I ended up getting the bug two hours after I wrote about my son getting it.
He and I spent the night throwing up together. At one point I was on his bed, throwing up into a bucket to my right while I held another bucket for him to throw up in on my left. It was surreal. And awful.
{And yes, my husband was helping, but I knew he had a long day ahead of him and figured he could use the sleep, since I wasn’t going to get any feeling as sick as I did.}
My son stopped throwing up at 4:30am, exactly 12 hours after he started, and woke up at 8am feeling great. I was not as lucky. While I never threw up again on Saturday, I felt terrible and was stuck in bed for most of the day. I did try to help here and there, when I could tell my family was really struggling, but mostly I let myself rest, of necessity more than anything else.
By Sunday morning I was feeling better. I even met up with a friend for brunch (but didn’t eat anything) and took my daughter to the zoo. This morning I felt like me again.
We’ve had kind of a rough go of it in August. First lice, then my daughter started school, then I started school, then my son was suspended for biting, then three of us got sick. I’m really hoping September treats us better.
In more exciting news, our cat caught a mouse… in our entry way. I think they are coming inside because I realized they were eating the organic kitty litter I was keeping in the garage (it’s corn based!) and I removed it, so now they have nothing to eat. We are really and truly buying traps now, so if you have any recommendations, please share. We’d like the traps to kill them with as little suffering as possible, require limited touching of the the bodies afterward, and if possible be somewhat cat safe (our cat gets into the garage sometimes, despite all we do to keep her out).
One more question for you: Would you wear a shoe that you cat cornered the mouse in for a fair amount of time (say five minutes)? There is no visible trace that the mouse was in there, but you know it was, so yeah, would you wear it again? Obviously, I’m asking for a friend.
You’re not going to like my answer. LOL I wouldn’t be in the HOUSE where the mouse was, let alone wear a shoe that the mouse had been in.
We’ve had a pretty serious mouse problem for a while, so they don’t stress me out like they used to. This is only the second time we’ve found one in the house though, and I DON’T love that. For some reason the garage is okay-ish, but the house is not. Our entryway is the only “room” downstairs so it still feels not too awful. If one were upstairs I would probably lose my shit.
Our cats bring them alive into the house frequently – they don’t really bother me it’s just a bit of a pain having to capture them to get them back outside. They hide under the furniture because they are scared. Wouldn’t bother me if they went inside my shoe. We have a humane trap which catches them without killing them and you can release them back outside. Got to check it frequently though – don’t want one trapped and starving to death inside it. It’s little field mice we have here in UK not sure what variety you have there – they are tiny little things and harmless. They can cause a lot of damage though, a friends holiday cabin furniture was badly damaged by mice in their absence.
Here is a vote for a healthy, happy, short, mouse free, relaxed work week. I’d want to disinfect the shoe….. and would consider what shoes cost and how worn they are too. mouse pee and fleas……not my favorites. I do not like the sticky paper traps, poison can result in stinky corpses, baited traps are problematic. Know rats can eat the wiring in cars not sure if mice do damage there. It is a problem. Interested in what you decide.
I think your cat is going to be your best mouse defense. We’ve struggled the last two months to get rid of the vermin, and all those jokes about building a better mouse trap are so true. We tried all of them and caught nothing. We ended up sealing off every stinking little hole in the house and that seems to have done the trick.
For the shoe question, not sure. I actually spray my shoes with isopropanol/water at the end of the day (I’ve got stinky feet) so I might be ok with it. But a mouse was in my purse at some point and I just couldn’t so I threw it out.
I am glad you’re feeling better, but the dual spewing with your son sounds terrible.
As for the shoe can it be cleaned at all? I don’t know if I could get past the thought of mouse germs in my feet all day.
I’d definitely wear the shoes, though I’d clean them out and spray some bleach on if they can’t be washed. There is definitely poop in your shoe. They poop constantly. We had (have?) mice, and we used those humane traps that they walk into & the door closes so you have a little mouse house. You have to take them somewhere and release them pretty quick though or they starve/dehydrate to death and dessicated mice are gross. But they just keep coming/multiplying regardless of traps. What seemed to work (fingers crossed): sealing EVERY possible hole with steel wool, and keeping ANYTHING edible in a plastic container. We bought like 20 rubbermaid bins and every single thing goes in there, like bags of rice, pasta, chips, cereal, flour, granola bars, etc… The only thing they don’t seem to eat is fresh fruits & veg that we leave out. I also clean out our bags & pockets at the end of each day—one chewed a hole right through my favorite red coat to get to half a lara bar (he couldn’t just climb in the pocket?) They also shredded up wrapping paper I had stored in the basement (for a nest?) so I try to keep clothes out of the basement (no leaving baskets full of clothes near the washer)
But yeah, we SERIOUSLY considered getting a cat just to kill mice.