Shoes that make you go `Eeeeewww'

Last week I went to my son's cross country practice and then I went running around the park. The grass was quite soggy from a recent rain so my shoes got pretty wet. Anyway, the next day after I got home from taking him to school, I took off the shoes and put them on the little carpet by the door. A few minutes later I'm like: What is that smell? Seriously, it smells like cat piss.

So I figured maybe a cat was outside or something. But the smell didn't go away. I picked up the shoes and took a good whiff. YIKES!!!! They stunk big time. At first, I thought maybe one of the cats at my house had peed on them. But I hadn't left my shoes anywhere they could have got to at the time. Then I thought maybe I had run through some dog pee at the park. But that didn't make sense. It definitely smelled like cat piss, not dog piss -- and yes, there is a difference.

So I washed the shoe uppers by hand with detergent. That didn't help much. Then I sprayed them with Febreeze. That helped a little. But still, they stink. What happened? I would have had to run through a swamp full of cat piss to make them smell that bad.

On a hunch, I Googled "New Balance" and "Cat urine." Eureka! Turns out lots of people with stinky New Balance shoes have been blaming their cats for pissing on them. Turns out it's some kind of synthetic material in the shoe's midsole that stinks.