Minutes before 6am this morning, Ana woke up. I went into the nursery to feed her and Sim took the dogs downstairs to let them outside and feed them. As Sim approached the main level of our house I heard him call up to me, “Someone puked down here…don’t worry, I’ll clean it up.” Then I heard him murmur something like, “What the…oh, dear Lord.” Instead of hearing running water or the gathering of cleaning supplies, the next thing I knew Simeon came back upstairs and said, “I am trying to summon the crime scene investigators to try and understand what happened down there. It’s just….” and then gave some sort of involuntary shudder and went back downstairs.

A few minutes later, Ana had fallen back to sleep so I went downstairs to help Sim. There were several piles of unidentifiable bodily fluids. The first was a scattering of dried flecks of what looked like cat food. Several feet away was a monstrous pile of gooey, slimy chunks (the odor coming off this pile alone made my eyes water) from which two separate rivers of liquid were drifting across the hardwood floor.

From these disgusting clues, we were able to surmise one of the cats had eaten too quickly and vomited up their barely digested food. Then one of the dogs came along and happily devoured this pile of cat puke, walked a few steps away and proceeded to vomit as well, emptying the contents of their stomach all over the floor. However once riding herself of the offending items, she continued to vomit up stomach bile, hence the slimy rivers. So much vomit. So much grossness.

Simeon and I set to cleaning up the massacre. He scrubbed the dried chunks and scooped up the slimy pile while I wiped up the river of bile and then quickly filled up my mop bucket with hot water and orange scented Mr. Clean. Once the disaster had been resolved, we headed back upstairs. I leaned against my husband and thanked him for helping me tackle that horrifying mess. It was definitely a two-person job. I swear if I would have discovered that in the middle of the night (or heaven forbid, after he had left) I would have literally thrown in the towel, packed up the baby, and left. There is only so much one can handle before being pushed over the edge.

So, how has your morning been?