Domestic Disasters – The Comforter
It all started on Thursday evening about 9:30 p.m. I went into the bedroom and proceeded to hang up a small pile of clothes that was on the bed. It consisted of my bathrobe, A.’s raincoat, and the jeans that I had been wearing earlier in the day. I folded the jeans and put them in the closet.
I then picked up the raincoat and as I put it on the hanger I noticed that the sleeve was wet. This was interesting because it hadn’t rained at all that day. Suspicious, I brought the sleeve a little closer to my nose and discovered the distinctive scent of cat urine. Reluctantly I turned around and, as I feared, I was greeted by a large wet spot on the comforter.
Upon closer inspection, I realized that not only was my robe also damp, the jeans that I had just put into the closet (on top of all my other clean jeans) had not escaped a dousing either. It was nearly 10:00 p.m. and I had no choice but to do a load of laundry. I grumbled a lot because starting a load of laundry at 10:00 p.m. that will take two and half hours to wash is a pain when you want to go to bed around 11:00, but I could deal with that…
However, it gets better, because after all, this Germany and things are never as easy as they seem!
For you see I had no problem throwing the robe and the jeans in the dryer, but the comforter itself was another matter.
First of all let me mention that in general comforters here come as plain white comforters that you buy a sheet-like cover for. The cover can then be removed and washed. The actual comforter itself is seldom laundered in your own machine because it doesn’t really fit. For the most part, people appear to merely wash the comforter cover and periodically air the comforter-proper out.
The other oddity about German covers is that instead of one large comforter for a bed people typically have two smaller comforters (one for each person). Now of course A. and I do not have a “typical” German bedding set up. Instead of two comforters, we have one: A very large one and even if I wanted to I couldn’t fit it in my washing machine. Therefore when it needs cleaned it just gets a spot clean, a good spraying of Febreze, and aired out on the balcony.
Unfortunately for me the cat piss had not just soaked the comforter cover. It had also made its way down into the comforter, resulting in a rather large area in a rather inconvenient place.
Groaning loudly, I took the comforter cover, jeans, and robe down to the washing machine, added a double dose of laundry detergent, and the trudged back upstairs to deal with the real problem: How to get the cat piss out of the comforter.
Now as anyone who had cats knows, of all animal smells one of the most stubborn is that of male cat urine. Now, Scooter (we aren’t positive that it was him, but I have my own reasons for believing so) is neutered, so his urine doesn’t have the same pungent aroma as that of a male cat that has not been neutered, but it doesn’t exactly smell like roses either.
So the problem wasn’t merely figuring out a way to wash the cat pee out of the comforter, the most important thing was treating the area where it had been so that no trace of the smell lingered. Otherwise the chance that we would have a repeat performance in a few days was almost certain.
While I was doing the other laundry, A. had been researching treatments online and so we spent the next two hours or so blotting, soaking, and bleaching. We only soaked and bleached the area where the cat piss had been, but at 12:30 a.m. we got ready to got to bed the comforter was too wet to be put on the bed, so we spent the night under light summer blankets bundled up in sweat pants and cuddling all night, something we hadn’t done since we first got married.
Friday morning A. went to get the laundry from the dryer and after all that time it was still not dry. I found the fact that such a small load was still damp rather odd, but was in a hurry and didn’t stop to consider it. I spread everything out on the bed and Friday evening when we got home everything (including the comforter) was dry.
However, I was to learn on Saturday that I probably should have thought twice about the fact that my laundry wasn’t dry on Friday morning, because the domestic disasters were not yet at an end…
