This actually did happen to friends of my parents. This was back in the days of wall-to-wall shag carpeting and their house reeked, I can tell you.
Or you can be like the tenants a friend of ours had - multiple cats (they estimated at least 6 and likely more) - kept inside, but not litterbox trained. Took my friend weeks to clean the place up after the tenants left. They had to shovel areas out, and replace all the flooring as well. A $300 deposit doesn’t go far in that situation.
Pets can do a LOT of damage. Most people, also, aren’t home in their apartments during the day, and their pets are unconfined - they get bored and start tearing stuff up.
–tygre
i have a small house that i rent out to college students in our town. i have a no pets policy. one time i lost 2 months rent because when a cat owning tenant moved out, in addition to replacing the pissed-up carpet, i had to let the place air-out for 2 months to get the scent out of there. some people, when planning to leave town for a week or so, will shut a cat up in a room with a weeks supply of food and water and when they come back, it is a mess.
PWD…Pretty White Dog?
Purple Wiry Dog?
Plaid Weasel Dog?
Pointy Wolf Dog?
WHAT?!?
What is it?
(I know I’m gonna do a “DUH!” when I find out!)
[hijack]
: PWD…Pretty White Dog?
: Purple Wiry Dog?
: Plaid Weasel Dog?
: Pointy Wolf Dog?
: WHAT?!?
: What is it?
: (I know I’m gonna do a “DUH!” when I find out!)
Portuguese Water Dog. They’re kinda’ like stocky Poodles – smaller than a Standard, larger than a Miniature. You can see mine at http://www.cyburbia.org/bailey/bailey.jpg. (Everyone say “awwwwwwwwww.”) The definitive site is at http://www.infive.com.
[/hijack]
DUH!! I have seen them and they are cute dogs!
Your link didn’t work, though, elmwood. 
It’s the same situation in Montreal. Cats and dogs are generally allowed everywhere…and then when I moved to Vancouver I noticed that pets weren’t allowed anywhere. I think it’s partly because the flea problem is much more extensive out there. I had had pets my whole life in Montreal and they never got fleas. I lived in Vancouver for a few months and my cat (and my apartment) was infested. Fleas are a huge pain in the ass to get rid of. The climate might have something to with it.
Wanna bet? Have you ever been over to someone’s house who’s got multiple cats? The place stinks to high heaven. I’ve got two cats, either of which is capable of laying some real bombs. Add ammonia smell on top of that, and a house Smells Like Cat real quickly. It can be murder to get it out, too.
Robin
Just a few notes-
I have a zoo- two dogs, a cat, two parrots. I have never heard of this:
What they actually do is throw food, and if you’re feeding them properly, this often means wet, cooked food. It’s like scraping barnicles to get it off. I’ve taken to putting large pieces of poster board up behind their cages.
Any destruction in our house has come from our adorable kitty. While she isn’t a scratcher, she occasionally pukes up wet food onto our brand new carpet. No matter how I clean, there always seems to be a little stain left. She doesn’t pee on the carpet, but my sister had a problem with a cat who did, and she’ll never get the smell out. It seeped into the carpet pad, and that’s not fixable.
If you really want to know why cat’s aren’t allowed, go price carpeting and padding for a 12’x12’ room, and imagine having to either re-carpet or smell cat piss. Neither is a good option. Easier to have your tenants stick to hamsters and fishies.
Zette
I’m not quite sure why you would keep an animal indoors anyway- doesn’t seem quite natural somehow. Our cats were never quite so happy when they were outside scattering the dismembered corpses of small birds and rodents around the garden.
On a serious note I wouldn’t contemplate declawing your cat. If it ever gets outside and needs to climb a tree or wall in a hurry to get away from a dog… oops!
I am a landlord. I own a three family house, and all my tenants have pets (myself included).
My first floor tenant has 2 small Pomeranians. The use his bedroom carpet as a wee-wee pad. Luckily, he pays to have it steam cleaned every other month or so. When he moves out, I will have no choice but to replace that carpeting. The barking is not much of a problem. In fact, I’d rather have barking dogs warning us of a stranger lurking in the yard.
My second floor tenant has two dogs as well. I have lived here over a year, and have never seen those dogs outside. The woman has them pad trained. Some times, in the summer, the smell is out of this world. Other than that, they are good tenants. Hopefully, if we raise their rent enough, they’ll move out ;). They have been living here for 20 years, so the apartment will need major renovations anyway.
I live on the third floor. I have 3 dogs. If the dogs make a mess, I clean it up. I care about it because it is my house. I can’t say the same for all tenants.
Next time I have an apartment vacant, I am going to ask for no pets. I do not want to renovate an apartment so I can rent it to someone with a smelly dog or cat, have them ruin it, and move out a year later. If I know the people, I may consider it, but not if they are strangers.
On the other hand though, if they ask after a few months, and I see that they keep their place clean, I may consider a small dog. My husband is allergic to cats, so a cat will never live in our house. If he needs to go into their apartment, he has to be able to breath.
Rose
I still don’t get it (you can roll your eyes if you want and I won’t be offended). All the various anti-cat arguments
I see here seem to imply that only they cause damage to
carpets. That’s not true. The tenants themselves spill things occasionally. I’d say my wife and I have done more
damage to the carpet ourselves, in four years of living here, than our cats have (oops, sorry about that!). Which is not to say much, just general wear and tear. We’ve also shampooed it a few times.
Yeah, we get litter-box stink but that just goes with having
cats. We always clean it quickly and we never leave the cats for more than a day. If we do need to travel, we board them out. And I don’t know what kind of pets these people have that pee on the carpet. Every dog I ever had knew where to go, as do the cats we have now. And these cats (all ex-male), never had a chance to spray. We had them fixed at the earliest suitable time).
Oh, and Zette, about parrots chewing the walls. This refers to a time when I was staying for a few days at a pensione in Florence. The owners had a large parrot you could hear screaming at all hours, and he loved to chew
the paint (or maybe it was wallpaper). You would see half moon shapes where the chewing at been done, at all the places where he liked to perch.
The last place I was at allowed dogs of all sorts, at a slightly higher monthly rates, but no cats. I think that this was for allergy reasons (cats are generally more allergenic than dogs): They were rapid-turnover apartments, and they might not have the time or resources to thoroughly get cat dander out of the place.
I have an apartment in my basement, and here’s my thoughts FWIW:
I do not have a no firm “no pets” policy. What I do have is an assumed but rebuttable prejudice against pets. My experience has been that responsible owners have clean, well-behaved pets; responsible owners clean up after their pets promptly and repair pet-damage promptly; and responsible owners keep clean houses because they tend to be sensitive to people (especially landlords) complaining about their pets. Irresponsible owners have worse-behaved animals and take significantly worse care of their apartments. They think since they can’t smell cat piss in the carpet that they never bothered to clean up, neither can anyone else. But I remember well how difficult it could be for me to get an apartment with my one small dog (and I was an apartment-dweller not too long ago) so I’m willing to at least discuss pets. The only hard and fast rules I have is the tenant cannot have more than two cats or one dog, due to the size of the apartment.
My current tenant doesn’t have a pet, but my last tenants had a Rottweiler and a cat. They were so good in cleaning up after them that you’d never know by looking at the apartment or the yard that they even had pets (except for the dishes, beds, and the occasional toy). Bottom line: whether or not I, as a landlord, let you have a pet or pets is going to have more to do with you as a person than it does with the type of pet.
Random thoughts:
– For whoever said “landlords have to replace carpet anyway” – nonsense. Carpet ideally only has to be replaced becasue it wears out, not because some stupid git has allowed his or her pets to ruin it. I have industrial-grade gray carpet in my apartment (not beautiful but not ugly) and it should last for 10 years. If I had to replace it because my tenant’s pet ruined it, I’d be hacked and might well institute a “no-pets” policy then and there. The deposit for the apartment (even inflated for a pet) would not cover the cost of having all-new carpet installed.
– Cat pee is way more odiferous and harder to get out of carpeting than dog pee.
– I personally looked at a lot of houses before buying mine, and there were at least three where I went in, sniffed, thought “cats” and crossed the house off my list. Extreme cat smell can require a homeowner to remove not just the carpet and padding but, in worst cases, the floor boards in order to get the smell out. I wasn’t signing up for that.
I’ve lived with cats my entire life, and had life-long terrors of dogs ( victim of multiple attacks here). However, I can see the landlord’s point in being prejudiced.
Generally, dogs must be taken off the premises in order to let them relieve their bodies. Cats do not. This tends to create an odor in and about the apartment unless the cat’s owners are INCREDIBLY conscientious. Even so, if one has more than one cat and no central air, come August that place will reek by 6:19 pm when you drag in from work. Most landlords also are wary of the kind of spray and claw damage listed above.
Our cats, from childhood on out, have always been declawed. Many battles on this front with friends ( and, I don’t mean to hijack this thread into a “Declawing Ethics” sidebar, honest). However, one is keeping a domestic animal. One fixes said animal if cat shall always be kept indoors and not bred. One declaws to protect self, infants and home. Yeah, they puke when they eat the houseplants. It’s good for them. ( tried “Cat grass”. They laughed at me. )
With those who love letting Fluffy run free through the farmlands, one must suffer the indignities of spray, claw marks, and little dead love offerings. Me, I'll take mine a shade more domesticated than that.
Cartooniverse
: Wanna bet? Have you ever been over to someone’s house
: who’s got multiple cats? The place stinks to high heaven.
: I’ve got two cats, either of which is capable of laying
: some real bombs. Add ammonia smell on top of that, and a
: house Smells Like Cat real quickly. It can be murder to
: get it out, too.
The previous owner of my house had three cats, none of which were litter box trained. I’m very allergic to 'em, and when I first saw the house, it stunk to high heaven and back. So, why’d I buy it? Because it was priced far below what the market was getting for anything the neighborhood, and besides, I had to get a fixer-upper to afford anything close to downtown Denver. Even though the place stunk, there was a waiting list in case my deal fell through.
I ended up tearing out all the carpets in the bedrooms, and pouring enzyme cleaner on the hardwood underneath – that seemed to take care of the cat pee smell upstairs. The basement bedroom, I just kept the door to that room closed. I tore out the carpet there a few weeks ago, and got sick doing it – I couldn’t stop gagging. Two years after the previous owners left, the padding was still moist. I poured bleach on the floor, washed it off, and then poured enzyme cleaner, and volia – no more cat pee smell.
As well there should be battles with your friends. How about I slice off your toes? Mmmm…happy?
As far as the OP is concerned, my landlord bans all pets in the lease, but you can alter the lease to allow cats with a $100 cat deposit. Our cat still has his claws, but we’ve trained him to only scratch his little cat condo, and he does ONLY scratch that…it’s very nice. He’s caused no other damage. Maybe I’m just lucky. We keep his nails trimmed so they really can’t cause much damage anyway…they’re just very dull claws that can’t get a good grip on fabrics.
Jman
I am a landlord. I prohibits cats (and all other pets) in my apartments. In fact I lay down as many rules for the tenants as I am legally able to do. If I could, I would prevent smoking and drinking in my apartments.
(I should also point out that I am also very strict on the people that manage my apartments. If a tenant has a problem - no hot water or whatever - I expect it to be fixed immediately. My view is that a contract is a contract - if everyone sticks to it exactly there can be no room for disagreements.)
I used to be much more relaxed about such things but once you have had one or two tenants destroy what you have worked for, you become much more harsh. Recently I had to spend about $18,000 fixing up the damage a tenant had done. One months deposit ($1,680) is a joke compared to that.
I realise that most people will treat the apartment well and will clean up after their pets and themselves, but unfortunately the rules have to take into account the lowest scum sucking pig that you could possibly imagine. It’s the same with many rules and laws. If there weren’t just a few irresponsible people abusing freedoms and privileges, we wouldn’t have to have laws restricting those freedoms.
I am a tradesman and rental unit repair is a large part of my business.
The worst case I ever came across, the repairs came to over 3 grand. The tenant had multiple (unauthorized) pets, species undeterminable.
All of the base boards were urine soaked and beyond repair. In addition a full foot of wallboard around the entire perimeter of the unit needed to be removed and replaced. The entire floor (vinal tile)was was destroyed and the subfloor was damaged. Electrical outlets were badly corroded and in need of replacement as well as extensive damage to the telephone wiring and cable tv lines.
All the doors were badly scratched and should have been replaced but instead were filled and sanded. The odor of the place was intolorable and I have no doubt a building inspector would have declared it uninhabitable.
The cleaning deposit on the place was $650, I remember it clearly as the owner mentioned it to me numerous times. The tenent occupied the unit for about 6 months, do the math.
Granted, this is not the animals fault. But we all know the world is full of asswipes.
After reading my post, I realize I left out some important facts. My post dealt with the worst case of PET damage I have ever dealt with. People damage can be (and usually is)far worse.
While it is usually limited to stained carpet and holes in the walls and doors, it occasionally (not rarely) is much worse.
One landlord called me to repair a unit that had been occupied for a few months. The tenant never paid rent beyond the first month and deposit. Apparently they were not a happy couple and had daily fights. These people punched holes in all the walls and doors broke the toilet and sink and ripped out the plumbing. I could list all the damage but that would be tedious. The total bill was higher than any pet damage case (not quite the 13 grand Mr. Why laments)and is more common than you might think.
Thought I would give equal time to the pro pet lobby. I think the reason the pet damage incidents stick out so bad is because of the stench and the unbelievable grossness of the jobs.