The House with the Overindulged Cat

With every project, you learn new things. When I look back at my "adventures", I swear it would make for a great comedy show or at least a skit on SNL.

This particular property was owned by a former attorney and a professor. The reason why I disclose their professions is to make a point and it will be obvious as I reveal my story. I met with the husband, the attorney, since the wife, the professor, was out of town. I was hired to provide them with a consultation to help them prepare their home for sale. This was their family home where they raised two girls who were now away at college. Since their "kids" were gone, their only "child" was their overindulged cat who was fairly old.

From the moment I walked in the door, I smelled cat. How I usually run my consultations is I'll walk through the property quickly with the homeowner to see the floor plan and allow them to point anything out to me that I should be aware of (i.e. renovations planned, etc.) and then I'll go through the property on my own to make detailed notes on each room, then go through the property again with the homeowner explaining in detail my recommendations room-by-room. When I was in the dining room, the cat scent was extremely strong to which I found a litter box. Why is there a litter box in the dining room? That went on my list of things to be removed. I later found another litter box in the laundry room. Why do we need two litter boxes? Did I mention that it was the owner himself who called the cat "overindulged?" So long story short, when I walked through to explain my recommendations to the owner, we started at the front door where I told him that as soon as I walked into the property, I smelled "cat". Well, he was a little surprised, but admitted that he had lost his sense of smell so he couldn't tell (lucky him!!). We walked to the dining room where I made my recommendations for furnishings and recommended removing the litter box and the standing fan that was in the room. He then proceeded to tell me that he had recently hired a plumber to check for a leak under the house because there was a wet spot in the dining area that he couldn't explain. Picture this. He is standing there in his bare feet, tapping on this "wet spot" in the middle of the dining room completely perplexed by its presence (THERE IS NO PLUMBING UNDER A DINING ROOM!!!) and I'm trying to keep a straight face while thoughts are racing through my mind - OMG!!! Are you with me? Without my telling him that it was probably the cat, I led him to come to the conclusion himself by the end of the consultation. He just couldn't imagine why she would do that, but she was getting old and probably couldn't control it anymore.

Then, there was the question about what to do with the feral cats. What's a feral cat? Well, lesson of that day was they are stray cats. Apparently, they have been feeding these cats that come to their yard. My response was, "maybe you should stop feeding them" to which his response was "Oh, I couldn't do that!" Well geez, if you were a stray cat, would you stop coming to a house that fed you regularly?

This consultation was true comedy. I recommended that he hire a professional carpet cleaner to clean their carpets. His response was that he didn't think that would be worth it since he had rented a $30 machine from a local grocery store and it didn't do anything (Hello! We're talking professional carpet cleaners with vans equipped with stain sucking machinery, not a cheap $30 wannabe cleaner!!). Of course, when he finally figured out it was the cat that was causing the "wetness" in the dining room, they had to hire a restoration specialist to treat the area under the carpet and clean it. He called me to tell me how amazed he was at the results. Mind you, I had recommended he have the cat live outside of the home during the sale of the property, but he didn't take me up on that so guess what? Surprise, surprise, the cat did it again. I can only do so much.

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