Piss on This, or the Story of the Snuggie

One of Duloc Manor's few shortcomings is a huge temperature disparity between the front and back. My husband's office is upstairs in the front of the house, and the sun makes it a veritable oven. Meanwhile, my workspace in the back is like a refrigerator, especially in the summer when he cranks the air conditioner to "Arctic Blast." The cold weather has made my little space rather chilly too, so finally I decided to do something about it.

I'll admit I'm a closet infomercial fan. Mostly I just watch them, but I have been known to buy the occasional item although I wait until they show up in stores. I want a physical place to return something that turns out to be junk, and I also don't like the infomercial call center habit of selling your information to every telemarketer on the planet. That gives them a way around the do-not-call list, since they can claim to be "partners" of a company you did business with. I'm the proud owner of a Magic Bullet and a Swivel Sweeper, both of which I love, so now I started to wonder: might a Snuggie be the answer to my chilly prayers?

For the five people on the planet who have not seen the Snuggie commercial, it's basically a blanket with sleeves that looks pretty much like a backwards robe when you are wearing it. It's not meant for walking around in; rather, you cover up with it when sitting around and the sleeves allow you to use your hands freely. It's long enough to cover your feet, so you have a nice little cocoon. I decided it would be perfect for my long work hours spent on the laptop each day.

I had read plenty of horror stories about phone and internet orders, so I decided to get my Snuggie at Walgreens. Florida has the highest Walgreens-to-citizen ratio. Right now I think we're at one Walgreens for every 2.5 Floridians; you can't go five blocks without running into either a Walgreens, CVS or both. We have one close to Celebration, but hubby and I had some errands to run that were taking us down to the west end of 192, towards 27, so we decided to stop at the Walgreens out there. The internet said that store had Snuggies, but I was personally skeptical. That is the same Walgreens that had me return four times for a prescription, claiming it would be in each day, only to tell me the last time that they had stopped carrying it in the type my doctor had specified. Argggh! Thus I bet my husband a quarter that they would have no Snuggies, despite what the website said.

Alas, I was correct (unless you count kid Snuggies, which they did have). Our next stop was Wal-Mart, which hubby said did not carry anything but pet Snuggies according to their website. I still asked just for the heck of it; the clerk momentarily raised my hopes as she said, "Oh yes!" and proceeded to tell us which aisle to check. Nope...just pet Snuggies.

But my hopes were far from dashed, since there were plenty more Walgreens to try. We stopped at another one on the way home that had also been listed online as having Snuggies. Amazingly, it really did! I selected my warm,. cozy treasure (not much of a choice...all they had was blue) and visions of being snugly wrapped while tapping on my laptop danced in my head.

When we arrived home, I unpacked the Snuggie and tossed it in my place on the couch. Our couch reclines, and the footrest was up so the Snuggie was draped there. First Farquaad had to investigate it; he settled in in temporarily, but soon SheiKra came to chase him off before doing his own preliminary investigation. I didn't think anything of it; I donned the Snuggie and prepared to boot my laptop. Quaad climbed back up, then left, and a realized there was a big wet spot. Weird...had he been playing in the water dish?

Then a terrifying thought struck me. I sniffed the spot and my worst fears were confirmed. Cat piss!!!! You can't miss that distinctive odor. Worse yet, it had leaked through to my jeans, and when I got up I discovered a puddle on the recliner foot rest. I don't know if Quaad or SheiKra decided to mark it or, or maybe one of them just lost bladder control for some bizarre reason (Quaad has been known to pee in fear, but it takes a lot to incite that reaction...usually being hauled to the vet). No matter the reason...the effect was still the same. My poor Snuggie had been christened in a most unappealing manner.

I had read that Snuggies and washers aren't a good mix, so I had been hoping to minimize washings. Alas, I hadn't had the thing out of its box for 10 minutes and already it had to be submerged in soap. Neither of the two potentially guilty parties seemed phased; my money is on Farquaad, but I can't rule out SheiKra entirely. It's strange because both are generally very good about using their litter boxes. Maybe "piss on this" is their comment on informercial goods?

Oh well, as I type this I'm waiting for my poor Snuggie to emerge from the washer, hopefully in halfway decent shape. Hopefully the cats will not decide it's a soft, cushy litter box and christen it yet again once I give it another try.