8/29/12 This is the Reason Why They Don't Let Cats Up in Space

I'm frantically cleaning the house because Stanley Steamer is scheduled to come by this afternoon to clean the stain off of the new mattress.  (And yes, I clean for cleaners.  A regular run of the mill mess if fine for my family.  We can be rolling around in dust three inches thick, but to have the possibility of some pimply-faced high school kid making minimum wage with a scrub brush and a hose come in to clean my mattress and be all like, "When's the last time this lady dusted?" is just flat out unacceptable.  I mean, I have standards here.)

(I should mention that I have no idea what Stanley Steamer people make.  They are probably handsomely compensated for their time and stain fighting expertise.  The minimum wage thing was just a guess.  I could probably look it up, but at this point I've spent more time going on and on about it than the whole thing warrants.)

Anyway, the whole reason why Stanley Steamer is coming is because we bought a new mattress a few months ago.  And because new mattress warranties are voided by any kind of stain whatsoever, we bought the super-duper money-back guaranteed waterproof mattress pad protector.  It has a 10 year warranty!  It has space age polymers!  It will protect your mattress through the Apocalypse!  So we bought one.  

And then we unleashed the cats.  

Here's something you should know about the cats.  Cats have hairballs.  Five times the cats equals five times the hairballs.  And on top of that, Dixon has a nervous stomach, which means that if ANYTHING unexpectedly changes in his environment (we go on vacation, we change laundry detergent, the full moon corresponds with the third Monday in a month ending in R), he will pull a Linda Blair all over your bed/floor/nicely folded pile of clean laundry in seconds flat.  So we asked the mattress sales guy if this mattress pad protector was up to that challenge, and he was like, "Oh absolutely!  Money back guarantee!  Did you see the part about the space age polymers?"

And to be fair, the mattress pad protector did manage to protect the first 9 times that a random cat (cough Dixon! cough!) barfed on the bed, but I'm afraid that time number 10 just did it in.  Even space age polymers can't handle that rigorous of a barf, wash, repeat cycle.  So now there's a cat barf stain on the mattress.  We called the pad protector people, and they were shocked! SHOCKED I say! that their space age polymers were bested by cat barf.  And I was all, "Yeah, that's the precise reason that Dixon flunked out of the space program...incompatible with polymers." (Which I thought was pretty funny, but it just seemed to confuse the mattress pad people, so I let it drop).  Meanwhile, what are we supposed to do about this stain on our new mattress?  In the end, the mattress pad people offered to send us a new mattress pad protector (now with more polymers!) and pay to have people come out and remove the stain from the mattress.  Which is why I am frantically cleaning the house in expectation of Stanley Steamer coming to pay us a call sometime between noon and 5pm today.  Of  course, the sound of the vacuums and cleaners and whatnot will scare Dixon enough that he will barf on the bed again, so it's all a vicious cycle.  Those space age polymers better be out of this world.