flossing the cat

My husband has a condition called anosmia. This means he has no sense of smell.  For the most part, this works out pretty well for me. For a start, I never have to buy scented sanitary towels. (Although why any woman needs a scented sanitary towel, unless she has a) neglected to change her sanitary pad in, like, two days, and also happens to be in a heatwave, or b) recently noticed her vagina is exuding a pyroclastic flow of green slime, is beyond me.)   Ditto any other feminine hygiene products.  But there are downsides to having a husband who can't smell. For example, deep down, my husband believes there is no such thing as a bad smell. He prefers the idea that bad smells are simply figments of my imagination, originating in deep-seated neuroses and hysteria. So, if I say, "Darling, the living room is redolent with the smell of shite", or, "Did you happen to tread in a bunch of dog shit when you went to get those logs from the garden and then smear it over...

OK. Here’s the problem. Every time I come back from a holiday, the house stinks. The porch and hallway smell like The Elephant House in high summer. The rest of the house also smells like The Elephant House in high summer, except one of the elephants has VAG ROT, and all the other elephants have died. The situation has gotten so bad I dread coming back. “Please god let the cats not have shit everywhere”, I whisper to my partner on the journey home from our most recent holiday. “I don’t think I can take it.” “Just relax”, says my partner. `’If they have, I’ll clear it up straightaway.” My partner doesn’t know me. If he did, he wouldn’t bandy around inflammatory words like ‘relax’. Conversely, I know him well enough to know that the very first thing he will do on arriving home will be to scroll through the list of recorded programmes on the Sky Plus Planner. He would do this even if he needed to pick the zapper out of a buzzing, twitching heap of cat shit as big...