I imagine the mice would be far more depressed if they had to get trackpad drivers to work and give a good response on Linux
If the mice had to deal with an intermittently disappearing cursor, and erratic hover behaviour on a 2 year old M2 Mac with the latest version of Sequoia .. that would probably illicit a very different response.
Are mice known to spill blood?
Everything was pushing me in the direction of buying a new laptop (with a small discount relative to the new price) and transferring everything across.