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Cat, carpet, landlord, advice?
Jan. 31st, 2011 07:47 pmThe cat established a new de facto litterbox behind the Christmas tree. Including the time it took to realize we'd actually have to lock her in her room unless supervised, the problem lasted daily about 2 weeks.
We have done home surface scrubbing and poured a lot of vinegar over it. It's still pretty strong. We invited Carpet Guy to come out and clean our carpet with the giant steam cleaning van. He said he'd do it if that's what we wanted, but what will actually fix it is picking up half the carpet, replacing the carpet pad, and nailing it back down. Instead of $200, we'd be looking at about $600.
If you have dealt with cats and carpets as a tenant, landlord, or homeowner, I'd appreciate your take on this. We'll do it if we need to, but we want to make sure he's not overselling us on the magnitude of the necessary cure, given that this was 2 weeks and not 2 years.
Secondarily, we're trying to figure out if we tell the landlord we're doing the work or not. He has said on multiple occasions, "There are no bad pets, only bad owners," which means we could hypothetically establish ourselves as the good responsible sort of owners, but we could also just let him never ever ever know, which might be the better part of valor.
Secondary factor to consider: We've lived here almost five years, and the landlord is very responsive to actual immediate "it's leaking, fix it" concerns and nearly immovable on anything else. We'd like to negotiate a "hey, it's been 5 years, how about you pretend you have to get new people in because we're starting to have trouble finding subletters because the place is a wreck," deal.
We've done some pretty significant work ourselves (repainting a bathroom, removing a dangerously rotting fence). We don't know if either response to the cat situation would be a better tactical move in light of the need for this discussion.
We have done home surface scrubbing and poured a lot of vinegar over it. It's still pretty strong. We invited Carpet Guy to come out and clean our carpet with the giant steam cleaning van. He said he'd do it if that's what we wanted, but what will actually fix it is picking up half the carpet, replacing the carpet pad, and nailing it back down. Instead of $200, we'd be looking at about $600.
If you have dealt with cats and carpets as a tenant, landlord, or homeowner, I'd appreciate your take on this. We'll do it if we need to, but we want to make sure he's not overselling us on the magnitude of the necessary cure, given that this was 2 weeks and not 2 years.
Secondarily, we're trying to figure out if we tell the landlord we're doing the work or not. He has said on multiple occasions, "There are no bad pets, only bad owners," which means we could hypothetically establish ourselves as the good responsible sort of owners, but we could also just let him never ever ever know, which might be the better part of valor.
Secondary factor to consider: We've lived here almost five years, and the landlord is very responsive to actual immediate "it's leaking, fix it" concerns and nearly immovable on anything else. We'd like to negotiate a "hey, it's been 5 years, how about you pretend you have to get new people in because we're starting to have trouble finding subletters because the place is a wreck," deal.
We've done some pretty significant work ourselves (repainting a bathroom, removing a dangerously rotting fence). We don't know if either response to the cat situation would be a better tactical move in light of the need for this discussion.
