The Wind In The Smellows

Today’s topic is smell. Obviously I could rant about how bad McDonald back alley meaty smells can make my vegetarian stomach turn, rendering me queasy for a whole day. Or how the joys of growing up with a younger brother were only added to by the vapours emanating from his room. Just last night we were talking about one particular goaty odour that took a vigorous carpet steam clean and a giant box of baking soda to get rid of. I could gripe about how The Reign Of Terry often cooks pungent meals at 4 am and how those oniony odours waft up through the heating vents to rouse me from blissful slumber. I could but I am not.

Instead I am going to talk about Yoshi who is aptly nicknamed Smellie. I call her Smells for short. I profess to be one of those totally annoying people who take common words or names and re-spell them in artful ways to give them street cred. Hence Smellie opposed to a more pedestrian Smelly or Stinky. Yoshi was named Smellie for one reason only, her breath. OH DEAR GOD how can anything so vile emit from such a cute container. I feed her high quality, organic, ‘better than I feed my own self’ cat food. She drinks bottled water from a squeaky-clean water dispenser. No ordinary bowl for her. This cat should have the breath of an angel instead of a dumpster. But that is what she smells like, a long forgotten dumpster conveniently located near a highly trafficked fisherman’s wharf.

Brush her teeth, you say! Bah! Have you ever tried that on a cat? A Siamese cat, to boot? Not going to happen. Just isn’t. Get her teeth cleaned? I don’t like the thought of that, as they have to anesthetise her for the procedure. Too dangerous. Instead I suffer. And suffer is putting it mildly.

Smells has the most annoying habit of yawning in my face. A lot. One after another. When I am sleeping. When I am typing out blog posts. When I am totally unaware of the impeding onslaught. She is a sneaky yawner, that one. It is like she knows. It is like a joke to her. Like men are proud of their farts I suspect Smells is proud of her breath. She likes to share. Think about it. She cleans herself with that same orifice everyday. So her fur can smell manky too. Spread the joy. But then she sleeps in front of the heating vent and her particular personal aura is replaced with the delightful oniony concoctions from downstairs.

Like wives with their farty husbands I can somehow overlook this character flaw and still love her like crazy. And I do. I love her like crazy. Even when I am yelling, “Stop YAWNING at me!”

However, in a strange irony, by stubbornly ignoring Yoshi’s obvious problem, I have somehow turned the word from an unkind adjective to a noun for cute things. In my mind, all sweet and cuddly animals are now, “SMELLY!” When I see a puppy I exclaim, “Smelly!” Or ‘Look at the Smelly.” When particularly affected by the overwhelming cuteness of something I will revert to adjective use but in an opposite way. As in, “That kitten is so smelly I think I might die.” What I mean is its cuteness is killing me. I know it makes no sense but that is how my mind works. And that is what I suspect is a contributing factor to why I can’t get a date.