On January 2nd, I shared a post about our unexpected surprise when our female mouse that Kara just got for Christmas surprised us with a litter of 7 babies. She was excited about the new babies, because she had just buried her favorite hamster the day before. Things have been going very well until the last few days. All of the babies made it past the week mark. We were hopeful that we were going to have a successful nest, even though unexpected first litters from pet store mice normally do not make it.
Frappe was doing her best to be a good mom. She was nursing her babies frequently. All of them seemed to be thriving. Then suddenly we noticed a few of the babies were missing. This unfortunately happens a lot with mice. Then the next day a couple more were gone. Last night (Sunday) we were down to three. They were getting big, and moving around a lot. This morning before Kara went to school, she was devastated to find only one left. She went to school, but called home the beginning of third hour. Both Kara and her best friend were in the nurse's office. Her best friend had a 102 fever, Kara who had been sick on Friday, had a stomachache and headache. Since influenza is going around, they allowed her to come home. I think part of the reason why she wanted to come home is because she was very worried about the last baby. I can't say I blamed her. I was very worried too.
After debating about it for most of the afternoon, we decided to remove the last baby because the risk was too high that she would not make it if she stayed with her mama. She is 11 days old, and her fur is coming in. While we will have to feed her kitten formula every few hours for another 10 days to two weeks, she would have a chance to make it. As you can image, Frappe was not happy about our decision. We both feel so bad for her, and we never would have done this if we did not feel it was necessary.
While researching what to do for our baby mouse, we found out that our male mice who had been bought together had to be separated ASAP!. It is fine to have male mice together when they are small, but once they get a bit bigger they will fight to the death. It is best to buy multiple females, not multiple males, something we were not told. In the last few days, two of the mice were starting to pick on the third one. They were all still fine, but that would not be the case if we waited any longer. They would fight over the female, even though she is no longer in the cage with them. We ran over to the big box pet store, because they had a big selection of cages. We found two cages that were reasonably priced. Kara also still had a gift card that paid for one of the cages. All 3 boys are now separated and in their own cage. They all have their own running wheels, food and water. Kara's big Christmas gift that her dad said yes to, has totally back fired. Instead of just having 4 mice in one cage, we now have 4 mice in 4 cages, and the baby in a small carrier. Our family room currently looks like a pet store, since it is still a bit too cool for them to go back in her room. Hopefully all of this experience Kara is getting with her pets will help her in the future, because she plans on working with animals.
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