Yesterday afternoon I felt icky and depressed. I had the urge to cry, for no good reason, which has rarely happened since I've been on Paxil. Well, unless I'm PMSing and thats a whole 'nother ball of wax. I think a big part of yesterday's pity-party was due to me comparing myself to others. I've come across some really cool new blogs and got into that negative mind set of "I suck. I can't write. Other peoples' lives are way cooler than mine." Going home and getting lots of hugs from hubby helped me to get back into a better perspective. I own my life and it's not bad. My life is what it is because of the choices I've made, which I think have been some damn good ones. I have a loving hubby, great furry buddies, health, a home, a job that I like, family, friends... I really don't have anything to feel bad about.


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Portia's post yesterday about the mysterious stench cracked me up. I can so relate. Except my crawling around and sniffing is usually in order to detect cat piss. One of the little stinkers started spraying at our old place, which came as no real surprise since several other animals lived there previously, the previous tenants didn't seem much into cleaning, and we had stray toms that liked to come around and stink up the outside with eau de chat piss. I finally invested in a blacklight to help locate the offending locations. (Yes, cat urine glows under a blacklight, as do other bodily fluids. I'm afraid to get anywhere near a hotel room with it. I already feel skeeved enough by hotels. Lalalala I don't want to know.) When we moved into the new house, we invested in these, which worked for about 6 months, then the little shit decided to start spraying again. Luckily it's been limited (so far), and the enzymatic cleaner works well enough that human noses can't detect the piss locations.

The other night I noticed that the part of the slipcover at cat-butt height, on our cat-tattered chair smelled like pee. (Shhh...don't tell hubby, he doesn't know about this and I'm going to covertly wash the slipcover this weekend.) How did I happen to be at cat-butt height in the first place? Well, let me tell you....One of the other cats was acting strange. She was frantically meowing, so at first I thought she was just jonesing for some whipped cream. She's an addict. I soon realized that the meowing was much more frantic than normal and I swear she was trying to get my attention. I followed her into the bathroom and shut the door to keep the nosy dog out. She was still meowing frantically. I sat on the floor to pet her and calm her when I noticed a distinct poop odor. I turned her around figuring she had a dingleberry...the cats really freak out when that happens. No dingleberry, but a turd she had tried to poop out that was still stuck inside...a turtlehead, if you will. I started panicking and thinking "Oh shit (no pun intended) she's impacted and needs to go to the vet." Reason kicked in and I picked her up and carried her to the litter box room. I sat with her on the floor, she hopped in the litterbox, and successfully pooped. No more distressed kitty! Sitting there by the chair was when I noticed the cat piss smell. So now you know. At least I'm not the only one with funky cat stories.