Cecil didn’t rely upon the study unless it WAS a valid study, meaning, most probably, peer reviewed. To be valid, it needed a control. Therefore, the issue has been examined and tested. Q.E.D.
And since when do you expect the Straight Dope to provide every little detail of information that goes into the conclusions Unca Cece writes?? You’ve read this column long enough to know that that’s never been his modus operendi.
He does expect us to do some of our own skull sweat from time to time. 
Don’t they sell Green Mouse ice cream treats at PetCo or someplace?
No mention is made of a study, only a claim is made. I would like to know if that is an assumption with or without backing. His assumption is the basis for much of the following article.
It is common to ask “cite” on this board and that’s all I’m asking. As much as I admire Cecil, I don’t hold him or anyone else above that standard. While he may not feel it is necessary to provide footnotes in the Reader’s columns, this forum is the place to do it.
So, what proof do we have that:
Mice and rats have a strong aversion to the smell of predators compared to smells of benign substances (never mind the “evolved” claim), and
Laboratory-bred rodents hundreds of generations removed from the wild will freak out upon catching a mere whiff of cat, as opposed to a mere whiff of benign substances?
I can imagine a single study could cover both points. If an animal freaks out by running away, I think we can call that an aversion.
Um. A chicken is a bird.
Nothing in the wild can catch a cow. If there’s a (beef) cow there, it’s not the wild. That said, a cat might not have to catch wild ox to eat some. Does felis sylvestris scavenge? My own cats have varying opinions on beef, more or less, depending on how it’s prepared.
Same principle as fishing lures. They’re designed to attract fishermen.
BTW: Apropos nothing, I once met an indecisive-looking lady in the canned tuna isle at the store. I told her which brand my cats prefer. She took that one.
Synchronicity strikes again? See today’s Gasoline Alley.
Holy crap, they still run Gasoline Alley.
Am I supposed to say “My cat’s breath smells like cat food” somewhere in here?
My cats have always liked basic dry cat food, the less exotic the better. And the occasional mouse.
If mice are deterred by the smell of cats, then why do my (seven!) cats catch several mice a year in the house? Are there mice who get depressed and commit suicide by cat, or what?
ETA: To be fair, some of these are voles, moles, and the like, but you’d think they’d be scared of cats too.
Maybe they’re catching the ones that are toxo-infected, as the article suggests?
Yeah, but both the characters and the artists are getting older, like us. {sigh}
No doubt. Not to mention otherwise weak, sickly, newborn, or stupid mice. Cats do their bit to breed a better mouse. Even some healthy mice might get cornered, caught in the open, or fall prey to the old strategy of approaching from downwind, especially if the cat is clever enough to not meow before pouncing (the way some cats do).
BTW: Nobody’s mentioned lizards. At least one of my cats seems to find certain parts of a Mediterranean gecko very tasty.
It appears to me that the last two replies in this article are two identical interpretations of the phrase, the first in the context of psychology and the second in the context of civil law, but Cecil dismisses the first as “farfetched interpretation”, and then agrees with the second.
I think this is the cite the OP is looking for.
Kobayakawa, K et al. 2007. Innate versus learned odour processing in the mouse olfactory bulb. Nature 450:503-508
[Note to mods: I have only reproduced the abstract of the full article here; this is considered to be fair use.]
Layman’s summary (gleaned from the full article): They tested both wild-type (i.e, normal) mice and mutant mice on a variety of odors: neutral (e.g., water), attractive (e.g., peanut butter), and aversive (e.g. leopard urine). Both mutant and wild-type mice showed no preference for the neutral odors as well as attraction for the attractive odors. The wild-type mice avoided the aversive odors while the mutant mice were in fact attractive to the same aversive odors.
Additional citations from the article on avoidance of predator odors in mice (PubMed links included where available):
Vernet-Maury, E., Polak, E. H. & Demael, A. Structure–activity relationship of stress-inducing odorants in the rat. J. Chem. Ecol. 10, 1007–1018 (1984)
ETA: The mice were tested by putting them in a box with a filter paper impregnated with the scent in question. “Preference” was recorded if the mice approached the paper, “avoidance” if the mice ran away from it.
PoGos is a maker of freeze dried meat treats for cats. One of their flavors is mouse.
Oddly, in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9442782#post9442782
I had made the contention that rodents avoid the cat scent. (That doesn’t mean cat scent is a perfect rodent repellent) and had cites to back it up, to wit:
http://64.233.179.104/scholar?hl=en…+Blanchard+1989
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t2w7774hg2662mg8/
However, the point was that rodents avoid cat smell. Somehow to some, “avoid= 100% perefect rodent repellent” (and this can easily be disproved). :rolleyes: No, it means they avoid it.
Cecil is correct. I personally did experiments with rats that proved that rats *avoid *cat scent. The scent did not cause the rats to explode, however. 
Since it was mentioned in the article that there are some people who have developed a flavor for mice, I would like to politely remind Cecil that people have been eating mice for centuries. In Rome, dormice were a delicacy. They were stuffed with herbs and cooked whole. People thought it was great fun to crunch into the dormouse’s bones and hear them crunch. Eating mice is only a new concept for a “new” mentality.
Although they are in the same Order Rodentia, edible dormice (glis glis) aren’t really the same as mice. The difference may be academic to some, but there’s likely a good reason that glis glis was a delicacy and mus wasn’t.
So do you think Alice’s Dormouse was sleepy because he’d been fatted for eating as a snack at the tea party (so his drowsiness wasn’t just a pun on his name)? And they shoved him into the teapot in their madness, thinking to drink rather than eat him?
As long as we’re discussing things Europeans eat that we don’t, I might as well bring up the Ortolan. There, it’s done. Let us speak of other things!
