Ring of Feces

Going into this, I knew the 500 sf apartment was going to be cozy, but one thing I wasn’t prepared for was being woken up in the middle of the night by the smell of cat shit. I mean, literally, my olfactory nerve was so assaulted that it stirred me from my sound sleep in order to dispose of the still steaming pile of turds in the litter box. Laying there, trying to go back to sleep, it occurred to me that provided I don’t die, my time over the next few weeks and months until I find actual employment recognized by the IRS will only truly be productive if I team up with the wife to publish a study in the New England Journal of Medicine to prove that the root cause of sleep apnea is the brain making the Kevorkian decision to close off the air passage and risk death rather than allow anymore cat-shit-infested air into the lungs.  Of course, in order to prove this I’m going to need to do extensive research to make sure CSI hasn’t already done this in one of their episodes:

Grissom: “What’s the cause of death, doc?”

Dr. Robbins: “Well, Griss, the autopsy is clear, this was death by asphyxiation.”

Grissom: “So we have a homicide on our hands…”

Dr. Robbins: “Not so fast. I found trace amounts of an odd substance lining the alveoli’s in the lungs. I sent a sample over to Hodges in the lab.”

Grissom: “And???”

Dr Robbins: “Felis Catus Faeces*.”

Grissom: “Huh???”

Dr. Robbins: “Cat shit…”

Grissom: “Cat shit!?!”

Dr. Robbins: “Indeed, cat shit. It would appear the victim died in his sleep. The smell must have been so repugnant the air passage chose to close itself off, voluntarily suffocating him. So unless you can determine a motive for Sprocket the Cat**, this is a case of subconscious suicide…”

After I publish that study, I’m going to petition ASHRAE to add specific requirements for the amount of CFM to be exhausted from a bedroom if there is a litter box within 50’. I think 2000 CFM would suffice***.

 

 

 

*Further proof that Wikepedia is the greatest invention since the bidet: I wanted to look up a more professional sounding word than ‘feces’ and came across this interesting little tidbit: “Due to the nature of feces, several synonyms have developed. Of these, some are generally used as profanity (such as shit and crap) while others have been deemed inoffensive (such as poo, poop, and dookie). Other terms (such as dung) are normally used for animal feces rather than human feces.” That sounds like something I’d write.

**I didn’t make up the name “Sprocket,” it was the actual name of a cat we saw in one of the houses we toured. Personally I would have named it “Vaseline” because its fur was all gross and mangy like it’d just taken a bath in petroleum jelly or something. I’ll have more on the relationship between pets and looking for a new house later. 

***For the none-mechanical engineers, I need to explain this joke, which incidentally is always the sign of a great joke – having to explain its humor: ASHRAE is an organization that has essentially written the code governing the heating and ventilating world. Part of the code sets minimum requirements for the amount of fresh air that’s required to prevent the air in the room from getting contaminated. In relative terms, public and private restrooms are required to have 50 CFM of air for each toilet fixture, which is to say, Ed’s shit is roughly 40 times more toxic than a normal human’s. This is the part where you laugh.