Written by Jeremy Cook on Thursday, 03 July 2008 Category:Random Hits:2814

The Cat Licked My Butter

As someone who has previously been through, and is now going through again, an extremely hectic and confusing housing search, I have decided to come to the internet with an appeal to the millions of people out there in the world of ManRants.  My words to you, through you, are intended for all of those who are kind enough to rent their property out for maddening sums of money at my expense.

What has my cat ever done to you?  I mean, seriously, have you ever even met my cat?  She’s grey with black stripes and a tan undercoat, with these big yellow eyes, and a wry smile common of smart-alleck felines.  She is about 10 lbs, surprisingly long for her petite overall shape, and her biggest flaw is that she is about the most out-spoken cat that you have never met, as well as the least soft-spoken cat you will ever hear.  But outside of that she is nearly the perfect tenant.

Now, that is not to say that she is without her flaws, I mean, she once caught me with a claw in the nipple when I picked her up and moved her off the bed.  But she was comfy, and I sure as hell would not let you pick me up and move me off the bed if I was chilling there.  And there was that other time where she spilled her food on the floor while going to town on some Turkey & Giblets.  But damn, I just dropped like half a slice of Pizza on the carpet the other night while watching the NBA draft.

And you know what the truly ironic thing is, I cleaned up the Pizza, and I cleaned up the cat food.

I fail to understand why it is, that people are so terrified of renting to the owners of pets, when it’s the pet owners, and not the pets, that they should be concerned about.

When the cat takes a piss in the corner, that means their owner did not properly house-train them, has not properly taken care of their needs, or has completely ignored them on both fronts.  It is not the fault of the animal, but a sign of the person to whom the animal is attached, something that will likely rear its ugly head in many other ways.

Now, all the smart and lazy people on the internet are going to say, “Well if the cat wasn’t there, that would not have happened.”  And to be honest, you are partially correct.

But that does not mean that the cat is the problem.  And it does not mean that your apartment will be peachy-clean without the cat.  You are renting your facility/home/tax shelter/abode to the PERSON, not the cat.  If the cat comes along for the ride, it is still the person’s responsibility to take care of the facility.

The person in this case, is the enabler, and the renter is the one responsible for the mess.  You are renting to the human being, and if they are not responsible enough to keep the their pet from making the place a disaster, then they are probably not responsible enough to keep the place from turning into a disaster via their own issues.

The fact of the matter is, my fiancée’s apartment is 500 times cleaner then mine because SHE is cleaner then I am.  I don’t like to clean every day, and the fact that there are piles of paper and clothes lying around my apartment DOES NOT bother me at all.  I really don’t care.  When I’m sitting on the couch, that pile of paper in the corner over there?  It has NO effect, none at all.

Now she has the cat, and her place is cleaner.  I don’t have the cat, and my place is a mess.  And in the end I would get the apartment if the two of us were competing for tenantship of a rental unit, due to my theoretically not having a pet, thus magically being “neater.”

I am not even going to touch the topic of children versus pets.  You show me a cat that does twice the damage of a two year-old, and I will show the most well behaved kid on the planet.

You show me someone who rented an apartment and let their pet go to town on the place, and I will show you someone who probably went to town on the place themselves.  That stench of urine is entirely belonging to the cat?  The discoloration in the carpet is entirely from the urine, not beer and/or wine right?  I mean, if the cat disappeared then they would have magically begun to vacuum the place every week, and they would have scrubbed the floors and steamed the carpet, the kitchen would be swept, and the dust would be busted. 

After all, if only the cat was not there then they would have plunged their toilets, and scrubbed their tubs.  The case of beer that fell off the counter would never have fallen, and the uncovered spaghetti sauce rotting off the back wall would never have splattered.

This was ALL THE CAT’S FAULT.  DON’T RENT TO ANYONE WITH A PET EVER AGAIN!  ONLY PEOPLE WITHOUT PETS ARE CLEAN.  Give me a break.

You are swimming in bathtubs full of money if you rent your property out right.  But as a result, you are ALWAYS taking a gamble, and taking responsibility for the tenant that you choose to rent to.  A person’s responsibility and cleanliness is unfortunately something that is rather completely independent of the fact that they have a 9 lb pet meowing when you call them on the phone.  So suck it up, and either put more effort into looking into the people you choose to rent to, protect yourself with security deposits, or just let people have a pet in the place they are paying you an exorbitant sum of money to live in.

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