More Frustration.

Today is Bagel Day (aka "payday"), so the Amazing Husbandini and I left the house early to go out for breakfast. After breakfast I lingered at the library and then wandered around Hobby Lobby for a while going, "I know I came in here for something, now what the hell was it?!" (An eraser for my design class, turned out.) Finally I headed home, unloaded all my stuff and went inside to see the kitties and indulge in a chapter or two of one of my new books before I had to get cracking on homework.

I sat down on the couch and got through about half a paragraph before I said to myself, "Self, why is our butt wet?"

Oh, joy ... somebody peed on the couch! (As an aside, I've had many reasons to regret buying this particular couch over the past 3 years, but I now have another one - the oft-touted non-absorbency of microfiber is a load of hooey.)

Who did it? Well, there's no way to know for sure. I strongly suspect Big Acoustic Kitty, since the couch has been his perch of choice since his recent re-discovery of the downstairs. However, it could have been either Big Yellow Hallway Monster or Electric Mayhem. (But my money is on BAK.)

Why did they do it? Again, there's no way to know for sure. In the past, inappropriate peeing of this nature has been due to BAK getting a little too much insulin. However, since he's currently off insulin, that can't be the case. Old age? Possible. BYHM or EM keeping him from the litter box? Possible ... and considering how much of an alpha pain in the ass BYHM has been lately, that's pretty much my guess.

So now what? I can't leave the house unless everyone is separated? Well, I guess so ... or at least I can't leave for more than a quick trip to the store unless BAK is upstairs.

And don't get me started about the couch. I've wiped it down with water and sprayed the beejeezus out of it with Nature's Miracle, but it's one of those poofy, over-stuffed recliner couches - I don't know how well it's going to clean up. Which means we'll be shopping for some new furniture, I guess. You know, we had come to the realization that the furniture in the family room is too big for the room, but this is not the way we wanted to fix the situation.

I'm starting to think seriously about running away from home.

3:20 p.m. addendum: It's now a couple of hours after the fact, and I've thought about it some more. This morning when I came downstairs, I noticed a distinct urine odor at the bottom of the stairs. I grabbed the StinkMaster 5000 and flashed it around, but nothing "came to light", as it were. I finally decided that someone had recently used the litterbox downstairs and that was the smell. However, I didn't sit on or otherwise examine the couch. It's possible that the couch-puddle occurred sometime after we took BAK up to bed last night. (I was sitting in that spot right before we took him up to bed ... and I know I'm not the one who did it.) So I'm not ruling out EM and BYHM after all.

And, I've found some super-cute 1930's-era armchairs on Craigslist that just need a little reupholstering ...