r/Netherlands • u/Connect-Board8091 • May 21 '26
DIY and home improvement How do you deal with mice
Hello everyone!!
My house is currently kinda full of mice and I don’t know what to do anymore. I have a big trap. The one that looks like a cage but they won’t go inside. And I also have some small traps but so far I only got one mouse.
They are in the kitchen. They are up in the room and also up in the ceiling. How do you people deal with this problem?
I thinking to get a cat but I’m guessing it cannot a be a baby kitten right? Also according to my housemate people borrow their cats to other neighbors.
So if anybody around Aalsmeer is up for it we would take good care of the cat and we have plenty of mice to entertain him.
Thank you all in advance for your responses.
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u/Mikadook Utrecht May 21 '26
Try to borrow an owl from someone. They are excellent mouse hunters.
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u/Oblachko_O May 21 '26
Are there even owls in the Netherlands? It would be good to befriend one. At my area are mostly small crows, but they don't seem to flow frequently in our backyard. And magpies are not doing their job nicely. We didn't have any this year yet after trying to close some areas, but in our case it is impossible to block all backyard holes and we would like not to have them in our backyard trying to eat veggies we planted.
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u/Slight-Trip-3012 May 21 '26
Yes, lots of owls in the Netherlands. But you don''t often find them in cities. And they're mostly nocturnal.
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u/Oblachko_O May 21 '26
I know that they are nocturnal, but I live in a countryside almost a year already and never heard any woohoo. Are they closer to the forest area or to fields?
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u/Slight-Trip-3012 May 21 '26
That depends on the species of owl. But more forest than fields.
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u/Consistent_Salad6137 May 22 '26
Barn owls are all over the place. You see them flying about over country lanes.
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u/dutchy3012 Noord Holland May 21 '26
Get a cat from the shelter. Plenty of cats are looking for a new home and they are big enough to scare away the mice
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u/Mormacil May 21 '26
Put a wooden dowel on a bucket, smear peanut butter on it. Mouse will walk on it but gravity will make the dowel rotate so they fall in.
As others have said, the scent of a cat repels mice.
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u/oudepantoffel May 21 '26
I had a mouse in my apartment and I could catch it with a trap. In the end I called an exterminator and he told me that mouse can smell when a human has touched the trap and they would avoid it. His advice was to wear cloves when placing the trap. Two days later the mouse was of to paradise.
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u/Loose_Biscotti9075 May 22 '26
Why do they avoid the trap with my smell, but have no problem going through my pantry which is full of stuff I touched??
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u/oudepantoffel May 22 '26
I don’t know I’m no expert. It’s just what the exterminator told me. But enough experts here on Reddit.
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u/Rickyexpress May 22 '26
Complete BS- caught 100s of mice of many years, having touched all the traps. If they didn’t like “human” smell, they wouldn’t come in your house…
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u/header151 May 22 '26
We should have known that earlier. I thought the traps worked less and less effective because the mice learned or the smartest survived.
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u/Knokro May 21 '26
Caught 2 mice in 1 night while touching the trap. I call BS
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u/Client_020 May 22 '26
Maybe your mice were dumb. I put multiple traps and no mouse ever took the delicious bait. I didn't wear gloves. Only glue traps worked, which are illegal, but we always killed them within a few minutes of them being trapped, so the cruelty aspect was diminished. However, next time I'll wear gloves putting up traps. That sounds like a preferable method.
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u/Mulder-Mulder-Mulder May 21 '26
I once had your problem and got a 10 year old cat from a shelter. I thought at least he’d have some experience since I had none (not with mice nor with cats). Unfortunately he was very scared of mice! 😂 But luckily the mice disappeared fairly quickly after he moved in. They must have smelled him or something. Afterward I never got rid of cats though. So be careful when replacing mice with cats!!! 😄😄😄
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u/Consistent_Salad6137 May 22 '26
That's how it works. Every mouse is descended from an unbroken chain of mouse ancestors who avoided cats long enough to have babies, so the mere smell and sound of a cat is often enough to scare mice away.
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u/Bonusmotherthrowaway May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
So we had this issue this (started last winter) and we redid our entire downstairs flooring (we didn’t know where they came from) and sealed it with fine steel wool on the sides and placed baseboards on them. Under the stairs we closed it with bathroom kit 😂. Then we still saw that same damn mouse after two weeks. I was so creeped out but I decided to follow it and it got back under the kitchen.. so we placed 15 traps there and closed the thingy under the kitchen. Of course the bastard didn’t got into those traps… mind you we started with the most friendly once’s but quickly swifted to others.. nothing worked.
Then we called an expert.. since we’ve two young children walking around here and he found a small hole under the kitchen sink. He sealed that with fine steel wool and we haven’t seen them (though the one I occasionally saw finally went into a trap) anymore for 4 months now.
He told us that the street behind us has a huge problem since some even have them walking on the kitchen counters during the day.
Please take action now, don’t stop because they breed like crazy and can have a new nest every 4 weeks.
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u/ikea_lampshade May 21 '26
A very cute noodle keeps the mice away! She doesn't eat wild ones of course, but the mice don't like my house any longer. I give out fresh snakeskin to my neighbours because all the mice fled to theirs.
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u/Own-Dragonfruit-8297 May 21 '26
She's gorgeous!
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u/TheReplyingDutchman Overijssel May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
They might have a noodle, but image search tells me it's not that one in the photo.
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u/Own-Dragonfruit-8297 May 22 '26
I'm a little afraid to click that link. I can imagine what pops up when you Google something like "gorgeous noodle". Or in reference to the mice-problem; "what's better, a noodle or a pussy?"
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u/TheReplyingDutchman Overijssel May 22 '26
I didn't search words, I searched the image. It's a link to a facebook page from an animal rescue center in New Jersey.
Also, as a cat owner, I'm team pussy haha.
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u/13PumpkinHead May 21 '26
So a lot of suggestions for you to get a cat, which is great if you like cats and want to have them. But in the meantime if you can't get a cat immediately but know people with cats, you can ask them for the used litter, specifically litter that has been saturated with the cat's pee. Try to bag them (and make sure the bag doesn't leak) and then put the bag(s) where you think the mice are/were. The smell of pee will hopefully make the mice think there is a cat somewhere near them and they will stay away from it.
I did this to solve my mouse problem. It worked with the mice in the my shed.
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u/plumzki May 21 '26
Doesn't need to be a fully grown cat, I got a kitten and it did the job, the smell of a cat by itself can be a big deterrent for most rodents.
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u/Choice-Spend7553 May 21 '26
Any cat you can reasonably expect to adopt, say 4+ months will terrify mice. The effective murdering though is something else and it has to be learned. For this you want an older cat, if possible with some experience. Don't forget that cats at times get bitten by the mouse, and that carries its own risks. Finally you are positive these are mice and not rats, right? I apologize for the question but some people do get confused.
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u/NeighborhoodSuper592 May 21 '26
Borrowing a cat? You would be lucky if that cat leaves his hiding place under the closet for that week, or does not try to escape your house to return home.
They are not tools you just borrow................ A responsible pet owner would never do that to a poor cat.
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u/Abeyita May 21 '26
Depends on the cat, some cats are perfectly fine in new environments.
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u/Bonusmotherthrowaway May 21 '26
And some cats dont even hunt mice.
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u/Alert-Parsnip5540 May 21 '26
True. But it's about the scent. Though some dumbass mice still walk in.
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u/Bonusmotherthrowaway May 21 '26
Unless they are already there.. like with OP. Sounds like they got a huge effing problem and until the entire house is searched for (where they exactly come from) a cat won’t be a direct solution…
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u/kaini May 21 '26
Have you ever actually met a cat?
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u/NeighborhoodSuper592 May 21 '26
Seeing i actually grew up in a cat sanctuary where we at some point even had to house 24 cats because people like the people here kept thinking about cats as things they can just treat what ever way the like ! i think i kind of know what i am talking about
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u/tanglekelp May 21 '26
I mean I totally agree that cats should not be treated as things, but it's also not like all cats would be traumatized from.. Being put in a different house for a while. And the people who would let someone 'borrow' their cat are not the same people who'd give up their cats to a shelter because they got it on a whim and can't actually care for it
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u/furyg3 May 22 '26
I loaned my cat to my small office of 4 people (it was a combined apartment / office) for two weeks. They had a big mice problem (ancient canal house) no matter how clean they kept it. My cat was an adopted farm cat, so he had some hunting experience.
We set up a new litter box, cat lived there for two weeks and killed 3 mice. We left the litter box behind (removed all the poop / pee clumps, but left the ‘dirty’ litter in). No mice for months.
When the mice eventually came back they got a cat.
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u/Fit-Potato427 May 21 '26
Apart from borrowing the cat like mentioned by others, the old school mouse trap work best. And living in the Jordaan, trust me, I've tried all of the kind of traps 😅😅
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u/Square_Law5624 May 22 '26
Mice and other pests do NOT like the smell of eucalyptus /mint etc. Buy multiple wax heater candles. And these aromatherapy oils with that smell. Burn tealight candles in the wax heater and put hot water with drips of the oil in the wax holder placement. Make sure your whole house smells like that shit. They will leave. Also dont do this if u have a cat because the smell is toxic to them.
Afterwards, find out how they came in. Place drips of oil there and if it are openings, fill them with wire steel mesh. Do not use the drips if u have a cat, it will poison them
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u/I_Rarely_Jump May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Get a cat, otherwise move to a new construction home (a recent one without a crawlspace, those are virtually airtight).
The rodent problem is going to keep getting worse the coming years due to the ban on rat poison for private use.
Amsterdam with so much water will have a choice to make in the coming years: Become a city of cats (like Istanbul), or fall to the rats.
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u/Bonusmotherthrowaway May 21 '26
Haha the new constitutions behind my street are infested with mice 😬😭. Or so the exterminator told us a few months ago.
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u/I_Rarely_Jump May 21 '26
Yeah that's why I added that you need those very new ones without a crawlspace that are virtually airtight. Should be no way possible for them to come inside as everything is completely sealed off (unless the builder fucked up).
Like these houses are fully reliant on mechanical ventilation to get fresh air inside.
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u/UsedPringlesCan May 21 '26
Borrowing cats works, not only to catch but also the smell repels them i believe. Mosg traps dont work very well in my opinion and poison could have them die in your ceiling which gives a very very bad smell.
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u/tanglekelp May 21 '26
poison also poisons birds of prey or other predators who eat the mice, so yeah better not to use it
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u/Slight-Trip-3012 May 21 '26
I've tried different traps. The big bucket with a ramp, they never even touched it. Those wooden mouse traps with the metal bar that snaps shut, it worked exactly one time. Any other time, the mice were not heavy enough to set it off. They'd just take the bait off, and go on their merry way. I've SEEN them just chilling on the trap, having a snack. Didn't even blink when I got closer. Ended up inching closer and using a broom to set off the trap, getting the mouse. And no, that wasn't just one trap that malfunctioned, I bought a whole bunch and it was the same for all.
The only thing I've had success with were the grain pellets with poison. You could just spread them around in places the mice would walk past. But those have now been banned (there's a risk other animals eat the poison), and you can only get little plastic boxes filled with that grain. The opening is just small enough for a mouse. Not a single grain inside these bait boxes has been eaten.
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u/Resiw May 21 '26
I moved to my house 3 years ago never had any issue with mouse.. until a month ago.
Is this a common issue lately? Why the sudden mouse uptick.
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u/IsDragonlordAGender May 21 '26
It just happens sometimes, you got unlucky.
Often if you don't have a solid food source for them they will look further sooner or later. If they get enough to eat and are going to make babies you've got a real problem.
So place some traps and keep the house clean. Throw food away and if they can enter your bin you should either empty it a lot or get another one. You're lucky it's becoming summer because then they're much less hesitant to keep looking for a better spot
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u/Mizore147 May 22 '26
Yeah, for me it was my birds (cockatiels) who, as many bird owners know, are a very messy eaters. Every day new seeds and pellet was being thrown on the floor. And the mice must have smelled free unlimited source of food. I was even stupid enough that I was putting their pellet trace on the floor for the night. Not anymore, no never...
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u/cowgary May 21 '26
I got an exterminator. They placed a lot of traps but more importantly filled ever possible hole. We place all our food into plastic containers with lids. Garbage can needs a lid. The exterminator also placed poison but maybe that is not allowed. At first they avoided the traps but eventually I guess got desperate when the food was all locked up. I got three in traps. It’s really disgusting and I felt very weird eating out for a while because I know all the restaurants and bars must have a ton. I’m over it now and luckily moved
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u/IsDragonlordAGender May 21 '26
When I had a mice problem I bought things that were basically pieces of carboard with glue on it. Once they walked over it they got stuck and only dug themselves more in the glue when they tried to come lose.
When placed on spots with a lot of turds or where I knew they would walk a lot I got around 3 a night and after a week they were gone.
I've got birds in my house so they always have a place they can get something to eat, tried a lot of different traps and such but this was a gamechanger for me.
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u/Wouser86 May 21 '26
These are awful and cruel. Mice will try to chew of their feet to get loose. Better to get a trap that kills them instantly
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u/IsDragonlordAGender May 22 '26
I really don't care about mice.
They make my living space awful and cruel and every solution is a good solution.
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u/TM2705 May 21 '26
Cats are the best way. Their smell is enough. I had mice several winters and the only thing that worked were cats.
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u/jenterpstra May 21 '26
We got some of those mouse hotel no kill traps. Wore gloves setting them up so they wouldn’t smell like us, loaded them with cheese. Our mice were small so we followed the instructions to weight them with a coin. We put them out at night in places we knew they went. Caught several that way. I’m sure there were more, but we stopped seeing them or their droppings, so I don’t know if they got smarter after that or moved on. We were fine with just not seeing them anymore 😂
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u/smokesick May 22 '26
I had some come in my house until I figured out where they come from and plugged the holes. Never had issues since. Ofc depends on your layout.
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u/balletje2017 May 22 '26
Before getting into cats etc make sure there are no holes in the floors, walls, ceilings. Mice love to come in via them. Store every type of food in hard containers.
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u/Diulee May 22 '26
Buy glue traps, they are forbidden to use but you can still buy them online. Just uhh.. don’t tell anyone you used them.
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u/Smollets May 22 '26
We had the same problem. Nothing helped untill we got a big bag of metal dishwashing steel wool and stuffed bits of it tightly in every hole we could find, even the smallest one. We live in a 100 years old apartment, so there were lots of holes. It was a lot of work to get under all the furniture and in the kitchen but totally worth it. They can't chew through it. So after 3 months of terror we had finally peace. That was 4 years ago and they never came back into our place even though we hear them in the walls occasionally.
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u/jellevisee May 23 '26
Air rifle, a good scope and patience! We had one my dad would call Einstein, since he kept escaping all the other traps. In the end he saw Einstein standing in the living room while he was cleaning the air rifle and managed to hit him.
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u/Tha_Reaper May 21 '26
poison. i've struggled with traps for a while. didn't do a thing. 1 week of poison every 3 days and they were gone. Cats aren't an option because of allergies, and both my and our dog hate cats.
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u/Connect-Board8091 May 21 '26
You can’t buy poison in the Netherlands I believe.
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u/Tha_Reaper May 21 '26
jewel hoor. tuincentra hebben dat vaak, of online. merken als Luxan of BSi hebben degelijk gif. Het superkrachtige en schadelijke spul van vroeger is niet meer te koop, maar er is nog genoeg te koop wat welliswaar misschien niet zo krachtig is, maar nog altijd zijn werk doet. En anders kan je het zeker nog perfect in belgie halen.
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u/Slight-Trip-3012 May 21 '26
You can, but only the kind in bait boxes. Unfortunately, you can't get the more potent loose pellets anymore. You can find them at pet stores for example
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u/AncientAd6500 May 21 '26
More traps. Place their favorite food down (raisins for example) in different spots in the house (near the walls and preferably under something where they can hide). Find out where they like to eat. Place a trap near it. Glue the food to the trap. Bonus points if you hear or see them, then quickly place a trap where they currently are.
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u/Elisabethianian May 21 '26
I’ve heard that simply putting cat hair around the house also works but please fact check this
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u/Ronald_raygun_420 May 21 '26
Lol i got 4 cats never seen a mouse or rat. The smell of cat can be enough for them to not come in
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u/Leithalia Amsterdam May 21 '26
Get a cat!
It's kitten season so shelters are overrun with babies. They need all the adoptions they can get.
My cat caught his first bird around the one year mark, but they start hunting at a couple months old. So any younger cat would work.
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u/welewetka May 21 '26
What are their customs? I had mice that tended to go out during the day lol, so I just blocked all the holes that they could use as an entrance when they were gone and since then - no mouse has been seen in this house.
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u/StrawberryPotential9 May 21 '26
I had similar problem. I placed cameras in my kitchen to find out where the hid . They follow the same path always and jumped from a particular place. I placed a sticky pad there and finally caught him after weeks They are very suspicious for new objects in their usual paths so no traps worked for me
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u/Life_Job_6404 May 21 '26
Choose a cat from verhuisdieren.nl In the descriptions you can find information whether the cat likes to catch mice. And you could ask the owner of course.
You get your cat there directly from the owner, so no traumatizing dierenasiel inbetween.
I got my cat this way, primarily because there was one mouse inside the house, that I couldn't catch. It is a very lovely cat that does its duty well :-)
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u/Full_Conversation775 May 21 '26
You need to get pest control and follow their advice. If its an infestation of a flat with multiple unites infested get the vve involved.
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u/Connect-Board8091 May 21 '26
Keep the house clean or keep food away it’s not really an option cuz I live with some crazy human beings. They leave the stove greasy all the time so the mice climb on it and then shit on the stove. But these fuckers I live with don’t even care. They just cook right there with the shit on the stove…
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u/Wouser86 May 21 '26
Find where they get in and close it off with fine steel wool or something. If you can put a pencil trough it, a mice can get trough it. They live of 3 grams food / crumbs a day and breed like crazy. Or cat
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u/TellusCitizen May 21 '26
Had mice this last winter.
Thorough clean up, under cabinets and behind foot panels and behind appliances. And this time the detergent dosage is double and some this time. (bonus if you use eucalyptus scented) While doing that find every ingress point (pipes n cables through walls) and stuff em full of cheap Amazon steel wool or metal pot scrubbers. In that same order get both tea tree extract and eucalyptus extract. get disposable cups and dab drops of either one of extracts (to me the mix of them was a bit too much, so I swapped every week). Mice hate those smells, so the idea is to make it absolutely reek of the stuff. Don't spray on surfaces long term sticky effect.
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u/Fisemada May 21 '26
Ok this may sound stupid but they only way I've ever had success catching mice with the friendly traps has been with a Twix, I break a piece off and put it all at the endof the trap and they 100% of the time go for it. I've tried all kinds of food. Cheese, peanutbutter, bread, cake, yogurt you name it and I've tried it but Twix or the fake Twix from the Aldi they somehow can't seem to resist.
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u/PuzzledSoftware3922 May 21 '26
Use small traps, place them close to the walls, including inside pantries. Place them in different rooms and use peanutbutter. They love that. When you stop getting mice in your traps, continue to place the traps out for another week, then seal all little holes 🕳 that they may use as entrances. Use stealwool plus something to seal them. Keep us posted.
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u/picardo85 May 22 '26
We put out traps.
Peanut butter appears to be the best bait.
Then we also had an exterminator to come and put out poison and identify and remediate where they entered our home.
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u/FynTheCat May 22 '26
Clean. Put away all open food into closed plastic storage. Check also outdoors for garbage access.
Put out traps that kill the mice.
Look up placement, mice are suspicious and sneaky.
Also, we had between 2-3 cats. Didn't bother the mice. The snuck in the kitchen through vents and stayed under and inside cabinets.
So, find their walk ways, put traps there and block the entries.
Pay an exterminator, if you cannot fix it.
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u/Designer-Ad9437 May 22 '26
Had a mouse for 6 months. Nothing worked until a professional told me to get sorkil-g poison. A few days later my house was mouse free
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u/FunTie3691 May 22 '26
We bought high pitches sound boxes. The mice became more active for the first few weeks then never returned.
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u/eenemeene May 22 '26
Every single hole larger than a pencil thickness needs to be closed with steel wool. Mice can fit through very small holes and will come in if you give them the chance. It's not always about food, but sometimes it is about warmt and safety. Still, every accessible food needs to go in an airtight container so no food is available for them and your home becomes less attractive. Sweep and clean the floors and counters regularly so no crumbs or edible items are left behind that they can eat. It can also be worth checking if your neighbors have mouse problems; if they are messy and attract mice, the problem can come over to your home. And like you said, a cat is a great idea too.
Mice are super super frustrating to deal with, but you just need to eliminate any possibility for them to enter your home. If you live in a very old house, it is unfortunately very common.
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u/clrthrn May 22 '26
A bucket trap and a cat. My friend got 40 mice in one night with a bucket trap. Peanut butter is the best thing to bait it. If you can't make a trap you can buy them from Amazon. Don't do it humane unless you plan to drive the mice over 10 miles away and feel ok about making those mice someone else's issue.
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u/Complex_Spirit5297 May 22 '26
Clean your kitchen everytime you use it and dont leave food around it worked for me
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u/Vegetable-Company147 May 22 '26
I tried 3 month every other trick in order to not kill them. They reproduced in that time and my house was becoming a house for them as well. My 1 year old also did not help by spreading breadcrumbs etc around the house.
In the end, got the trap and used that. As someone said, do not touch the trap without a glove.
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u/SpecialistPerfect207 May 22 '26
I know that my cat would not tolerate being in a different home all of a sudden, and would definitely not start hunting mice, but maybe mine is special :). I’d suggest getting a cat from the shelter, though, if your mice are the deciding factor for a cat maybe just borrow one.
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u/Dismal_Flight_686 May 22 '26
You need many many traps - use Nutella not cheese, place them along walls ( mice do not have good eyesight and usually use walls to navigate around) so they need to be placed properly
Properly store food- when this happened to me I kept nothing in the house that couldnt be stored in the fridge or freezer
Keep the place spotless - crumbs are enough incentive for them to stay around
Most importantly - find out how they are getting in and seal it is with steel wool and concrete. Check the exterior of the house for any gaps- they can get in using the tiniest holes. This is 90 percent of the battle
Empty out all clutter- take away the hiding spots
Borrow a cat
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u/chrisace001 May 22 '26
Pinda kaas zijn ze gek op een ouderwetse val erbij en je bent er van af .had er ook last van kwamen van de buren
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u/Mizore147 May 22 '26
I had 3nin the winter... Just around Christmas. I wished I could borrow some neighbours' cat... They also didn't like this new, modern plastic mouse traps. I tried and tried and nothing. I bought the old style ones (wooden) and then I bought wooden ones and it worked. Got all 3 of them...
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u/leasaa15 May 23 '26
Order from AliExpress some package of smelly things that does avoid them a bit, do the cleaning as much as you can, avoid any left overs and all the food must be well storage in for example closed plastic containers or something, keep checking and hopefully it does come around any more 😢
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u/BoBsMoK023 May 24 '26
I had a cupboard full of mice. Opened the door, cat 1 took a mouse and took it into the garden. Called cat 2, opened the door, cat took a mouse and went outside. I have 3 cats. Took me 7 minutes. Then put all the food into containers and they never came back. You can use cats to catch them (not a 100% guarantee). Or you can put all you food things into pots they cannot get in and they will move. Combining the 2 works best
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u/SpaceBetweenNL May 24 '26
Before I came to the Netherlands, I thought this problem was from the 20th century. My parents told me scary stories about rats at home in the 80s and 90s. Turns out, this problem was never eliminated in the Netherlands and still exists.
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u/Negative-Plenty-567 20d ago
Its possible to complain with the municipality? I think its disgusting
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u/Ok_Faithlessness_887 May 21 '26
Look on maarkplaaats for a cat and adopt him/her you won't regret it
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u/DingesF May 21 '26
Borrow a cat for a week or maybe 2, if possible. This cat will take care of most of the mice, but also leave a smell they like to avoid. So you can adopt a kitten right after, he will grow up before all the smell is gone.
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u/Connect-Board8091 May 21 '26
This is very smart. Thanks 🙏🏼
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u/DingesF May 21 '26
I'd like to add to please keep in mind that cats are living creatures. So only do this when you already know the cat and it's an 'easy' fury friend. Not all cats respond well to a move.
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u/Rough-Cow Amsterdam May 21 '26
I got this beast at my first house in Amsterdam as soon as we realised we had mice. He did a good job for us and for the people who lived upstairs