A pet that asks an apartment for almost nothing
Mice fit rental living better than most animals. They make no noise a neighbor could hear, they never need to be let out, walked, or given a garden, and a group lives contentedly inside one enclosure that takes up less room than a microwave stand. For someone in a flat whose lease rules out cats and dogs but permits small caged animals, mice offer genuine animal company without negotiating for outdoor space or worrying about damage to paintwork and carpets.
Their short, busy lives also suit people whose housing may change. A tank that two people can carry, with animals that travel calmly in a secure carrier over a short move, is a far easier relocation than most pets present.
Smell: manageable, but only if you stay ahead of it
The honest caveat for a small flat is odor, and it comes mainly from male mice. Intact males scent-mark and smell noticeably stronger than females, which is one reason groups of females are the usual recommendation for a first apartment group. Even with females, a cage cleaned late will announce itself in a one- or two-room home in a way it never would in a house with a spare room to close off.
The fix is rhythm rather than effort: spot-clean the wet corner and the wheel frequently, because wheels are where much of the smell concentrates, change bedding on a schedule instead of when it becomes obvious, and ventilate the room the tank sits in. Deep bedding, counterintuitively, helps — mice burrow and bury waste, and a generous substrate layer absorbs more between changes than a thin scatter does.
Escape-proofing in a building full of hiding places
A mouse outside its cage in an apartment is rarely in immediate danger, but it can be extremely hard to recover, because skirting gaps, appliance voids, and shared wall cavities give it somewhere to disappear. Prevention is the whole game: a lid that latches rather than rests, bar spacing narrow enough for the smallest mouse in the group, and a play routine that happens in a bathtub, a playpen with solid sides, or another contained space rather than loose on the floor.
If one does get out, humane box traps baited with something strongly scented, placed along walls in the evening, recover most escapees — but check every enclosure seam first, because a second mouse following the first through the same gap turns a mishap into a pattern.
Neighbors, landlords, and late-night wheels
Mice themselves are silent, but a cheap wheel squeaking at midnight in a quiet flat can disturb your own sleep even if it never reaches the neighbors. A decent solid wheel, positioned away from the bed in a studio, solves it. Check your lease wording on caged pets before arrival, and if you sublet a room in a shared house, tell housemates plainly that the tank is cleaned on a set rota and the animals are contained — most resistance to mice is really resistance to smell and escape, both of which you can answer.
Sharing the routine in a shared flat
In a flatshare, mice thrive when cleaning and feeding do not depend on one person's memory. Agree who does the evening feed, who owns the weekly bedding change, and what happens during holidays, then talk it through before anyone goes away. KinsLe Family Sharing then covers the colony's profile: relatives you pick get their own access to the group's profile.