Today’s a good day. Apologies in advance as today’s blog post is a bit of a therapy session …
In the beginning, before we signed the lease for our apartment, we told our letting agent that we had two cats. She said that was no problem. All was fine and dandy until our landlord came to visit two years later. Our letting agent frantically emailed us saying we had to hide our cats because our landlord didn’t know we had them.
Queue infinite levels of stress, cleaning and arranging for the cats to be out of the apartment for hours leading up to our landlord visiting. Not to mention my epiphany that mentally destroyed me and pushed me into hyper-drive – what if our landlord’s allergic to cats? Well, you better scrub your fingers to the bone and make sure there’s no trace of the cats! Not even a hair.
This fear mongering and general being thrown-under-a-bus-for-no-reason from our letting agent went on for years. I won’t get into the details, but she caused an insurmountable amount of stress for years. On one particular occasion involving the Irish Revenue and I was so anxious I became physically ill. I know to you, this probably doesn’t sound like a big deal, but if our landlord found out about our cats, we were told he would take action. 1) Ask us to leave [our rent is currently way below average for Dublin, praise science, so we want to stay as long as we can] and 2) keep our deposit. Or he could 3) ask us to simply get rid of our cats if we wanted to stay. It caused many sleepless nights. It sounds dramatic, but when you’re living it, it’s a very real worry.
But today, today is a good day. The perfect conditions arose for me to tell our landlord about our cats [he’s no longer using said Letting Agent From Hell, and instead dealing with us directly], and guess what? He was totally cool with the cats. He actually laughed. He’s a decent person. Years. YEARS of unnecessary stress and for nothing.
I’m having a giant drink with my lunch today. Maybe three.
Normal non-fear fueled blogging will resume next week as scheduled. Oh, and if you’re curious, you can creep all my crazy cat lady pictures of June and Tosh under the hashtag #JuniperAndToshi. Happiest of Fridays, homies xx
*Thank you Mr. Ferrell for creating the most epic-ly appropriate blog title reference.
Oh how annoying! Sorry you had all that stress for so long. I'm glad your landlord is cool with your fur-babies and you can relax now. Although, you must be his favourite tenants with all the improvements you've done to the place!
A friend of mine once had a similar situation… but the landlord didn't know about her newborn BABY… she had to hide her under the bed one day when the landlord sprung a surprise visit…. She was so traumatised she found a new place to live shortly after.
Enjoy your liquid lunch 😉
WHAT. WHAT. WHAT! Oh my god Sadhbh, your poor friend! I know all too well the horrific feeling that is accompanied with dealing with landlords and letting agents, so I can only imagine how desperate she must have felt at the time. Oh the poor woman! I don't blame her at all. We've had some weird landlords in our time.
Liquid lunch was had an enjoyed 😉
I think your landlord appreciates you massively, you keep his property in tip top condition and give it more love than any other tenant would. He is sitting pretty! Great tenants with pets isn't a problem but if he had tenants who didn't take care of the place because it isn't their property and then added pets into the mix who could potentially make matters worse with uncleanliness, that would suck for him. Plus, who couldn't love Toshi & Juniper!?
That's exactly what he said to me on the phone Kim – that if we were crap tenants, he'd have an issue, but we aren't. He actually laughed as I was noticeably (incredibly) nervous. I had to actually write down what I was going to say to him before I spoke – I get so stupidly nervous about some things! Ha!
And I totally agree – who wouldn't love Juniper and Toshi?! I should just email him all my Instagrams 😛
What to what? Was the letting agent on crack? Or perhaps it was a weird power trip for her?
So strange.
Anyway, doesn't the truth just feel good? Being out of the closet is so wonderful. Let your cat-freak flag fly!
Oh, serious power trip. And a compulsive liar. She's one of the most difficult people I've ever dealt with. I knew she played dirty when she started throwing around the 'C' word every time she was late, and she was consistently at least an hour late. Seriously. So glad I don't have to deal with her anymore.
And the kitty flag is well and truly flying high!
The 'C' word! I hate when people say Christmas too. 😉
LOOOOOOOL!
Everyone go home. Pat just won the internet.
p.s. For clarity purposes, and I realised it may be construed as a different C word; the one she kept saying 'cancer'. It was her excuse for everything. She was 2 hours late because her neighbour had cancer. It took her 8 weeks to replace our washing machine, despite my constant badgering, because her assistant had cancer. She forgot appointments because her husband had cancer. Everyone. She was a compulsive liar so I don't know how true any of it was. She lied about everything. I blocked her calls so she could only get in contact via email (because she went back on her word constantly and it was the only way I had a record of the crap that came out of her mouth).
End rant.
Christmas FTW! 😉
Oh my god I can't believe you lived with that stress for so long!! Gah! I'm so happy you had the opportunity to 'come clean' and he was so cool about it!! But then of course he will be – your flat is fabulous and you have made so many improvements – you're pretty much ideal tenants and the cats are so cute. You'd have to be a MONSTER not to love Juniper and Toshi 😉 Yay! Drink up baby!! xxx
Hahahaha, I was so excited / relieved after I spoke with our landlord that I nearly emailed him pictures of our cats. Like, "here, look! Look at how floofy and lovely and sweet and squee they are!" But I restrained myself.
The last time he visited he said the place was in better condition than he's ever seen it. I just like working on a good project! And I'm a sucker for good before and after opportunities 😛
When I moved to Ireland I was completely taken back by the strangeness (for lack of a much better word) of letting agents. I'm sure some are ok, but ours is the most daft person I've ever met! I actually feel worse that the landlord has to pay this guy for literally nothing and at one point he was actually costing him extra money by making big deals out of small situations, we now just talk directly to the landlord. Crazy stuff, I tell you!
Sara – you're literally describing our (freshly no longer) letting agent!!! She was an absolute nuisance. There was almost nothing done right and she would drag out situations for 8 weeks that could be resolved in an afternoon. She was such an unnecessary stress. To the point that our landlord just gave up on her because we were contacting each other directly and with much less hassle. Unfortunately, you're not alone! Letting Agents be cray.
Happy "cat out of the closet" day! I used to have to hide our snake when we were renting, it's quite difficult to hide a giant tank with a lightbulb in it but we managed! The idea of having to move, or more likely, the landlord not really caring but using it as an excuse to keep our deposit when we left was really stressfull! So I'm delighted for you, you're cats are out and proud, as they should be, they're gorgeous 😉
A SNAKE! Good lord Linda, I tip my hat to you! We simply took our cats out of the apartment each time (husband sat in the car with them for an hour until our landlord was gone. We both would have to book the day off work!). And you hit the nail on the head – from past experiences with a weird landlord, we were expecting the worst (loss of deposit etc). I actually nearly cried from relief on Friday! 😀
I had built it up so much in my head. I always prepare for the absolute worst (and am a giant worrier), but looking back on it now, you're so right – he's really just delighted with how well we're keeping the place. But I was having none of that mentality leading up to Friday! I'm such an unnecessary worrier.
Oh yes, Elliott is 12 now and his giant-ass tank takes pride of place in the playroom. Old life, meet new life!
And I know what you mean about building stuff up in your head, last week I couldn't sleep cos I was having a birthday party for my three year old the next day and I convinced myself it would be absolutely crap, everyone would laugh at me and then my daughter would be scarred for life and end up hating me! It was a kids party. I gave them their weight in baked goods and played the frozen soundtrack, it was the party of the year! So yeah, being a worrier sucks, I hear you 🙂