Can I just be honest with you?
A smell, particularly a bad one, can upset an entire day. For a while, I thought we had opened a musty old suitcase. Certainly that wouldn't last a week, would it? The 16 year-old says, I think it is the pipes under the sink in the bathroom.
Then, I panic. All that money to finish the basement and a crazy awful smell moves in?
It drove me crazy trying to figure it out. What died in our basement???
Any number of micey-things have tried to move in with us. Maybe one of them got behind one of my beautiful walls and gave up the ghost!! Maybe the cat got a hold of a little mouse thing and is keeping it for a rainy day, somewhere....
Around the basement I crawled. ---We spent the extra on better padding and let me tell you, it's worth the money if you ever need new carpet!!! We don't have the good paddin upstairs and it is not as nice on your feet. Or knees, if you happen to be crawling.---
The smell changes as I look for it. Maybe not death, but mold??!! It was about now I began to freak out. I mean, have you watched TV?? Mold can kill you. It takes over your house and kills you slowly. "Long strings of black mold", John Stoessel reported, "have driven these homeowners into a Holiday Inn Express...."
I can't have mold. The basement was just finished! It cost us a mint! Now it's moldy? Thoughts of us running away from swampy moldy creatures rush thru my head as I crawl on my hands and knees, nose to the ground.
Both dogs are following me.
I tell the smart dog to FIND IT. She runs into the bathroom and brings back the bath mat. There are blue fumes coming from the bathmat. It is glowing, a little bit, I think. Then, the thought, (along with the smell), hits me.
The bathmat is stinking up my house.
The dog drops the bathmat in front of me and I rush it upstairs, holding my nose the whole time. The dog thinks it's a party and starts barking madly, dancing on her hind legs, trying to take back the offensive bathmat.
I have never used the hot cycle on my washer, before today, but I turned it on hot and threw the bathmat in.
I closed the washer and backed out of the laundry room, slamming the door. The dogs are there, eyes shining, enjoying the game.
"You know what I think," I tell the dogs, "I think the cat has been peeing on the bathmat."
The dogs just want to know if we will go back to sniffing the floor in the basement.
When I realized the cat has been peeing on the bathmat, I was kinda happy.
Cat pee is better than black mold swamp creatures. Way better than defective plumbing!! I almost found myself extolling the virtues of cat pee to the dogs as I bleached the floor and cleaned the toilet and shower.
Mysteriously, the cat never showed herself this whole time. Why she would start peeing on that thing now, I can only guess. Cass is not taking good care of the litter box. I am going to have to have a talk with her.