First mouse found

Question

Cinnamon?   Hi Tamarah,

    I previously sent you a question about my captured 3 mice.  Well before those ones my fiance caught another and first thing i thought was she was a pregnant female but can't say for sure so will post picture see what you can tell me about her.  We don't have her anymore bit have loved to keep her. I did research online and i came across the same mouse picture color of it.  They said it was a cinnamon mouse.  I guess what i want to know was it female was she pregnant and was she a cinnamon mouse and would she have been a pet or wild mouse?

Answer
Hi Stacey,

She looks like she could be pregnant, but she could also simply be obese.  The reddish coat color is caused by a gene called yellow, and can result in mice of all shades from yellow to orange to a very reddish, rusty orange color.  This is frequently, but not always, a variation on the agouti coloration most wild mice have, which is also very common in pet mice.  The short answer is that it's impossible to guess if she was a pet or not, but she certainly could have been.

The cinnamon coloring you are referring to is defined as having ticking throughout the coat:  http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/varieties/cinnamon.html  From the photograph, it looks like she also could have been fawn or red, depending on her eye color and genetics:  http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/varieties/I.html

I cannot tell you if she was a pregnant female, a non-pregnant female, or a chubby male, because obesity in mice is genetic and highly linked to the red/yellow genetics.  You'd have to find her to figure it out!  :)

Let me know if I can help out with anything else,
-Tam