One was a houseful of cigarette-smoking druggies. I’m okay with smoking as long as people do it outside, but the house—or pad, let’s just call it a pad—was littered with overflowing ashtrays and cans and plates, all full of cigarette butts. Under and over and in between that was the nauseating smell of cat spray. Not piss, but that burn-your-eyes smell that went along with unneutered male cats that liked to back up and raise their tails to walls and couches and legs. In fact, one of the cats backed up to me while I was standing there trying to act interested in the place as the stoner showed me around. I felt something weird through my tights, looked down to see a cat tail quivering in the air and a stream of whatever hitting my calf. I screamed and jumped and the cat took off, skidding around a corner. “Yeeaah,” I said, dragging out the word as I squished up my face, then kind of grimaced in an I’m-sorry expression. “I don’t think this is right for me.
