Primrose has always been a particularly sensitive creature. We used to call her “squeaky baby”, which is kind of the mouse equivalent of “cry baby”. When she’s feeling upset or stressed, she squeaks, sometimes very persistently.

She’s been pretty quiet for a while, though. Once she settled in to her life and routine in our home, she felt comfortable enough that she was mostly silent. She’s back to squeaking now, though.

I’m pretty sure it’s the death of Dahlia that has her upset. I’m not suggesting that mice consciously understand death, but they do certainly bond with cage mates and they do show signs of grieving and loss when one dies. Primrose seems to have just figured out for real that Dahlia isn’t coming back, and she’s upset by it. She was particularly fond of Dahlia, and now that she’s gone, poor little Primrose seems rather lost.

Yesterday, she was squeaking mournfully and so I held her for a while and gave her a nice scratch and a pet and she settled down. Then, last night, I reached in to get mice out of the hidey house (I make a point of holding each of them every day, and I hadn’t held Iris). I ended up removing Buttercup and Iris, and I deliberately left Primrose behind in the house.

Primrose was not happy about this. She started to run around in a circle, squeaking. I can’t say for sure what she was trying to communicate, but it certainly looked and sounded like, “Hey! Hey! Where did everyone go?! Don’t leave me here alone!” When I got her out, as well (and did one of my famous “triple mouse pats”, which is three mice in a row on my palm, all being stroked simultaneously), she settled down.

I’ve had mice off and on since I was ten years old. I’ve never seen a mouse this sensitive and this prone to stress and upset. I have certainly seen mice grieve for the loss of a cage mate, but this level of mousey panic is new to me.

I guess I’ll just have to try to keep her world as normal and comfortable as possible until she settles down again. Poor squeaky baby.

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