I have a pretty strong stomach, stronger than most, I'd say.  I've changed some nasty baby and toddler diapers, picked up and cleaned up animal waste, seen and dealt with all kinds of vomit, both from kids and grown-ups,  and regularly go into nursing homes and hospitals to sit with and care for people who have lost control of their bodily functions.  In other words, it takes a lot to make me gag.

However, there are still some smells that cause me to gag.  The last time I gagged over a smell it was when Henry, my dachshund, had rolled in a liquifying mole that had died in a leaf pile in my yard.  It was nasty, so nasty that it took a 12 hour soak in straight-up, undiluted pine-sol to get the smell out of his harness, and 3 baths to get the smell out of his coat.

Today, I had the dubious pleasure of finding ANOTHER smell that makes me gag.  Actually, this one made me vurp a bit - that's throw up in your mouth, for those not in the know.

Digested cat shit.  Yep, that got me heaving.  Grace, our boxer-dawg, will go get hot snacks out of the litter box if she's given a chance.  We solve the problem by scooping the poop and not giving Grace unattended access to said litter box.  However, there was a short amount of time this afternoon where I was cleaning the bathroom and Grace wasn't standing there watching me.  I wondered where she'd gone, and really should have gone and found her....but the thrill of a clean tub was too much for me to resist, so I kept on scrubbing.

When I was done, I let myself out the front door and took a rest on the park bench in the front yard.  I didn't venture into the living room, or I'm sure I'd have smelled what Grace had been up to.  My son was the one who alerted me to the problem when he came home from school.

Grace had eaten cat shit some time earlier today (I guess we missed a turd) and had, after digesting it for a few hours, thrown it up on my beige shag rug in the living room. 

Now, I don't know if any of you have ever smelt digested cat poo, but let me tell you that it's worse than death and decaying things.  Much worse.  The smell hit me when I was about 6' away from it, but what made me gag was having to get down on my hands and knees with my Green Machine and try to scrub it out of the shag carpeting.  That's what caused me to vurp.  I had to get up and walk away from it, and when I went back to it I had to pull my T-shirt up over my nose and mouth to try and diffuse the smell somewhat.  It kinda worked - instead of digested cat shit straight up I got digested cat shit and Victoria's Secret Amber Romance body spray mingled together.  Ick.

The good news is the stain has come out of the carpet.  The bad news is that it still smells faintly.  I'm going to let it dry a bit and then go try some diluted white vinegar on it to see if that helps.  The vinegar-y smell will go away as it dries, and I'm hoping that the acidic vinegar will cause some kind of chemical reaction and make the smell go away.  (I've tried Febreze on things similar to this before, and it hasn't worked well - so I'm not even going to TRY it on this.)

Suddenly, I'm not hungry for supper any more.....