A Cat Pee Kind Of Day

I just spent the last hour cleaning up pee. Not any old kind of pee. Cat pee. The most unbearably fragant kind of pee there is. I will take people pee over cat pee any day of the week. Mostly because you can tell the people not to pee there again and they will listen to you. I can tell that cat over and over again, "Do NOT  urinate outside of the litterbox!" He just looks at me with that I-hate-you stare. Dang cat.

Just to be fair, it wasn't all the cat's fault. He's not incontinent. It's just he couldn't get to his litterbox in time. Or actually, at all. My sweet daughter closed the door to his "room", the upstairs bathroom, last night before she went to bed. Poor kitty. After I went to bed I'm sure he sat at the bathroom door for a good hour before he gave up and found other means of taking care of business. The other means ended up being my son's winter coat that had slipped off the hook.

This morning as my children are getting their backpacks and jackets on, I can smell a very familiar, very pungent aroma. Believe me, once you've smelled fresh cat pee, you never forget it. I start sniffing. First, I smell the kids. Negative. They had just showered so it would have been very suspicious if the odor was coming from them. I smelled the couch. Negative. The closet. Negative. Alexander's coat on the floor. Bingo! We have a winner.

After some choice words and tossing the cat into his "room" (upstairs bathroom), I began the cleaning process.

How To Clean Up Cat Pee - By Kelly (with love)
1. Yell at kids for leaving coats on floor for the cat to pee on in the first place.
2. Rumage around under sink for rubber gloves.
3. Pick up "soiled" garment and place in washing machine.
4. Select temperature. Scalding should do it. Dump in 10 times more detergent than needed.*
     *WARNING - Even with this much detergent it still might not get the smell out.
5. Return to the scene of the crime.
6. Carefully get on hands and knees and begin the sniff test.*
     *WARNING - The sniff test is as unpleasant as it sounds. It entails sniffing everything until you find more.
7. Discover that cat pee soaked through coat into very expensive wool rug.
8. Swear. Loudly, because the kids are at school.
9. Yell at cat through the bathroom door.
10. Retrieve carpet cleaner from the basement and all the cleaning attachments that go with it.
11. Use a full bottle of Resolve Carpet Cleaner and Febreeze* pre-treating soiled carpet.
     *WARNING - A must!
12. Run carpet cleaner on hottest setting over the soiled area for at least 15 minuets.
13. Smell carpet.
14. If it still stinks, return to step 11. If it's all clear, set carpet cleaner aside because you may need it again when it's dry. You can never really know if the smell is gone till the article is completely dry.

I got it cleaned up. I think. I finally let the cat out and he's hiding from me under my bed. I yelled at him, after all. He's not happy. Let's hope he doesn't crap under there.

After a couple of hours, I felt like I was still smelling little whiffs of it here and there. Smelled carpet again. Clean. Smelled all coats, shoes, slippers that were in a 20 foot radius of the incident. Clean. Where was it? Finally, while I was at the computer I found the offending article. My sweatshirt. That I was wearing. At that very moment. 

It seems while I was putting the coat in the washer (step 3), some dripped off the coat and onto my sleeve. Yes. It is as gross as it seems. I had to repeat steps 3 & 4. I then sniffed the rest of my clothing. Smelled clean but I wasn't taking any chances. I was afraid I was in olfactory fatigue. You know, where you smell the same smell over and over and eventually you stop smelling it? But everyone else still can smell it? That was what I was afraid of. I was afraid I was going to be the Stinky-Cat-Pee lady in the neighborhood. What? Your neighborhood doesn't have one of those? You're missing out. I stripped down. Gave myself a bio-hazard shower. Got out and did a sniff test again. I've pronounced myself clean. For now.