Mouse support for Tass Times in Tonetown

Does anyone know if a mouse is actually required to play Tass Times in Tonetown? I've managed to get the game to run in DOSBox, but my mouse has no effect, meaning I can't click any of the action buttons. A quick Google suggests that the game only supports an old school serial mouse, even when played through DOSBox. I don't have one and my laptop doesn't even have a port for one. I'm thinking I might be able to play the game using only the text parser if I have to, but obviously it would be much better to get the mouse working.

The below link is the best info I've found so far.

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=22032&sid=72a4e70849d4182e1d90403e4ad89f69

Any ideas would be much appreciated.