I have no idea how this happened. It's not like we have a cat. It's not like I go around making cats pee on my walking shoes. But yet, here they are, reeking of urine. Cat urine. Ewww. I even washed them, hoping to get the horrible stench out. This afternoon I learned that it didn't work.
I noticed a little bit of a funk when I picked them up from their drying position in front of the baseboard heater, but I wasn't too concerned. I was more worried about getting them ready to wear--my poor old clogs were in need of a break, and honestly, sometimes a girl just wants her sneakers. I tossed them in the dryer and hoped for the best.
I don't know what it is about our dryer, but it hates drying tennis shoes. Who knew? Apparently there's a sensor that makes the dryer turn off when it believes all the items are dry. It's a safety feature designed to prevent fires. Or maybe to drive the desperate owners of wet sneakers crazy as they run up and down the stairs, starting and restarting the damn machine. I'd hear the tell-tale thumping of drying shoes stop, and then race downstairs, eagerly throw open the dryer door and breathe in a good long whiff of hot cat pee. Refreshing. And disappointing for many reasons, not least that the shoes were still clammy and I had only twenty-five minutes left before I needed to run out the door.
More serious measures were definitely in order. I went for two stand-bys: tea tree oil and the oven. Nothing dries things faster than a few minutes in a 250 degree oven, right? And nothing wipes out bad smells like a dash of tea tree oil.
I suppose I'm just lucky the damn things didn't melt or catch on fire. With three minutes left to go, I pulled them, steaming, from the oven. They were still soggy. And now the unmistakable aromas of cat piss AND tea tree oil billowed out of the oven.
And I thought cat pee smelled bad.
I crammed my feet into my still-damp Danskos and jogged outside. I had only two hopes as I hurried to pick up The Midget from her playdate. First, that the smell hadn't clung to me. And second: that I could score an invitation to dinner. How would we be able to eat in a house that stank like ours?
2 comments:
I hear stuffing them with cheese and leaving them in the sun for a couple of days works. Try that.
First; get some good boiling water going (but only if your shoes wont melt from it, they oughta be fine), pour it on them, then remove your insouls and put 'em through the wash. pack your shoes with baking soda (and pat down the outside) and dry them quickly, probably with a hairdryer or something similar. You might have to repeat one more time.
--Jak
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