Shortridge was a South African mammal specialist commissioned to perform fieldwork in Western Australia for the British Museum of Natural History, and was honoured for this by Thomas in the specific epithet of the new taxon.

The pelage is densely furred and their body is comparatively stocky, the tail is well covered in dark brown hair at the upper side and a whitish colour below.

This mouse is very similar in appearance to another native mammal, the bush rat Rattus fuscipes, but it can be distinguished from the pink colour of that species feet and tail, which is hairless and scaly, and the elongated shape of a posthallucal pad on the lower surface of the foot.

[2] The face of the heath mouse is blunted in profile, resembling a Roman nose, and possesses bulging eyes, characteristics shared by the majority of the genus Pseudomys.

[7] Another common characteristic of Pseudomys, which is also the second morphological character that helps to distinguish the heath mouse from the bush rat, is the hairy tail with distinct bi-colouration; in this species it is dark brown above and light beneath.

[8] The eastern distribution includes the Grampians region, and the arid open and sclerophyll vegetation of southwest Victoria in an area bounded by Dergholm, Nelson and Mount Clay.

[4] A study of the species population in response to historical and modern practices of fire management was conducted in Victoria in the 1970s, excluding surveys of the western and southern Australian occurrences which were still presumed to be extinct.

These specimens were supplied to the Western Australian Museum by Joyce Savage of Buniche, after their recent capture by her domestic cats, at a location adjacent to the Harris Nature Reserve in the southeast of the Wheatbelt.

The record of living species in the state was previously suspected from evidence in owl droppings, the fragments of several individuals in an old deposit then seemingly fresh bones in a second sample.

Many specimens and possibly captures in surveys of other mammals in Western Australia were initially identified or presumed to be Rattus fuscipes, including the 1931 Savage collection received by the state's museum.

[12] A habitat type favoured by the species at Lake Magenta, particular heath plant communities associated with lateritic soils, was used for aerial photography surveys to successfully predict their occurrence in other localities.

[5] Based on an assessment published in 2012 and current in 2016, the IUCN Red List has assigned Pseudomys shortridgei a classification of near threatened, of less concern than the conservations status of vulnerable.