master of social engineering

well, for mice anyway.

For the last month, Miette has been in jail – living in a metal Ikea garbage can since she was attacking Keiko. She was quite unhappy about it and started rebelling by managing to put all sort of crap (literally) in her drinking water. Keiko was lonely but I didn’t want to put them back together because when I tried it they didn’t interact at all until they started fighting again. Its well known that mice rely on their smell more than any other sense, so I figured if I wanted to put them together again I would have to arrange some sort of social smell situation that was condusive to friendliness.

So this weekend I cleaned Miette’s home and put Keiko there and then I put Miette in the cage where Keiko was staying. I didn’t clean it and it had already been a week so it really was smelling like Keiko. Miette went absolutely mad that night with excitement and was much happier in the morning. Then I put Keiko in the cage … and voila! They were chummy and happy miceies again. Not only did they interact right away, but Miette even let Keiko groom her a bit. After a few days I simply had to clean the cage and after that they’ve been a bit less chummy but no fighting yet.

The image above was a short-lived attempt tp put a bandage on the massive sore Keiko had on her shoulder after a row with Miette. You can see from the look on her face how happy she was about it. Of course she found a way out of the darn thing by the morning so I just gave up and left it, and it has healed, but not completely.