It takes the husks off the seeds before storing them in its cheek pouches and carrying them back to its burrow where they are cached. It mostly collects grass and weed seeds but also eats some green leafy material. In warmer weather it consumes cached food in the afternoon before emerging on the surface to forage in the evening. The silky pocket mouse is mainly nocturnal and lives in a burrow by day. The silky pocket mouse occurs in arid and semiarid grassland, sandy and rocky places, Pinus - Juniper areas, Artemisia flats, shrublands and areas with Yucca and cactus. In Mexico, it is present in most of the central plateau. It is present in the states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma and possibly Wyoming (where it may be extinct). The silky pocket mouse is endemic to the southern United States and Mexico. The species exhibits little sexual dimorphism, but the male tends to have a slightly longer tail. Behind the ears there are clear buff patches without black-tipped hairs and there is a narrow strip of plain buff between the dorsal coloring and the underparts. The underparts and the forelegs are white. The upper parts are ochre or yellowish-buff, with many black-tipped hairs.
Its relatively short tail, which is buff or dusky colored above and white below, does not have a tuft of hair at the tip and is always shorter than the combined length of the head and body, which average about 60 mm (2.4 in). The silky pocket mouse is the smallest pocket mouse in the family Heteromyidae, though otherwise is very similar in appearance to the other members of the genus Perognathus.
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