What is This Meat Loving Flying Insect?

I am an American, living in London, England. Recently, we had a problem with mice in our home. They were so numerous, you could hear them fighting and smacking into each other in the walls and behind cabinets.

I'm a vegan, and against killing animals, but it got so bad, they were coming out into the living areas of the house, despite our 4 indoor cats! My husband eventually put down Rentokil bait, and within 3 days, they had all apparently died, though we only could locate 3 dead mice.

A week later, a fly began to appear in the house. I have never seen anything like this fly before. It looks a great deal like a flea, but with wings. It has black, 'not' red eyes, long, jointed flea-like legs, bristles on the head, and it is a brown reddish color with alternating black or dark brown 'stripes' on the thorax. The ventral part of the thorax is light cream color.

They are not attracted to sugar or any sweet food items. They only seem to want meat, ie., cat food or the jelly on the food, and they attack the saliva left in the bowl, immediately after the cat eats.

They fly right at me, and they are very insistent about it. I do not know if they bite, as I do not let them land on me, and if one does, I get rid of it fast. They are extremely hard to kill. You can try to crush them when they have landed, but they seem to be able to withstand a lot of pressure, like a flea can. I've sprayed them with Flash with bleach, and it stops them, but once they dry off, they just fly away! They won't go out a window if they are on it and I open the window to let them out.

What is this fly? It's driving me insane. Rentokil has asked me to try to post a few to them, for i.d purposes, but that will take 2-3 weeks before they get back to me. Can anyone help? By the way, they are 'not' drain flies or fruit flies, wrong morphology. Please help. Thank you!

By Leslie