There are two things wrong with this picture! 1. That is snow you see, luckily not a lot, but enough to be on the ground and trees. Yuck! 2. There are no window covers on my windows, not just this one either, in fact all do our window coverings are down! Why you ask?
FLEAS!
Yup, luckily not a lot, but you don't need a lot to freak out! I'm sure I've gone overboard, but better safe than sorry. How did I find out? Insert back story:
My Dad moved back down home, got his own place and all, which meant that all of his stuff in my shop can go to his new place. He brings his dog over all the time, this was no different. Then he went moose hunting and sure enough my sister volunteered to watch the dog. About 3 days later she found a ton of fleas on her. So she went all crazy in her house, bathed Gypsy 3 times, and sure enough all was to be fine.
Yesterday I was at my sisters house photographing her jewelry and her dog kept itching, so I told her to check him and sure enough, she found a flea. Her dogs are treated with flea stuff regularly, but still managed to have fleas. She called my Dad over to bath her dogs and cat with flea treatment. Sure enough he went. I packed up, headed home and then checked my pets and sure enough, I found one on Gracie, and one on Lux. None on Jazz, Lily or Binx. But if one has them, they all have them in my eyes, as they are always cuddling, sharing beds, etc. So I called my Dad, told him how not impressed. I was and then got straight to work.
M came home from work to a frantic pregnant clean freak, coming up with a master plan of how we were going to deal with this. We used the bathrooms as holding areas for the pets. Dogs in my bathroom, cats in M's. Then started a contamination room - aka laundry room to hold all of the potentially contaminated linens. We had a quick dinner, and then cleaned our house top to bottom, took all bedding, curtains, pillows, washable rugs, clothes and put them into the contamination room to be washed. Sure enough I have a heck of a lot of laundry to do, which was also started last night. My house is spotless for the most part. Everything was vacuumed, floors washed, I'm sure you get the picture.
We bathed Lily first and sure enough we still didn't find any fleas. Poor M was stuck bashing everyone because I couldn't come into contact with the shampoo being pregnant. So I dried the dogs with these handy dandy gloves on! Better safe than sorry!
Gracie was up next, still rather simple to bath, the dogs usually are. While I was drying Gracie, Binx was up next. She is soo easy to bath thank goodness! She's just laid back and purring. But I found a few more fleas on Gracie while drying her off! luckily they were dead but I couldn't get them off with my gloves on, so M came over to help and sure enough Binx is just wandering around the bathroom. We finished drying Gracie, finished bathing Binx and moved on to Jazz. You would have thought we were skinning her alive, she was soo upset with having a bath. I dried her while Lux was up next, he was a brat. Let's just say the baby won't be the first one to go to the bathroom in the tub! Poor M! And poor Lux!
We put all the towels in the wash, then shut both bathrooms at 11:30pm, made the bed, cleaned ourselves, emptied the vacuums and garbages and sure enough it was past midnight by the time we came to bed.
Needless to say we were beat!
So I have 3 rooms left to be cleaned, 2 of which will be done today - both bathrooms and the laundry room once everything is washed!
The good news is my house is spotless. My animals are clean, but man that was a whole ton of work! I'm sure those without animals - if they made it this far in the post are not only disgusted, but wondering why someone would have an animal. But those who do have animals know this is a possibility and yes it does in deed suck.
But my answer to those without pets would be, these animals are my fur-children, my babies, and they are part of our family. And although this evening really sucked, I would do it all over again, even with a baby on the way or even here. There is a bond between pets and humans, one that only pet owners understand.
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