I knew we were in trouble when the owner of a cute little house for rent blocked the door for a moment as we approached. "You have to have vision," he told us. When you are house hunting, the last thing you want to hear is that you need to have vision. Well, I suppose the last thing you'd want to hear is the pitter patter of little mouse feet in the attic, but if it's a house that requires vision, it generally requires olfactory vision in addition to good eyesight, which means there's a cat in residence, which, at least, takes care of the mouse problem.
Actually, I once knew somebody who thought cats belonged in the microwave (on the highest cook level), but then again that same person would have liked to see me take a spin in a metal box full of electromagnetic radiation, so I view his position as a bit extreme. I am not a big fan of cats, and have yet to see any evidence that there is a cat out there who acts like a dog, and anyway if you want your cat to act like a dog why not get a dog? It's like frogs' legs. Word has it they taste like chicken. Seems to me there's really no reason to go with frog, unless the world has suddenly run out of chickens.
But back to cats. The bad thing about cats -- other than the bitchiness, the sneakiness, and the propensity to scratch someone's eyes out if given half the chance -- is the litter box. Cats are ironic little creatures; they are too haughty to pee outside, yet think it perfectly acceptable to pee in an excrement-filled box inside the house and never bother to flush. Classy, very classy. And, as is usually the case, folks get used to anything, which is why people who live with cats and their litter boxes seem to have no clue that walking into their home is as much an assault to the senses as descending into a New York City subway station. Like falling face first into a urinal.
So, no matter how much of a visionary you are, no matter how adept your senses are at thinking and sniffing outside the (litter) box, once there's been a cat in residence, the odor is there to stay. It permeates the walls, seeps through the suspiciously pee-stained carpet (could the cat have done that, or was it the humans?) into the grains of the polished wood floors they assure you are beneath the rug. A house is a cat's world. The world is a cat's urinal. Do the math. Even with the real estate market picking up, nobody wants to sink a big chunk of change into a urinal.
When I was getting our house ready for sale, I was not exactly receptive to my broker's suggestions about sprucing. As far as I was concerned, if folks couldn't see past a few chinks in the armor of a home that had been lived in for nineteen years, then they didn't deserve to live, at least not in my house. In a rare moment of conciliation, I deferred to her on an emergency paint job in my master bathroom. As it turns out, I should not have folded; the offer from the family who had seen the house a day earlier came in as the paint was being applied. Neither the walls nor the ink on my check had a chance to dry, and once again I had thrown good money after bad -- something I had promised myself I would never again do after dealing with divorce attorneys for almost three years. As it turns out, even ordinary folks can have enough vision to realize that peach colored walls are like hair: the normal color will grow back.
Smells, though, are different. If it smells bad, it is bad. Somebody told me that, once. Smells are insidious, they permeate the nostrils, stay with you pretty much forever. No amount of vision -- olfactory or otherwise -- can erase a nasty stench. It's why people who know stuff will always tell you to follow your nose. It's the best way to move forward, to find what you're really searching for.
I took a deep breath when we emerged from the cute little house that smelled like cat pee. I may not be much of a visionary, but I could definitely envision myself living somewhere else. I'll just have to see where my nose takes me.
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