If you were a fan of Friends, you may remember Phoebe’s song called “Smelly Cat”. The lyrics went something like this:
Smelly cat, smelly cat… what are they feeding you? Smelly cat, smelly ca-at, it’s not your fault!
And hoo boy, did we have some smelly cats at the cats-only boarding facility over the Memorial Day weekend! But just like there are lots of different personalities in our guests, there are lots of different smells.
- Some cats have food that smells awful. We have one guest (who I adore) who eats the grossest-looking and smelling food. I swear, it looks like a can of eyeballs, all gooey and weird.
- Some cats have the stinkiest litter boxes. In fact, we tend to rate them as compared to some of the worst offenders. “Oh, this one is almost as bad as B’s box!” With some cats, you don’t need to look in the box to know it needs changing — the cloud of stink crosses the room to get you.
- Some cats have awful breath. I love cats who will rub their faces against mine, but some days, the cat food breath is worse than others.
- Some cats have grooming issues. We’ve had guests who were too large to clean themselves… and who needed some help from time to time. We keep waterless shampoo on hand for small messes, and have a grooming sink for all-over messes. Other guests may be too sick or in pain to clean themselves.
And there are some cats that are just dirty, I guess. We had a pair of guests over the weekend who smelled so bad that we had to put them into an isolation ward — just to keep the whole place from smelling. These poor cats were matted all over, with terrible dandruff. Matting can make it hard for a cat to groom — the mats pull the skin (it probably hurts) or just make it tough to access certain spots.
I’ve only ever lived with dogs, but I know from my own pets that there are some that just smell worse than others. My Lally is a relatively clean, decent-smelling dog. My dog Miko was not… he needed a bath every month or he’d get stinky. His coat would get oily and he would start to get dandruff flakes. Yuck! He was a smelly dog, for sure, but I loved him anyway.