I don’t have much of a sense of smell.  Even as a child I had really bad sinuses and constant upper respiratory infections.  After years of working in and around noxious chemicals, smoking two packs a day and then some for years, and the fire extinguisher incident, I was told not to be surprised if I was never able to smell anything.

What sense of smell I regained after having sinus surgery a few years ago is vestigial at best and not terribly reliable.  The only odors I can detect are strong- I have to be really careful with perfume, for instance,  and the scents I can detect fairly well are usually offensive.  I seldom can smell the peonies in May for instance, but I can always smell cigarettes, man-funk,  puke or shit.  Go figure.  Sometimes I smell things that I know aren’t there, which is really bizarre.  I guess one could call that phenomenon “olfactory hallucinations,”  if there is such a thing. 

I didn’t realize why non-smokers are so militant about people smoking in their airspace until I had not smoked for a few years.  After I had sinus surgery I especially noticed how noxious cig smoke is.  I might not be able to smell Chanel No.5 unless I take a bath in it, but I can smell cig smoke just getting close to a smoker.  Go figure that if I can smell anything, it’s almost always going to be nasty.

I have to be really careful with my use of perfume.  I love the stuff, but in order for me to smell it I pretty much have to marinate in it, and others around me might not appreciate that so much. 

If I go with the “poison toad” mentality(bright colors, bold patterns being nature’s warning signal) regarding personal odor, then maybe I should marinate in Chanel No.5.  I would if I could afford it.  The dollar store knock off stuff is not the same, and I want to smell good to me.  I’ve always liked bold, brassy fragrances- I’m one of the few people who really likes Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew- probably because they’re the only ones I can truly smell.  Jerry hates just about every kind of fragrance (odd because he’s a hard core smoker) so I am lucky to get away with Sand and Sable or Inner Realm (which is hard to find but lovely.)  Chanel No.5 or Liz Taylor’s Passion (another wonderfully strong, bold perfume) completely gross him out.  He thinks the body lotions from Bath and Body Works are too strong.  Puh-leeze!

Mom always hated Youth Dew, and if I wore it around her it would give her migraines.  I have encountered not a few people who have had the same reaction, so I don’t wear Youth Dew any more.  Pity.  I like it.  Grandma (Mom’s  Mom) liked it too, (she wore it often, and presumably, by the gallon) and anytime I smell Youth Dew it reminds me of her.  The irony in that is if she were still alive, she’d be 95.

I just don’t want to smell offensive to others as in smelling like bad breath, skanky hair, pit funk,  nasty feet, or butt crusty.  I’d rather smell too fresh and flowery than not enough.

Fanny is the big silver and white tabby cat in the foreground.  Those who are familiar with the song “Fat Bottom Girls” by Queen will get the “Big Fat Fanny” reference.  Fanny is a large cat by any standard, and there’s some big meat on those big bones.  She’s about 15#. 

Sunday night Fanny got out which terrified me as she is an indoor cat, she’s declawed, and she’s slow.  Yesterday morning I think she finally got hungry enough and realized that I would be doling out wet food to Fluffy Butt (the normal sized, long haired cat in the background) and Isabel (the 5# all black cat not pictured here.)   So as I went to the back door yesterday (Tuesday) morning, I heard the pitiful cries of a very large cat who likely hadn’t eaten much in the past 36 hours.  Though she didn’t look any worse for wear and certainly didn’t appear to have lost any weight, she snarfed most of the can of wet food (Isabel didn’t get much) and crashed out on the bathroom floor most of the rest of the day. 

All three of the cats like to watch the ferals that live out in the back yard and on the body shop lot, but Fanny is the only one who takes any sort of interest in wanting to socialize with them.   She’s three times the size of the males- and the ferals want absolutely nothing to do with her lard ass.  I am sure she probably was greeted with a cold shoulder when she decided to sneak out the back door.  When she made her way back she seemed to be quite delighted to be back in the house sucking up 9Lives and spreading out to sleep on the bath mat.

I am thankful she came back and is safe.  Even though she is a lard ass, and she likes to chew on my fingers and ears when the cat food bowl is empty, I have to love Big Fat Fanny Cat. 

I am one of those strange people who likes cats equally as well as dogs.  For a long time I only had cats, because I will only have dogs if I can have big dogs.  Our household is a bit unusual also in that the cats and dogs get along very well together.  Sheena can be mildly annoying to the cats at times but they know how to get away from her when she gets too rough.  Isabel likes to sleep on the dogs and clean out their ears.

I made the mistake of picking up one of the feral kittens out back.  They are about 12 weeks old now and are delightfully cute.  Unfortunately for me, even though grabbing him was easy (the kittens were all munching on some food we left out back) keeping hold of him was not.  This adorable grey and white kitten turned into a raging razorball of teeth and claws.  I guess these little ones are too old to be socialized now.  On the bright side, my puncture wounds are already starting to heal.