroy environments, poison the atmosphere and the seas, and drive entire species to extinction, but it is somehow mice that are the vermin.

^^ Good point^^ But I never said that humans were not vermin as well, and we are hell bent at destroying the earth as fast we can for the almighty dollar,but we are the ruling vermin so we have that over the mice population so sorry they lose on this go round.

Yes they will. Try putting the traps inside something heavy that the cats can’t move, like a arrangement of bricks. And don’t use cheese to bait the traps. (Cats like cheese!) Use peanut butter. And if there is one mouse, count on there being another. You can put the traps behind something heavy, like the stove or refrigerator.

I would not use a traditional mouse trap around cats.

I would use the kind where the mouse crawls inside

Another example

A cat will probably sniff at the trap if it can get to it out of curiosity, then streak away at warp 7 if it’s little nose manages to trigger the trap, Or it will scream bloody hell if it catches it’s nose.
Position the traps along the wall as mice usually travel inches from the wall.

The kind where the mouse crawls inside did not work for me. Only the snap traps did.

It’s not just the cats head you have to worry about. Sometimes when cautiously investigating something, they will paw at it.

Wpuid you want to risk the cat ending up with a fractured foot? Those spring traps will snap on anything that disturbs it, including human fingers and cats paws, tail, nose etc.

Cats are so curious they can worm their way into spaces you wouldn’t believe. You may think the trap is inaccessible to the cat but if you’re mistaken, the cat is the one in pain.

Find another type of trap. And whatever you do, don’t even consider poison (even if you think you can put it where the cat can’t possibly get it.) cats are capable of getting into things we couldn’t possibly imagine they could.

A mousetrap will snap shut on anyone/anything that hits its trigger. Food for thought—if you wouldn’t want your cat, dog, infant child, or parent with Alzheimer’s disease to be injured by a mousetrap, why would you set one for an innocent rodent?

With all due respect to @LuckyGuy, I’ve had great success with humane trap-and-release devices. No, the mice and rats, which I released into the woods, didn’t return to my pantry.

@Love_my_doggie How far away from your house did you release them? Do the woods have many predator species? Are there other homes in the area where they could go? Was it in the summer or winter? Mice can see in the near infrared. If it is cold outdoors and there is open space they can see your warm house from a long distance.
I live near a forever wild area. Some people in the nearby suburb are known to trap rodents in their area and then drive to the forever wild area and release them. It does not take long before they multiply, roam the area, and start setting up camp in our home, cars, barns. It got so bad a couple of years ago we decided to crack down and aggressively work to stop the problem.

Caught mouse number 2 last week so I am calling in an exterminator this week.

@janbb

I realize that you don’t have cats, but since you’ll be dealing with an exterminator soon, just for curiosity, could you ask him what preventive measures exterminator use, in households with cats, to insure that the kitties are not harmed (by either the poison or traps which they use)?

Fortunately, since I’ve usually had cats, I’ve never had the need for an exterminator for mice. I had always assumed that “word got around” in the mouse community to stay away from my place :)

But I’ve always wondered what exterminators do to make certain that what they use can definitely NOT be accessed by curious nimble cats.

And I imagine that @jca might also be interested in this info :)

I have to add we have had acat in the house for the last 25years and have never had mouse problem.

I just ordered a plastic no-kill trap from Amazon. Will arrive at my job by Tuesday with Amazon Prime. If I catch anything, I may take it to my daughter’s school property, where I know there’s at least one coyote (I saw the coyote about a month ago). The school is about two miles away.

As I said before, it seems where the mouse has been going is in the cabinets under the stove, where the cats cannot access because the cabinet doors are closed. @SQUEEKY2: Mice that have shown up in the past have been beheaded by the cats (photos are on Facebook LOL). One of my cats killed his first mouse when he was about 4 months old, which made me a very proud cat mother.

Also, yesterday, I went to Walmart and bought a bunch of plastic food containers and cannisters for the food like cereal for future storage. I already store rice, flour and sugar in jars.

@jca

Four months old is VERY impressive.

There must be very stupid mice in your neck of the woods because with that kind of history, just the sound or smell of CAT should have them running for their lives, ha ha.
I guess they’ll learn the lesson again to stay away from your place.

BTW: Have you seen the YouTube video of a guy proudly releasing a mouse he had trapped in his dorm room? (I think he was a military cadet if I remember correctly.)

He was so proud of himself for how humane he was being to release the little guy.
Literally a second or two later a hawk swoops down and made off with it. His friebds are laughing like crazy. The law of nature in all it’s splendor.

I’m on my old iPhone or else I’d put in a link but you can likely find it without much trouble. Altho, admittedly, I’ve ruined the element of surprise here. But it’s still funny.

@Buttonstc “Have you seen the YouTube video of a guy proudly releasing a mouse he had trapped in his dorm room?...He was so proud of himself for how humane he was being to release the little guy. Literally a second or two later a hawk swoops down and made off with it.”

Yes, I’ve seen that video. The young man’s so kind and decent. And, despite the little mouse’s fate, the guy should be proud that he did the right thing for a helpless animal.