Eva's Old Pet Mice Page

Denna sida på svenska. This page is all about some of all the mice I've had through the years :-)

My first mice

In 1980 I started working at a laboratory, breeding mice and rats, mainly mice. There I got my second mouse, this time an adult albino lab mouse. I named him Aristoteles, from a rock opera I had heard on the radio, that was based on an old science fiction short story. Aristoteles soon turned extremely tame, he often fell asleep in my hand.

My Mousery

My astrex line In the early 1980ies I was given a whole cage of astrex mice in several colours, like black, chocolate, and champagne. I found them truly inspiring with they curly hair, but I had one big problem with them, they all had bad temper! I divided them by colour, and tried to breed out the worst temper, but I really had to little success. I got tired of them, and discontinued that breeding scheme. These mice were no good pets at all.

My black tan line Shortly after that I was given a whole cage of gentle tempered black tan mice with white markings, some had long hair too. There were both males and females, maybe 30 mice or so, so I divided them into several cages and instantly had my own mousery of pet mice! I kept this line of mice for many generations, keeping the ones with the best temper and also the ones with long hair. Generally with these mice the males could live happily together, even with females in the cage. This was something I liked, since I cared for so many lab mice at work that bit eachother to pieces. Of course there were other lab mice that never ever hurt eachother - like all the mice from Aristoteles' strain. My black tan line were all very good pets, but they had one problem. Many of them got some kind of fungus in the neck that I just couldn't get rid of. I tried lots of different medications... But nothing worked.

My new camera I bought a new camera in 1989, and that's the reason why I only have photos from 1989 and onwards, and not from before that year. The old camera was only good for taking photos of bigger animals, like horses...

This photo shows Aristoteles Belinda, black tan longhaired female, one of the last mice from my old marked black tan line. This photo was taken 1989, so I had bred from these mice several years by then. I only had two mice in all those years with the white belt you can see in the photos of Belinda and Pricken, and I inbred all my mice back then. So I truly do not believe I had the gene for banded in my line, it was probably just a coincidence that these two happened to get these strange markings. Most of my black tans way back then had white tipped tails, and several had small white spots, or markings, in their faces. Many had small white markings on the belly. Only a few had any white markings whatsoever on their backs.

These photos shows Aristoteles Pricken, black tan longhaired male, a close relative to Belinda (Belinda is in the background in one of the photos). All of the mice from this line, except Pricken, had less and smaller markings than Belinda, and Pricken was truly the odd one out. He had sort of a wide white band all around his body, with two big rounded black spots in the white. He looked rather peculiar! These photos was also taken in 1989.

Here are two photos from November 1989, an argente texel female and an longhaired argente baby.

Here's a photo of a chocolate texel baby, taken in 1989. I have no saved records from this time, but I guess I bought the argente texel female from a friend and that the two babies are her babies. I did not have any texels before I bought an argente texel female called Morakullans Alvina, and it might actually be her in one of these photos. You can see in the photos that both babies have white tailtips, like all of my old black tans, so they are crosses between Alvina and my old black tan line. Sadly Alvina was not nice to my mice, she bit them a lot. And later I got a sibling of Alvina's called Morakullan's Angelina that was much worse. I actually rehomed Angelina because of her temper problems, and I could not keep all of Alvina's babies either, because of temper problems. Today SWedish mice in general is said to have much better temper, though. It is easy to see in the pet classes at the mouse shows.

At the same time as I had these I started crossing out my line with other, unrelated, mice, with really bad results. I got bad tempers, and unhealthy mice that died. I thought, and I still think, that the best quality a mouse has is a good temper, making it an excellent pet. Mice have been pets for a very long time, maybe even thousands of years, so they are totally domesticated. This means that they are just as tame as dogs...

To the left is one of the Black Tan females I had in 1990. I think she is pretty, and she actually had a very nice temper too, just as almost all of my mice. You can clearly see that I have crossed in a lot of English type mice in her, since she has that long, uneven back, that was so typical of the English type mice at that time. To the right is one of my black tans with part of her litter, one of the babies is blue tan, the others that you can see are black tans. I was crazy about black tans back then, maybe I still am...

Here is a photo of two of my black tans from January 1993.

Here is a photo of two of my black tans from May/June 1993. This photo have been stolen by a big american publising company and har been published in at least one of their books about mice... I have tried to kontact them about it but they refuse to answer.

My old pet mice:

• Day In Day Out, Black Tan Satin Longhair female.
• Cherry Brandy, Champagne Argente Texel female.
• Åkej, Blue Argente shorthaired female.
• Heroisa, Silver Texel female.
• Daisy, Champagne berkshire female.