The Life of Mice

How living with rescue mice leads to a broader ethical enquiry into animal rights

In 2020, Eva Meijer started adopting laboratory mice from Utrecht University via a rodent rescue project. For three years, the writer took care of twenty-five mice at home while convalescing from Long Covid. Observing the way they clean each other, compulsively tidy up, run in the wheel, make escape attempts, and approach nest-building as a quasi-artform, Meijer came to know them as fully-fledged individuals with their own personalities. Soon Flankie, Bram, Wezel, Bullie and companions were making a deep impact on their human observer.

Non-Fiction
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Original title
Muizenleven
Author
Eva Meijer
Year of publication
2025
Page count
160
Contact for translation rights

Stella Riek

riek@cossee.com

Mice are highly social animals and have an extensive language, which makes use of sound, posture, gestures and scent. They have habits and even make plans. Meijer was struck by how well they take care of each other, especially when one is sick. This care continues after death. The mice greet and wash the body of their dead friends and bury them under a pile of papers or nesting material. Science, on the other hand, considers mice convenient experiment material: sexually mature at ten weeks and able to birth offspring in just nineteen days.

Many scientific articles have been written about lab mice, but they are rarely actually about the mice themselves. They describe what the research teaches us about human diseases, human emotions, human neurology and other human matters. Our propensity for anthropocentric thought places humans at the centre of society, marginalizing other creatures, organisms and things. Meijer argues, however on the basis of her study, that we need to move towards a different political system based on justice and freedom in order to co-exist with human and non-human beings.  

‘The Life of Mice describes beautifully the social behaviour of the mice Eva Meijer shared her home with (…) and provides a good introduction to decentring humans in our way of thinking, as well as the philosophy of animal rights. […] A book truly worth reading with the same open mind and curiosity that Meijer has towards the mice.’

NRC ****

‘The Life of Mice is a revelation! Eva Meijer raises serious questions about the animal testing industry.’

De Morgen

Eva Meijer
Eva Meijer (b. 1980) is a writer and philosopher. Their extensive oeuvre, which includes the international bestselling novel Bird Cottage (2016), is much praised in the international media. Meijer received the Erasmus Dissertation prize for The Soldier Was A Dolpin: On Polical Animals (2017) and went on to garner the Halewijn prize for their literary oeuvre, and the Hypatia philosophy prize. Their work frequently addresses language and politics in the animal world. Meijer currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, writes essays and columns for Dutch newspapers and is a member of the Multispecies Collective.
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