February 15, 2006

Searching

Tonight I turned off all the lights in the house and then crawled around in the darkness with a handheld black light, searching for mysterious markings on the carpet. I held the black light up, waved it one way and then the other, and watched as a spot appeared near the corner of the couch, a spot that would have been invisible in the day time. How magical black light can be, making things appear before our very eyes.

Of course, if you are someone who owns cats, you know that what I was doing was far less romantic than it sounds. Yes, you guessed it. I was searching for dried spots of cat urine so that I could treat the spots on the carpet with Urine-off so that our house won't smell like cat pee when the humid weather returns in the spring.

The funny thing is that I get a certain amount of enjoyment out of a task like this. I mean, the black light does make the task easy. It is satisfying to find those spots and scrub them out. I was thinking tonight that I wish I had a black light I could wave over myself during times of intense introspection. A black light that would highlight my faults, my issues, my weak spots. So that I could just treat the spots, douse them, scrub them, be done with them for once and for all. Do they make Urine-off for the soul?

23 comments:

Suzanne said...

That sounds like a marvelous invention. I'd especially like to use it not just on myself but also on others around me who are not so adept at expressing their emotions.

Anonymous said...

Ah, but then I would just question the blacklight/Urine-off. I'd be thinking: "Really? It doesn't seem that way to me. I don't smell anything here..."

What I need is the two-by-four for the soul.

The glow-in-the-darkness quality of cat urine was unknown to me until it showed up on my son's "Fact or Crap" calendar this week.

bridgett said...

We'd be a lot less likely to piss on one another if there was such a thing.

Anonymous said...

I always wondered if those things worked---they do? (on cat pee that is?)

jo(e) said...

PPB: Yes, if you have a black light, it will locate the cat pee stains for you. And of course, it's great for those dance parties too ....

J. said...

On urine: You are brave to search out such things in your space. If I took a blacklight to my carpet, I'd probably just move.

On soul scrubbing: Your "faults", "issues", and "weak spots" may be your charm, quirks, and lovable traits to someone else. Why wipe those away? Like cat pee, I think it's just good to know the location of those spots.

jo(e) said...

J. -- I like your way of thinking.

Psycho Kitty said...

Okay, that's the book title:
Urine-off for the Soul.

reverendmother said...

Does the Urine-off really work? We've got one troublesome spot in our house, and Nature's Miracle is less than miraculous.

Anonymous said...

The urine-off for the soul sounds great, although I suspect I'd see the cats of the soul returning to the scene of the spot to re-mark it. In the long run I can get the marking reduced, I hope.

For reverendmother, the original Nature's Miracle people sold the name but not the formula. They now sell the original formula under the Petastic name. Supposed to be much better than the current NM, but it's also harder to find. I'm more educated about dog urine than cat urine, so your mileage may vary.

Yankee, Transferred said...

I can hear it now, psycho kitty's new series: Urine-off for the teacher's soul, the teenage soul, etc.etc.

Your soul is fabulous. No anything-off needed.

jo(e) said...

Reverendmother: Yes, it does seem to work. I buy it in the gallon size so that I can really soak the carpet all the way through to the padding. Then I set an electric fan near the spot so that it will dry thoroughly. For the first couple of hours before it dries, the smell of the Urine-off is dreadful (I am just really sensitive to smells of any kind), but once it dries all the way through, then the problem is solved.

Mrs. Coulter said...

OK, I need one of those blacklight thingies. No disco parties around here, but plenty of freakin' cat pee.

I do not want a black light shone on my soul. I'm afraid of what I'd see.

halloweenlover said...

Hmmm, do you think it works on dog pee? I'm traumatized that there might be pee I don't know about.

I'm buying Urine-off this weekend.

The notion of Urine-off for the soul is intriguing. Since it removes all remnants, it would mean we'd be less likely to soil the same spot. Right?

jo(e) said...

Halloweenlover: Well, I guess we'd have to figure out why we were peeing over in that corner in the first place.

Bad Alice said...

I wouldn't dare take a black light to our sofa. Ugh. Oxy-clean worked for me, I guess because it's an enzymatic cleaner.

Still better to use a black light to search for urine than for bark scorpions. Shudder.

Mona Buonanotte said...

Note to self: buy a handheld black light. So THAT'S why the basement stinks of cat pee!

Sfrajett said...

Love it! Though it made me worry: what if I tried to scrub all the cat pee off my soul's carpet, and the cat pee WAS the carpet?

listie said...

I'll have to try that stuff on a couple of trouble spots. Now if I could just find something that would take the cat puke stains out; I'm tired of buying carpet to match the color of cat vomit.

HeyJules said...

Great post, Jo(e). I agree with Bridget...we WOULD be less likely to piss all over each other!

Rana said...

Urine-off is AWESOME. It really does work -- I put it to the test on wood furniture that had been peed on for _years_ and it's no longer stinky! Yay!

It does work on all kinds of pee; the site that sells it says that realtors buy it in bulk to clean up skanky houses, and one of the people endorsing it raises wild cats (like the big kind). If it's an old, deep, stain, it will probably take repeated soakings, but once it's gone, it's gone. :)

Anonymous said...

Jo(e), I love this post! Thanks!!

curious said...

Does it make it so the pee is no longer visiable to the black light?