A well-intentioned young woman has made a habit of feeding mice in her building every evening, because she thinks they are cute. But her kindness eventually attracted more mice, which also gnawed on the wires in the building, prompting many complaints from her neighbors.

The woman felt guilty, and so she decided to kill the mice.

Earlier this month, residents were dismayed to discover that their building, in a community in Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, had more mice than ever.

The residents complained that the building's wiring had been destroyed by the mice.

Several said they'd often seen mice appearing in the doorway of the building. But to their surprise, other buildings in the same community had no rodents.

A resident of the building surnamed Li discovered a woman surnamed Wang feeding mice through a little mouse hole in a wall in front of the building.

As she threw food into the crevice, she seemed to murmur to the mice.

Wang said she has loved watching Tom and Jerry cartoons ever since childhood, and that she was very fond of the little mouse Jerry.

 One day when she was leaving her apartment building for work, she saw a small mouse patrolling the entry of the mouse hole.

She said its appearance reminded her very much of the cartoon character.

Wang thought the mouse was hungry since it was very thin and assumed it was leading a very tough life.

In order to avoid public ridicule, Wang chose to feed the mice in the evening when fewer residents were around.

Within days, the small mouse grew fatter.

When Wang learned that the mice had made trouble for the residents of the whole building, she apologized to her neighbors.

She said she knows that mice can carry diseases and can disturb people's lives.

Eventually, she made the decision to apply with the community managing office to set out poison for the mice. In the future, she said, when she misses her rodent friends, she would watch the old cartoons.

nen.com.cn