What's that smell

Mark E Smith

Member
Messages
190
Location
Arkansas
OK little background info, we have cats and they go outside every day into a fenced in back yard through a doggy door. This normally works out well because I have sand pits the little furballs use them instead of the several litter boxes in the house. Well it's been raining a lot lately and the cats of course are not going out much, been noticing a bad smell and just assumed ok cats are using the litter boxes more and the litter we use, ain't doing the job, warning..don't just assume you know what a smell is...lol...any ways, yesterday while vacuuming near the pool table we found several maggots...umm...that is odd, but kinda passed it off, but very interesting, thought about it all night, really bugged me, where did them things come from, then while drinking morning cup of coffee, it hit me...I KNOW THAT SMELL....yep this morning we looked under the pool table where we had several boxes for the furballs to play with, inside one of the boxes...yep, dead squirrel...man don't know when it got brought in, don't know how long it's been there, but long enough to have maggots, only noticed the smell a few days, but blaming the kitty litter contributed to not finding it until today. Glad we found it, before our whole house ended up with an Exorcist type fly infestation.....lol...such is the life when you have cats, of course the trade off, no mice or bugs in the house, but I guess occasional dead critters do show up from time to time, you have to stay vigilant and for goodness sake .. if you smell some thing start searching immediately....lol
 
Last edited:
I love the smell of decomp in the morning!....well, maybe not so much. I remember my dad tearing out a section of kitchen ceiling tile and boosting me up into the attic crawl space to retrieve a critter that got into his poison baits and then managed to make it into the kid sized space to ripen. Good argument against using baits around the house.
 
A number of years back we lived in a suburb of Houston on the north side of Lake Houston. At the time we had 3 cats in the house who didn't have litter boxes in the house as they also had a doggy door and went outside for their business... they also brought animals into the house, only they seemed to like live ones... woke one night to a noise in the living room to find 3 cats chasing a live squirrel around the room... that house had a foundation problem that jammed the front door and made it difficult to open, but finally got it open and joined the cats to chase the squirrel... I wanted it out the door... after a couple of passes around the living room he headed out the door with 3 cats right behind him.... he hit the pine tree just outside the front door and was up to the top in about 30 seconds, with our Siamese right behind him....I wasn't dressed to be outside,( matter of fact I was buck naked having just jumped out of bed to see what was happening in the living room), but quickly followed to knock the cat off the tree.... my wife still laughs about me chasing squirrels naked.

Next night they brought another in, but he wound up trapped in the guest bathroom and I just left him until morning.

Then one of them brought in a snake and let it go... almost never got that thing out from under the fridge.

Miss those cats...two of them got sick and were put to sleep and the third refused to move with us...
 
Last edited:
A number of years back we lived in a suburb of Houston on the north side of Lake Houston. At the time we had 3 cats in the house who didn't have litter boxes in the house as they also had a doggy door and went outside for their business... they also brought animals into the house, only they seemed to like live ones... woke one night to a noise in the living room to find 3 cats chasing a live squirrel around the room... that house had a foundation problem that jammed the front door and made it difficult to open, but finally got it open and joined the cats to chase the squirrel... I wanted it out the door... after a couple of passes around the living room he headed out the door with 3 cats right behind him.... he hit the pine tree just outside the front door and was up to the top in about 30 seconds, with our Siamese right behind him....I wasn't dressed to be outside,( matter of fact I was buck naked having just jumped out of bed to see what was happening in the living room), but quickly followed to knock the cat off the tree.... my wife still laughs about me chasing squirrels naked.

Next night they brought another in, but he wound up trapped in the guest bathroom and I just left him until morning.

Then one of them brought in a snake and let it go... almost never got that thing out from under the fridge.

Miss those cats...two of them got sick and were put to sleep and the third refused to move with us...

Yep we get live ones too, fortunately with the fenced in area it's kept to a minimum, they have to fall into the fence area to get caught. Only had one live squirrel, mostly birds, few of those, couple frogs, dragon fly's ...but the worst was a few years ago when the cicadas bugs came out after their 17 year hibernation...omg..you think they are loud outside, you should hear one inside your house and every cat seemed to want to bring their own bug into the house, and of course they were alive, dead bugs didn't make any noise. I guess a live noise maker was just to good to pass up, was really glad when they went back into hibernation...lol


quick pic...without the fence this squirrel would have been in serious trouble


squirrel.jpg
 
Last edited:
We have cats - anywhere from two to four over time. They don't have access inside the house unless we bring one in for some reason. Their "home" is our two-car garage where I installed a kitty door in the main garage door. We have been presented with birds and squirrels as offerings over the years - all of them laid right where we step as we exit the utility door into the garage. When they aren't looking, we retrieve the critter and dispose of it - can't let the cat see us get rid of it or their feelings get hurt!
 
We have been presented with birds and squirrels as offerings over the years - all of them laid right where we step as we exit the utility door into the garage. When they aren't looking, we retrieve the critter and dispose of it - can't let the cat see us get rid of it or their feelings get hurt!

We had a cat would bring groundhogs home for my mother. Big ones they were.
 
We had a cat would bring groundhogs home for my mother. Big ones they were.

We had a medium sized male cat that managed to kill a rabbit a few years ago. My wife saw him dragging the rabbit from across the yard, taking a few steps then stopping to rest a few seconds. He finally got the rabbit all the way to our garage to present it to my wife. The rabbit was at least as big as the cat! My wife thanked the cat for bringing supper, then bagged the rabbit while the cat wasn't looking.
 
One of our larger cats would catch his own meals daily. He would go fishing in the lake and bring home roughly 6" blue gill fish several times a day, and then eat them on the porch. About all that was ever left afterward was a few scales blowing around the porch. He ate everything. He never seemed to want to eat canned or dry food like the other cats. He just preferred catching his meals himself. It was quite common to see him totally wet and walking back to the house with his latest "catch" in his mouth. Usually the fish was still alive and flapping his tail when the cat reached the porch with it. He must have dove completely under water to catch the fish, although I never saw him do it.

One day our malamute was walking along the ;ake shore on the mowed part of the lawn,and then she stopped and crouched down. A moment later she jumped up and plunged straight down into the tall grass between the lawn and the lake, like an arctic fox jumps straight down through the snow to catch a vol that is hiding under the snow. When the malamute landed, she must have surprised our fishing cat and he jumped up out of the grass and then ran across the lawn with the malamute chasing him, all the way to the house. I guess she ended his fishing for a few hours. They lived together and were good friends, but that dog couldn't resist a good surprise jump on her house brother whenever she got the chance. I live on the end of a small peninsula in a lake with 1600' of shoreline adjacent to my property. The house actually faces the lake and the driveway enters the back yard and then circles the house. It's quite private here with good, safe, freedom for our pets. The main highway is almost 1/2 mile away.

I'm just now getting back on this forum. A computer crash, followed by a second one, and then some health issues and password issues have kept me away. It's been a while, and I missed being here.

Charley
 
...my wife still laughs about me chasing squirrels naked...

Chuck, I think I speak for all of us here when I say that painted a picture I really didn't need to see. :rofl:

Great stories...makes me glad I don't have cats.

Not long after I met the girl who would become my wife, she and her mom had some kind of critter die in the garage (probably the result of the poison baits they'd set out), and is smelled like rotting flesh for months. The garage was stuffed with boxed and other junk, and they couldn't find the source of the smell. Years later as I was helping to empty the garage for a move, I found a nicely-preserved rat skeleton in the bottom of an empty box.
 
Top