The Case Of The Not-Cat

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Last Friday, as we were gearing up for Two-wedding weekend, the hubs and I found ourselves in a bit of a flurry. There were treats to craft, presents to prepare, chores to be done, rifle kids to coach, schoolwork to do, moody teenagers to console and counsel, and about eleventy billion other things.

By the time that I crashed into bed at about ten that night, I remember thinking, Well, at least I'll get a good night's sleep before it all goes down.

I hate it when I curse myself.

My hubs stays up late playing The Division 2 or Diablo 4 with his game pals, and a lot of the time he doesn't meander into bed until 1 or 2 AM. He hardly ever wakes me up because I sleep like a gothic tragedy corpse and he's a courteous soul.

Well, I was a little startled at 12:49 AM when he roused me and said, "Can you come smell this?"

We are not a family who engages in the fine play art of, Whoever smelt it dealt it so I was more than a touch concerned and most intrigued.

The intrigue evaporated into disgust and despair as soon as I stepped out of my room and into the wall of scent that almost knocked me prone.

In front of me was my daughter's dog, Lani, AKA Flabbins.

She was wearing a look of shame and regret, and my nose detected why.

Lani had met her first skunk.

In the over two decades I have lived on this farm, we have had loads of wild animals visit, but we have never had a skunk, mainly because there is no dang water around here.

But the scent that hit my nostrils was most definitely Le Pew in origin, and the agonized sigh that emitted from my already over taxed carcass was pretty ragged.

As it was almost one in the morning, I put Flabs in the school room and returned to sleep. A few hours later, I rose, got a bucket, mixed up a paste of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap, grabbed Flabs out of the school room, and proceeded to apply the paste most thoroughly to the poor creature as we both stood shivering out in my driveway.

After thoroughly scrubbing in the paste and letting it set a spell, I took Flabs to our shower. I have a massive, handicap accessible, walk-in tile shower, complete with a handheld shower head and grab bars. These features are very handy when one has to clean a post skunk spray canine.

I lashed the Laners to the grab bars and proceeded to spend a good twenty minutes scrubbing, rinsing, and repeating the 60 pound hound.

I also might have cooed words of soothing to the big beastie, I mean, she probably thought the skunk was a cat and ran up to greet it.

Now she knows, there are Not-cats out there.

While I was cleansing the unclean, the hubs mopped and scrubbed the house. Even though we got her out of the place quickly, a foul odor lingered. I mean, of course it did, we had 60 people coming to our place in less than 36 hours, of course a skunk showed up.

Thankfully, all of our cleaning ministrations were successful, and the skunk stayed away until after the wedding. Yes, the little stink bomb drifted through the farm, unseen of course, but left its tell tale calling card of scented eww behind. I was just thankful because it was before and after the blessed festivities, and honestly, I have just come to accept that my life is always going to be a bit of an adventure...

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's not now nor will ever be in skunk-scent iPhone.

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