Mice would be great if they knew how to cook a la Pixar’s Ratatouille, or create fabulous couture clothes like the gown Cinderella’s furry friends made for her in the Disney flick. Who wouldn’t love to get the lowdown from Mickey about his famous peeps, or tuck Stuart Little into his tiny bed at night? However, once mice leave the animated world and enter reality, they become pesky rodents that are absolutely not welcome inside of my house.

Admittedly, those tiny field mice can be cute - when they’re not hanging out of my Siamese cat’s mouth. Juno is an indoor, “no kill” cat, who doesn’t like to share her private space. She always brings wiggling, very much alive, mouse house invaders to me to toss back out. After a few rounds of flying through the air like Mighty Mouse, you’d think the mice would get the idea that they’re not welcome here, but the little dopes keep coming back, somehow finding their way into the garage.

Our home’s attached garage is Juno’s place to take a break from the continuous dog party going on inside the main living space. That is, if the three members of my muttley-crew decide not to follow her through the cat door. Most of the time, the young dog boys are content to hang inside because it’s a lot more fun to interrupt me and bark through the window at passers-by than watch the cat snooze on top of a motorcycle. Still, the boys love to be right in the middle of adventure, and that’s where the mice are having problems.

Sammy, a rescued Beagle, is a former hunter; Beemer, the Border Collie, loves to herd; and Oscar, my Love Dog, is a Beagle / Border mix that would lick you to death if he could. Whenever Juno brings a mouse into the house, she plops it down in front of the first person she finds who can send it packing. At first, the stunned mouse was scooped up and gently tossed out the door, where it scampered into the safety of the woods. Lately, the routine has shifted to Juno dropping the mouse and the rest of us chasing it around like Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops.

It’s best for a mouse on the run in here if a human member of the household nabs it first because overweight Sam likes to pounce on mice, and Beemer, an excellent ball player, has caught more than one in his mouth.  Needless to say, his teeth are much larger than Juno’s. Oscar just enjoys the commotion and his tail wags non-stop during the chase. With the onset of cooler weather, we have had weekly mouse runs, the odds now strongly in favor of the Beagle or Border Collie. Definitely not good news for the unwanted visitors.

Unfortunately, the last rodent to enter the house through the swinging cat door alive, wasn’t so lucky exiting. We had our usual chase around the house with Beemer scooping the mouse up first. The mouse’s movement inside of Beemer’s mouth must have tickled his tongue because the dog quickly spat it out. I was about to grab the mouse with a paper towel before it could run off again, when Sammy zoomed in and gobbled it up. Sam has been on a doggie diet, and the temptation of a forbidden snack was just too much.

Things have been quiet on the home-front lately. Maybe word has spread throughout the mouse community about the mouse-eating beagle, and the little critters will henceforth avoid house number 714. In a perfect world that could happen, but we all know it won’t.