When you grow up in a house built on tension, your body ends up keeping the score long before your brain has the words to explain it.
The House That Smelled Like Cat Piss is an eight-page zine about childhood in rural Illinois: the thick orange shag carpet, sleepwalking through family anxiety, an unpredictable father whose anger erased everything in its path, and the long road to trusting my own senses.
Page 1: The cover
THE HOUSE THAT SMELLED LIKE CAT PISS... and other stains that sunk deep
Designed by Adam Rye (adamrye.com)
Page 2: The funk
"The house we moved into smelled like FERMENTED cat piss.
It was a visceral, suffocating FUNK that met you at the front door... and dared you to unpack.
MY BEDROOM was the worst one, carpeted in ORANGE shag so thick I would lie on it for hours, playing with wrestling figures and Barbies.
MEANWHILE, our cocker spaniel BLONDIE would wet the floor with pure joy whenever anyone arrived.
We scrubbed weekly with Pine-Sol, desperately trying to mask the scent and pretend everything was NORMAL."
Page 3: Sleepwalking trails
"When you live in a house of hidden TENSION, YOUR BODY absorbs what your mind tries to ignore.
For me, that childhood ANXIETY manifested physically. I was a sleepwalker with a bladder full of plot twists.
I would DREAM of walking to a clean, bright bathroom... but in reality, I was peeing all over my Goosebumps books, soaking the shelves.
ANOTHER NIGHT in our shared bedroom, I peed straight (lol) on my brother Zach while he slept. He woke up SCREAMING, but I stayed DREAMING.
I'd wake up the next morning and be told of the night's trauma drama over a bowl of Fruity Pebbles."
Page 4: The unpredictable storm
"The sleep-pissing made sense cuz the daytime was entirely unpredictable.
While dad worked constantly, mom, Zach, and I built a safe galaxy inside BLANKET FORTS.
BUT WHEN DAD CAME HOME!! His heavy funk threw off the whole vibe.
Some days he was the playful clown, wrestling around on the carpet.
OTHER DAYS, triggered by his own deep insecurities, he would EXPLODE, over-reacting and punishing us with belts and wooden paddles over things that never made sense."
Page 5: Complete erasure
"To cope with dad's UNPREDICTABLE anger, our family adopted a policy of complete erasure.
At church potlucks dad would introduce us with a smile: 'I have 3 boys.' Never four.
Chris, dad's son from his first marriage, was entirely redacted or edited from our life.
No photos, no stories, and no space... just silence where a brother should've been.
I spent my childhood calling myself the third, almost oblivious of this missing page."
Page 6: Rigid perspectives
"Dad built crooked shelves and declared them fine... if they looked 'good enough from the street,' believing that COVERING UP a problem was the same as fixing it.
It took HARD, exhausting college conversations for me to finally see past his cover-up paint.
I realized his absolute, unbending 'facts' were actually just the RIGID, UNDIAGNOSED AUTISTIC PERSPECTIVES of a man who forced his narrow reality onto everyone else."
Page 7: Reclaiming reality
"THAT is why naming abuse is so hard: you stop smelling the funk because you are told it isn't there. But the lesson of my childhood is that your body always keeps the score.
HEALING didn't mean waiting for an apology dad could NEVER give. Healing meant trusting my own senses, sifting through his noise, and reclaiming my right to define what is real."
Page 8: Hope and resources
"This house held his anger and our silence. And somehow, I still learned to call it home.
This zine is hope. Healing from Dysfunctional Families.
Find your support:
Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families: adultchildren.org
The National Domestic Violence Hotline: thehotline.org
TransNetwork: mytransnetwork.org
Behind the zine
Writing and illustrating The House That Smelled Like Cat Piss was about taking back my own sensory truth. When you grow up walking on eggshells and tip-toes, you learn to distrust your own memory just to keep the peace and pace. Drawing these pages was a way of saying: it happened, it smelled terrible, but my body was right all along.
Limited physical copies are available in person at local community pop-ups and zine markets across Tampa Bay.
