The nose knows when it comes to cats

I don’t know how to say this without offending lots of people. One of them is my wife.

She’s going to blow her top when she reads this, because she owned a cat when I met her. Actually two cats. Simultaneously.

Here is some news for cat owners. After being in your home for 10 seconds, I can tell if you own an indoor cat because it smells like a house where a cat lives!

Oh, I have been fooled in homes with outdoor cats, that is, cats that sleep and do other “things” outside. I recently discovered that my own sister had let a cat enter her house.

Visiting her home, I was surprised to see some matted hair on the sofa cushion.

“Sis, you takin’ radiation treatments?” I asked while holding up a bit of fur.

“It’s the cat’s hair, you boob” (an endearing term she has applied to me since childhood).

“I don’t smell a cat.”

“Snowball stays outdoors most the time, but I’ll bring him in the house, and you can smell him where the other cats smell him.”

Her caustic remark didn’t shake my belief that I knew what I was talking about. After all, I grew up in a home where two felines were lodged.

Somewhere in my youth, my parents transformed our cats from “outdoor” to “indoor.” I didn’t notice the smell because I lived in it, in much the same way people who work at a paper mill do not notice the odor.

I visited the old home place recently and chatted Mom up as she worked on a 70 million piece jigsaw puzzle.

“Hey, Ma, why’d you and Pa bring the cats indoors?”

“‘Cause it gets cold outside, ya boob.” (See how family nicknames catch on.)

“But they make your house smell funny.”

“We need something funny around here.”

“Huh?” I responded. Apparently this cat coddling has a hereditary aspect. My two adult daughters are still bitter because they were denied the fundamental human right of growing up in a home with the companionship (and smell) of a house cat.

A few years ago, I invited the two darlings over to my apartment during the Christmas season.

They were late arriving. I asked why they didn’t follow my directions.

“We just followed our noses,” one daughter said as she rolled her eyes.

“You followed your nose. Whassat mean?”

“Garlic,” the other daughter answered. “We knew the smell had to be coming from your apartment.”

“Yup, we both stood outside your door and said ‘Mmm, wonder who lives here?’ ” Then the girls high-fived each other and emitted cruel laughter.

“Huh?”

“Your apartment smells like a Dumpster behind an Italian restaurant,” first daughter attacked.

“Dad, fire up a couple of hundred of those scented candles,” barked the second daughter.

I sniffed. I do favor garlic but hadn’t cooked with it for at least 12 hours. I didn’t smell garlic but I smelled a rat. Or rather a cat.

“This assault on me doesn’t have anything to do with old grudges held by two sisters who didn’t have a kitty cat when they were children?”

“A cat would certainly help with that garlic smell,” the older sister taunted.

Maybe you cat owners, like my daughters, feel that all smells are equal and that one smell is as good as another. Well, then, go ahead and buy the kind of cat litter that claims to get sweeter smelling each time the cat uses the box. Ha, ha!

Then permeate your house with a thick fog of room freshener. And when the room freshener settles, light up those scented candles and breathe deep while you vacuum up the mounds of cat wool stuck to everything.

But don’t blame me because your house still smells. I’m just telling the truth that others dare not say.

And if I get sent to the doghouse because of it, at least the smell there will be better.