One of the drawbacks to South facing windows with unobstructed sunlight is that they can turn a room into an oven. Golden rays fade material, raise the indoor temperature, and magnify the smell of odorous things in their path. Take, for instance, cat urine.

Our living room window lets in copious amounts of sunlight that concentrates on a part of the couch where Cimbi decided to go wee wee. Coming into the apartment at the end of the day, I was hit with hot damp air inside about ten degrees warmer than the hot damp air outside, and with the same concentration of ammonia found in Jupiter's atmosphere. I was ready to put the couch and the cat on the curb for sanitation pick up the next day.

Cheryl calmed me down, and I plodded off to Posh Paws to pick up Nature's Miracle stain and odor remover. I knew about the product from seeing it mocked on the Colbert Report, the source of most of my knowledge.

I can now honestly vouch for the product and say that it worked, albeit after four applications across two days. Not wanting to throw the couch out, we followed the instructions to a tee. (Well, except for the part about testing the colorfastness the of the target area. Who cares if the colors bleed or not when the furniture reeks like cat piss?) We soaked the target area of the cushion and let it air dry at its own pace. The smell was not gone the first time, so we tried it three more times, and by then it was no more.

We did have a couple big things in our favor right from the start. The couch is leather, so the pee pee did not soak in like it would on a fabric couch. Also, Cheryl pays more attention to the cat's diet than my mother ever did to mine. By giving Cimbi high quality food, digestive supplements, and keeping fresh bottled water available, the cat's urine has very little odor from the get go.

To be totally truthful, Cheryl swears she cannot smell anything. I swear that if you really smash your nose into the target area and breath deeply, you can still kind of smell something.

(I was going to write that if your face was pressed into the couch and you were breathing deeply, then you have more important problems than negligible odors, but then I thought about it. In all the times I can think of when someone has their face pressed into the couch and they are breathing heavily, it's a great night. So, the couch may have to go after all.)