Tessa has a perfectly lovely cat named Millie. We have a mostly lovely cat named Apollo. Well, Apollo is technically Tayden’s cat, but he has lived with us his whole life, so he doubles as the family cat. Apollo is only mostly okay because, while he is fine with humans of all sizes, he is a jerk to other animals. Those other animals include Millie. Since Tessa is still in school, Millie has lived with us from time to time. Apollo doesn’t like that. He is perfectly happy to be an only pet, now that the dogs and Taryn’s cat are gone. So, Apollo makes Millie’s life difficult. In exchange, Millie started using our basement couch to pee. Since we don’t use that couch with regularity, it took a bit of time to figure it out. At some point, the smell was too strong, and I hunted it down. You would think it would be obvious, but since she was pooping in the litter box, there was nothing to see. I had heard that once a cat chooses to pee on a piece of furniture, they won’t stop. That has definitely been our experience. 

Now, the very few times Millie comes to stay with us, she stays in the upstairs bathroom, which we make comfortable with a cat tree, toys, cat beds, and her OWN litter box, which Tessa brings with her from school. There is a window with a ledge in there that looks out over a tree that birds love, so it’s like cat TV. It’s not the best situation, but it works okay for short periods of time. 

So, what to do with that couch. I treated it with some enzyme stuff. I treated it with lots of stuff really. I actually just took the lids off and poured the enzyme stuff on the couch, waterfall style. Nothing worked. Instead, the couch felt tacky from all the treatment, but still carried residual smell. So, we covered it and continued to use it… the few times that we actually used it. But, the smell, while reduced, was still there. And once you smell it, you will always smell it. It’s like my nose hunts it out. Travis has said to pitch it for a while, but the couch looks new. To be honest, it was pretty uncomfortable, but functional when needed. I was struggling with tossing it. So, once in a while, I would go on a frenzied attempt to, once again, eliminate the smell, completely ignoring that the couch had a stickiness to it. 

This past weekend, I ended up in Homenclature, looking for chairs for my sister. While Debbie didn’t find her elusive chairs, I did. And I bought them. Well, I bought the one that they had on the floor, and ordered a second. Poor Debbie had to transport the chair in her SUV (Bert is down, waiting for new front wheel bearings) and wrangle the chair into my basement. She got to experience Big Green, the riding mower, hauling the chair around the back of the house. We had to take the legs off to fit it through the door, even though the chair isn’t that tall. I didn’t make her remove the cat pee couch, although she offered. That was just a bit too much punishment in one day. On Friday, she helped me batter fish at the school fish fry. How much payment must one make to stay at my house? She was here to watch her granddaughter, Claire, swim in the Illinois state meet, which is oddly held in Indiana. We have more natatoriums, so they are priced more competitively. Hence, the Illinois state swim meet is mostly held in Indiana, close to the border.

Trav and I put that couch on the curb with a sign that read, “Cat PEED all over couch.” Someone still took that couch! On our busy road, decent stuff is usually gone in an hour. This time, it took 24 hours. So, if you see this couch at a garage sale, avoid! We thought about moving the couch to our garage and then moving it down the impressive driveway on trash day to avoid someone taking it, but how many times must we handle that couch. And it was already on the trailer of Big Green. So, it went down. And now it’s in someone’s garage. But I warned them. 

Have a great week everyone!!