The smells you are used to living with will never bother you (hmmm -- except maybe in extreme circumstances when the odor sucks all the oxygen out of the room! Yes, I was in real estate and experienced that.) You may think your cats ALWAYS used the litter box but obviously, others know better. Dogs aren't so bad because they don't spray the walls BUT they can also smell if you don't let them out and bathe them often enough. As far as wood floors go, you can't sand out cat urine. It will be there as long as the floor stays. Sorry --- you enjoyed your pets and this is the price. You will finally sell your house at a discount because you enjoyed those pets. Someone buying your house may have to replace drywall and floors and will expect you to pay for that. Sad but true.

Yes, I did get rid of it. In our case it involved cleaning and repainting a concrete area with a shellac and then having our ducts cleaned. That said - I would not worry about the cats for the apartment if you get a good pet fee. Most places I am familiar with charge a non-refundable pet fee (sometimes plus a deposit) so things can be cleaned later. Our situation years ago was unusual. We were using a room under the stairs for the litter box. Our kids at times weren't diligent on cleaning the cat litter. I think because of the lack of air in the little room (no ventilation in it) that it made things worse. That is the only place where I had any problem. For example, I recently sold a different house and we had cats in it and I had no problem from cat odor.

We bought a house from heavy smokers who kept their house pretty clean. We thought we could get rid of the smoke smell by cleaning everything really well and airing the place out, either cleaning the window treatments or getting rid of them, either cleaning the carpets or worst case replacing them. Turns out we had to clean and air the home, scrub the heck out of everything, replace the nearly new carpet, throw out the window treatments, repaint all the walls and ceilings, and replace some of the drywall. Also, the smell of the cigarette smoke masked the musty odor of the home. Once we got rid of the cigarette smoke, we had to find the source of the other odors and fix those. I don't think I will ever, ever buy another house that doesn't smell fresh unless I have no other choice. Our neighbors bought a home from owners who had a cat who urinated on the floors. They wound up having to replace the subfloor. I think they said they'd never ever again buy a house that smelled of cat urine. I hope whatever you decide works for you!

If you've cleaned it thoroughly, I would recommend using one of these traditional odor absorbers. 1 - leave a bowl (about 1 cup) of white vinegar inside overnight with drawer door closed 2 - leave a bowl of baking soda inside overnight (door closed) 3 - sprinkle ground coffee (3-4 tablespoons) on a plate, leave overnight I've used these methods to absorb orders in trash cans, laundry room, etc and have had success. I've never had to do it in the microwave - don't have the drawer style - but if it were mine, I'd try these.