Day 150: What’s That’s Smell?

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 150: What’s That’s Smell?

Christmas is coming and ever since I discovered shopping online, I’ve been all over the Net looking for suitable gifts. Of course, I had to start early as some gifts come from China and it can take as long as four weeks for packages to arrive. And arriving they do, one after another.

Next up I went in search for wrapping paper, not online but in an actual store. Since not any paper will do, I looked at several designs and finally settled on this one …

This morning I thought it was time to start wrapping the gifts, cleared the dining room table, got the scissors and the sticky tape and set to work. It didn’t take long before I smelled something foul, let me rephrase that … something that stank up to high heaven.

Since it was the smell of poop I thought that one of the cats had an accident on the floor. I checked the carpet under the table, I checked the surrounding floor and when I couldn’t find anything, I checked the bottom of my slippers. I could see anything.

I continued wrapping and the closer I got to the paper, checking that the corners were neatly folded, the stronger the stinky smell became. So, I bend and sniffed the wrapping paper … OMG I nearly passed out, the paper smelled like the worst kind of poop.

Even the cats made a hasty retreat. Thus far Halley and Greyson had positioned themselves on the dining room table, ready to ‘help’ me with the wrapping, but the smell of the paper was even too much for them.

Of course, I'm not just Christmas shopping for Dieter, the cats are getting a gift too. In the past when we bought them toys they showed little or no interest in them but claimed the box the toys came in. So this year we opted for something practical rather than toys. We got them this:

The box is set to arrive tomorrow. I wonder, will they show an interest or ignore the cat tree?