Sunday – a confession

I’m not typically a church-going woman, so a Sunday confession is NOT normal. But in order to tell you what I did today, I need to make a confession first.

A and I have always had cats.  When we had to put my Frankie down this spring, it was because of kidney failure. If you have had a cat with kidney failure, you know that sometimes they signal they aren’t well by not using the cat box all the time.  Frankie was notorious for this, and we always paid attention to her when she acted up like this, rushing her off to the vet. So, this spring, it finally got so bad we had to put her to sleep.  A couple of weeks later we got the kittens.

One big change we made in between was the location of the cat box – we took it out of the laundry room and put it into the guest bathroom.  This was very exciting to me, since it meant we could now close the laundry room/mud room door when we do laundry and in the winter, to keep the house warmer.

Here comes the confession: this week, we started shutting the door at night.  And in the morning, when we opened it – overpowering smell of cat urine. All summer, the windows had been open, and we never noticed it. Ugh!  Just what we want to have greet us when we come in the house. We are pretty sure that it is not the new kids that did this, but the old sick girl.  And truly, we HAVE cleaned in there this summer, but obviously, we missed something major.

So, today I totally emptied both rooms, moved the washer and dryer out, cleaned behind them, cleaned the dryer hose while I had everything apart, scrubbed the floor all over, especially under the sink where the cat box had been.  But nowhere did I find any signs of old cat urine – no smell, no dried puddle places. It took hours to wipe everything down, dusting, vacuuming, moving furniture.

Now that everything is clean, it only smells like the floor cleaner in there. The only things that aren’t back in there are the shoe stray and the door mat.  I am really afraid the source is the door mat, because that would be the hardest to clean.  It is also most likely what Frankie would have gone on, if she wanted to go outside and the door was closed. So, we will bring the shoe tray in and see if the smell comes back.  If it doesn’t, then we will know, and that will be the end of THAT door mat!

Other than tearing one end of the house apart, cleaning it and putting it back together again, I haven’t done too much.

A got her brand new table saw this morning, she and her brother-in-law put it together, then she cleaned up the workshop, and now she is too tired to go play with it.  But it will be there for years to come, so I know she will use it a lot.

We did make a very special dump run/road trip – we took the kittens for a ride.  🙂  I know it sounds like a crazy cat lady thing to do, but I really want these kids to not be afraid of their crate and the car.  So to me, that means we take them out sometimes when they are not going to the vet. Today we decided to try it out. It was interesting – they both got into the crate with no trouble – no surprise, we leave it out all the time so they can use it for a bed (something we learned from Tuppence – we had to get the crate out days before we needed it – she hid when she heard it).  We all got in the car – me and the kids in back and drove the 5 miles to the dump.  Kids were fine – a little nervous, but not crying or terrified – just cautious about something new.  On the way home, A said “Open the door and see what they do” so I did.  It was too funny.  They carefully came out, and sat looking out the windows. Allie eventually went under the front seat, and then sat beside A for a few minutes.  Then, without any coaxing, as we turned in our road, they both came back and climbed in the crate. So I guess they are not yet traumatized by car rides.  We will keep up the experimenting, and maybe someday, we will be able to take them with us without listening to wailing and crying the way we had to with their old sisters.