October 8, 2010

A Word to the Wise

If you find yourself dealing with kitty-piddle issues in your house, you will probably come across advice that suggests you invest in a black light** to more easily locate (and then eradicate) said kitty-piddle locations.

It's good advice. However ...

As someone who finds herself the owner of a 35+ year old house that was previously home to (at least) one aged cat and two elderly dogs, I must add a little something to the advice. My addendum is this: Before you shine that black light onto your walls and rather old carpet to check for the glowing yellow spots that mark previous "accidents", brace yourself with an adult beverage. Or two. And if you need to invest in a big box of those sterile bootie things before you can bring yourself to set foot on your carpet again, nobody will blame you. Least of all me.

Yikes!!!

I'll tell you one thing ... the "10-second rule" is now a thing of the past in our house. And new carpeting just leaped to the top of our to-do list.

*We've named ours the "StinkMaster 5000".

4 comments:

HubbleSpacePaws said...

LMAO!!

Precisely the reason I'm going Scandinavian after the remodel. Hardwood floors and washable (albeit at a commercial laundromat) area rugs.

Wish I'd read about the adult bev bracing before I fired up ye old black light back when Winnie had with her UTI issues. My old rug had to go. Then, when the new (cheap) rug fell victim to the basement flood, I just said to heck with it.

Marvelously descriptive post!

KittyChair Designs said...

I am 200% in favor of hardwood for the entire house now. With an extra-think layer of poly on top. Heck, at this point I'd even take a house full of cheap-o laminate. :-)

Anonymous said...

The MythBusters showed that you can get false positives on blacklight detection ... but all things considered you're probably safe to assume it's showing you where assorted critters have gone potty.

Leah

KittyChair Designs said...

We spent a couple of days trying to figure out what the long, thin, wobbly lines of bright yellow glow were ... surely one of the cats didn't just wander around the house, casually peeing? Then we decided it was from Big Acoustic Kitty scuttling through the upstairs, trailing ropes of drool after I'd given him his liquid pancreatitis meds. Now we can't decide if one scenario is better than the other. :-)