Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Smell (the sense of smell) (07/29/10)
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TITLE: Smoke Alarm | Previous Challenge Entry
By Yvonne Leigh
08/05/10 -
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Curled in her sleeping position in the best chair in the living room lies the focal point of my house. Leisure moments are spent asserting authority between our feline denizen and my husband over the chair. He refuses to allow her to win the battle, and I come to her rescue by preparing her a nest somewhere else. Usually the substitute nest is satisfactory until he gets out of the chair to get a cup of coffee or some other errand. Sleeping with one eye open is aptly called a cat nap.
She came into the family when I was 42 years old and now I am 66, making her, according to cat year count, 140. She doesn’t hold her tail erect as often as she did when she was young, and the large eyes she inherited from her peke-faced, Persian grandmother have a cataract glaze on them. Her hearing is failing, and the long grey tabby fur is scruffy and occasionally knotty. To accommodate the sparseness of her teeth, I mix baby food meats with her canned cat food. Old and still loved, she has been with me during the meatiest portion of my life. Together, we’ve reached our senior years and I have become care giver to an elder cat. Making the picture complete, she is not able to defend herself against the dangers so she no longer goes outside. Here’s where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
Living with a litter box in the house deadens the sense of smell and visitors can be knocked off their feet if you don’t keep watch over it. Continuous proximity to offensive odors creates an immunity to them and, apart from barring the door to guests, you have to be as busy as the cat is to defunk the house. Multiple products for filling the litter box makes the job easier, but they don’t operate themselves, unless you get that expensive electric box, and I didn’t. It’s up to the litter box master to get the dirty work done. Since the nose is not reliable under the circumstances, judging the box by the contents is the first priority. I hide the fact that a certain stainless steel kitchen tool works better than the flimsy plastic thing that somebody designed for the clump removal part of the job. Occasionally that fails when things get busy, so I devised a fail-safe tactic. Installing a smoke alarm nearby serves as a smell warning. When the smoke alarm over the litter box goes off, the litter box is past its prime.
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Really sensed your affection here and know you have to be a special person. Blessings. :)