So, has anyone else's toddler eaten handfuls of mud that their cat uses as a loo - and lived?

[whensmydayoff]

I can't believe this. DS is 3 next month so I was quite shocked when I looked out and seen him munching mud. It was all over his face and in his teeth

I have warned him loads about the mud and the cat and if he is in the garden to play with his diggeres in the stones and not the mud. I have never seen him near it.

Im absolutely shiting (excuse the pun) myself here. Im panicking about toxoplasmosis as the cat is out loads and Ive seen her with mice which of course where it originates from and how it ends up in their poo.

I phoned the doc and she basically said it's not great but there's nothing they could do and to just 'keep an eye on him'. Thing is, it can take up to 3 weeks to show but is pretty terrible if he gets it.

Please tell me your tots eat shitty cat mud regularly and that they thrive on it!

Oh you poor thing, I'm so sorry I can't offer you the slightest bit of useful advice as my LO is only ten months and hasn't got her mits on mud yet (but would if she could, the little tinker) but I just wanted to give you some sympathy instead and hope someone more experienced than me can offer you some reassurance soon. Hope your LO stays fit and well (and away from cats poos)
x x x

DS2 used to eat loads of soil and at the height of the bird flu panic, once licked a huge dollop of bird poo.

When he was really little DH took him to the park, turned his back for a minute only to see him with a dummy in his mouth. A friend's child thought he'd dropped it, but actually, said dummy was one that had lain on the floor for months and had probably been licked by every passing dog, cat and rat around for miles. He was fine.

Does 'rat corpse mud' trump 'cat shit mud'?

I think DS might have eaten contaminated dirt (he certainly ate dirt) last summer when he was about year and a half (so immune system perhaps less developed?). He also lay prone in the (pedestrian) street and stuck his tongue in a (well, more than one) puddle.

He was ill, but I think some of that was because he wasn't eating; and he wasn't eating because he was doing a post-18-month strop; and he was eating dirt, by the way, because he was hungry!

Poor thing. I felt very sorry for him, but he got over it. The main mistake we made was trying so desperately to get him to eat that we offered him crap (Jaffa cakes, etc.).

They all go through eating (and non-eating) Phases, and seem to survive. I spent a year in Nigeria when I was under 2, with electricity going off all the time (therefore refrigeration unreliable), shots needed for absolutely everything, etc. I ended up with a German precision-engineered machine of an immune system.

Good luck!