Yea, we don’t dissagree as much as my statement implies. The odor does not come from urea. Urea does not smell. It may hydrolize to ammonia and uric acid, but that smell will go away with time. I’m guessing (and it is just a guess based on knowledge of smells), that the worst smell comes from thiols. Thiols are potent smells in the part per billion range. cite At that sensitivity, you have to wash away massive quantities of smell. The only realistic way to remove the smell is to find something that reacts with it.
If natures miracle hasn’t worked, it is most likely because it hasn’t reached the source of the smell for long enough. The same goes for any of those oxidizers I mentioned.
As far as the precise interperetation of the statement given by the OP goes: There is a lot of handwaving going on there. They don’t define any specific parameters to judge. There is no way to judge the statement without handwaving, because the entire statement is handwaving.
I am really interested in this line of inquiry and have been working my way through some of the related Wikipedia entries. As I barely passed one semester of Organic Chem in high school, it’s slow going. After looking at your link, I think I remember encountering thiols as mercaptans sometime in the past.
Simply from an empirical evidence point of view, it makes perfect sense to me that there’s an ingredient in cat pee that is unusually “smellable” (i.e. detectable in very small concentrations) and that effectively removing the smell might require applying something reactive, rather than trying to wash it off.
Well, and the same goes for the new stuff I’m using, according to the manufacturers. Does that have bearing on the description in the OP?
Whether it bears on the OP or not, you’re right; clearly part of the problem is getting whatever remedy it is to reach the source and really saturate it. I wonder if some kind of dispersant would help?
Now I’m not being sarcastic here: what exactly do you mean by “handwaving”? Clearly, they’re not revealing their ingredients, or using precise or scientific language; it’s dumbed down for folks like me. Is that all you mean by handwaving? Or do you suspect there’s some deliberate obfuscation going on?
I would like to mention at this point that I really appreciate your replies – **Christopher **especially, but all of y’all.
The futon is my most important current destinking project, with the most at stake (and the one with the most pee on it in the first place). It’s a standard cotton futon, the kind intended for the mostly-used-as-a-couch-and-occasionally-as-a-guest-bed market in the US. The Demon Princess nailed it at least twice, maybe three times, with a full bladder’s worth. Lest you think I’m an utter fool, I should say that the futon does have a waterproof barrier sheet on it, underneath its decorative cover. Unfortunately, the last time we washed and replaced that all-enveloping decorative cover, we accidentally flopped the futon barrier-side-down.
The Scoe 10X directions say that one should aim to apply the same volume (correctly diluted) of Scoe 10X as there was volume of piss applied over time. I applied about 30 ounces of dilute Scoe yesterday evening. That was enough to visibly saturate the area of the stain, and then reapply around the “halo” of stain that crept out from the moistened area. Per here , a human bladder can contain about 400-600 cc max, or 13-20 ounces, before you just gotta go. The demon Princess weighs six pounds. I’m thinking there’s no way her volume of piss could have exceeded 30 ounces on this particular article.
Anyway, the results are intriguing. There is no more sharp smell that says “CAT PISS HERE!”. The mellow, slightly sweet, smell that remains is very much like coconut oil. If I wasn’t worried I’ve desensitized my own nose sniffing around here lately, I’d almost be willing to let visitors in the same room with this futon. I have moderate hopes that another application might make me OK with letting them sit on it, too.
In that little paragraph that you quoted, they don’t give enough information to either be proven troe or false. They don’t say anything about the scale of these urea crystals, so If I were to look at cat pee on a micrometer scale they might say the crystals were nanometer sized. Once you get to nanometer size, you can almost guarrantee that there is some organization of material, but you can also bet that it would take a multi-million dollar peice of equipment to decipher it.
It is certainly likely that the organic material is attracted to the organics in the carpet/pillow/cushion, but the description they give is about as accurate as those cartoons of a razor where the first shaves close and the second one closer.
When I mentioned handwaving, what I had in mind was the tendency of manufacturers to trot out scientific sounding explanations (the cosmetics industry is a huge offender) as a sort of magician’s trick - sleight of hand to make you believe that their product uses some sort of technology that is too fancy for us laypersons to understand and therefore must be effective because it’s so technologically advanced. If you were feeling more benevolent you could assume handwaving is a way of explaining things while (hand)waving off all those tedious and unnecessary details.
I’m a skeptic by trade and inclined towards suspicion. That is not to say that a given product is not effective. I just don’t like pseudoscientific claims.
Regarding the futon - if your first application(s) worked, repeat applications might finish the job. You’ve got a lot of surface area to cover within a given section of futon. I would also say don’t be afraid to really soak the thing, provided that isn’t contrary to the directions of the cleaning fluid and provided you are confident you can get the futon dry again. (Mildew is right up there with cat pee)