By Victor Greto
The house started to smell the day I returned from a weekend conference.
And I just knew – like all men know who dread these things – that my manhood would be tested.
See, when you own a house, so many things can go wrong. And when you’re the absolute opposite of a handyman and you’re the only one living there, you’re screwed.
Like any normal no-can-do, I’d-rather-read type of person, I ignored the growing acrid smell the first day, figuring, well, it’s the garbage or something and the next morning was trash day and I’d take it out that night and by morning it would be cool.
Nope.
Of course, I – and just about everyone else I know – is cursed with “sensory adaptation,” which means that we get used to smells quickly and, after a few minutes, it’s like it’s not even there.
This explains so much about body odor in everyday life, including the dude in the elevator who hasn’t a clue he smells like something the cat dragged in.
Keep this cliché in mind as I continue.
The following morning, as I made my coffee, I couldn’t smell it, breathed a sigh of relief, went out for a bit, came back and – well, when I breathed again, it was with no relief.
I called my older brother, who had dealt with these sorts of things before. Dude, I asked him, what exactly does a dead animal smell like?
He came by and we looked in my dank, crumbling cellar, saw nothing and assumed the worst in this instance: something (mouse? squirrel?) got caught in a crawlspace, with which my disgusting cellar is, well, crawling.
The next day even my sensory adaptation was starting to go on the fritz (another clue, dear reader).
I called yet another brother and told him, Dude, it’s getting worse. He came over and he went down the cellar and I started to go down behind him and – wow. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, to the left of the stairs, by a white brick column in front of the heater.
A dead cat.
I’m going to say just one thing in my defense, as I admit I’m a sissy about this sort of thing: I didn’t grow up with animals in the house, and I never liked them inside a front or back door. Out in nature, they’re great, aren’t they? In the house? I’ll pass.
Now, this other, younger brother is like me in this at least. There was no way either of us was going to get a shovel and a trash bag, lift the nasty, furry carcass up, and slide it into the bag.
Writing this fantasy scenario even now gives me the willies (do people still say this?). My brother and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
I called Animal Control, and they said they’d be happy to do it for a measly $35. A steal, as far as I and my brother were concerned.
My brother left, and I waited, and this is the part of the story where the universe, more often than not indifferent as hell to me and my circumstances, decided to have a laugh.
The animal control person was a woman, and much younger than my aging self.
“Oh,” I said. “To top it off, you’re a chick.” She smiled.
So she goes down from the outside, and I hear her below, in jest, “Here, kitty-kitty!”
I go out back, and there she is, walking toward her van and holding the dead feline by the back paws, its poor body swaying in the chilly air, its acrid odor trailing behind it.
“Thanks,” I said, my head down.
She waved her hand, dismissing me, and smiled.
I could have sworn I heard the universe giggle along with her.