piss and vinegar
Friday morning as Jennifer was getting dressed for work she reached into a basket of supposedly clean laundry to get a pair of socks. You can imagine her displeasure when she found the contents of the basket to be damp and .... well .... befouled.
We both happened to be hanging around the general vicinity at the time, so Jennifer gave us an angry stare and asked which one of us was responsible for this offense. After receiving no reply, Jennifer turned to Shelby and said "I suspect you!"
Shelby's not owning up to anything, but Jennifer and Thalia both point out that we never had this problem before Shelby moved in. (Well, except that one time, but everyone agrees it was totally Jennifer's fault.) Jennifer's big concern is that she can't figure out why he does this. She knows that some cats are kind of picky about the cleanliness of their litter boxes, but Shelby's misbehavior doesn't seem to have any connection to how recently clean litter has been supplied. Jennifer's latest theory (and Thalia completely endorses this) is that Shelby the WonderCat is just kinda dim. He means to go in the appropriate place, but sometimes he just gets confused.
The other problem is getting the smell out of anything that Shelby has peed on. A few months ago Jennifer picked up a bag that she likes to use when traveling and discovered that it had been victimized. She has washed it, soaked it in every form of detergent she can think of, "Febreezed" it, and it still smells foul. At this point it has been relegated to the basement. But Jennifer wasn't thinking about this when she re-washed the laundry that had been peed upon. She just threw it in the washer w/hot water, some bleach and lots of detergent. Most of it came out smelling fine, but there were a few things that still reeked. Jennifer thinks these were the items directly hit.
Jennifer was pretty much resigned to just throwing away the stinky things, but first, she decided to check with the source of all wisdom in the modern world: Google. Not surprisingly there are a lot of people who have had this problem. There are several commercial products with silly names like "Icky-Poo-B-Gone" that apparently work. But then, she found a site with a much simpler solution. Soak the items in vinegar. Jennifer was a little doubtful, but figured it was worth a try. And, whatta ya know? It worked. Something about enzymes. Of course, then you have to get the vinegar smell out, but that's not nearly as difficult as getting the pee smell out.
Anyway. We're going to need a lot of vinegar to try this on the bag, but it worked great for the socks. Jennifer says this is not license for Shelby to go peeing on everything in sight, but it's good to know that if he does, she has a solution. And who knew vinegar could be so useful?
Well, probably a lot of people, but we sure didn't.