Hanging bags of peppermint, scatter mint leaves or Camphor will discourage mice and not hurt your pets.
This next may give you a chuckle and lighten some of the fustration of having rodents.
This is taken from a book written in the very early 1900’s. Not that I would try this or advise anyone else to try it. So please no animal lovers bash me I am an animal lover too! But I found it interesting the lengths one will go to rid themselves of rodents. This is no joke, this is actually in print.
“Release live rats after coating them with a mixture containing phosphorus. Mix with water to the consistency of milk 4 ounces of glue, 4 ounces of asafetida, and 2 ounces of potash, and add ½ ounce of phosphorus dissolved in a little alcohol. Shake the whole to form a complete emulsion.
Catch one or more rats in a wire cage. Take a pronged stick having prongs about as long as the rat’s neck is thick, wedge the fork just behind the animal’s ears, and pin him firmly to the floor. He can be held in this position without risk or difficulty. Roll a bit of newspaper into a tight cylinder, set fire to one end, and with the lighted end singe the hair from his back. This can be done without burning the flesh. Fix a small paint brush on a long stick and after dark apply a coating of the phosphoric mixture, slightly warm, to the animal’s back, and release him near his hole. Just what impression is produced by what seems to be the ghost of a departed rat reappearing in his old haunts would be hard to say, but those who have tried the experiment report that no rats remain in the vicinity to give an account of their sentiments”.
But again in another paragraph in the same book, it gives the recipe of "mixing in a fruit jar ½ ounce of phosphorus in 10 ounces of warm water, and mix to form a stiff dough with 10 or 12 ounces of rye meal, 10 ounces of butter, and 8 ounces of sugar, Place small quantities of the dough in the rat runways. But…remember that phosphorus readily ignites by friction, and the rats may carry it into their hole and set the place on fire".
