How short-term renting with a full-time indoor cat is likely to fail

Polly Stenham
Polly Stenham. Image credit below.

The story in the newspapers about a playwright and her cat being sued by a landlord because her cat peed on the carpet highlights how short-term renting with a full-time indoor cat is likely to fail.

The story concerns Polly Stenham MBE, 38, who was sued by her landlord Elio Cassandro, a media lawyer after renting out his plush property in Notting Hill Gate, London, UK, to her. Polly is an award-winning playwright who made her West End debut at the age of 20. She lives with a cat.

I’ll presume that she lived alone in this plush Notting Hill Gate apartment with her cat. The rent was £5000 a week which obviously is very high but then Notting Hill Gate is in the middle of London and a desirable area.

I’m going to have to make some presumptions, one of which is that Polly left her cat in her plush apartment all day on occasions at least when she was out working. Or she left her cat in the apartment for extended periods of time.

The second important factor here is that her cat was living in a strange environment. As we know cats become fixed to an area i.e. their home range. It takes a little while for that to develop when a cat moves to a new place but after about six months, they consider the area their home range and it is very important to them. But in the meantime, they are in a strange environment which is going to cause them stress – to varying amounts depending on their character.

And being left alone for a period of time will add to that stress. And stress leads to anxiety and anxiety can lead to the desire to seek reassurance which a cat achieves by spraying urine around the borders of their home range to tell others that this is their home. It makes them feel better.

Either that, or due to anxiety a cat can develop idiopathic cystitis which causes involuntary urination in small amounts around the home and on carpets.

The point is the obvious one namely that if you rent a property with a cat for a short time and live in this temporary home, you can cope okay because you’re a human and you can rationalise what is going on. But a cat lives instinctively and is simply plunged into a new place which for them is uncomfortable.

This is likely to lead to symptoms of anxiety as described. That’s why I don’t think it works well. Some cats will accept it, but this story is probably quite typical.

And Polly’s landlord sued her for compensation in the sum of £10,000 after claiming that she had failed to prevent her cat from urinating on the furniture and carpet. He sued her in the Central London County Court.

In addition to the peeing on the carpet the landlord claimed that there were black pen stains on the sofa. There are other minor problems like plants dying.

Polly Stenham had a defence to his claim. Firstly, she was aware of the urination problems and had employed a professional cleaner to clean a carpet and other aspects of the property. She admitted in court I presume that “on occasions” her cat might have urinated outside the litter box. But she insisted she would have cleaned it up promptly.

Comment: Polly Stenham is obviously a decent person and was a decent tenant but you can’t just cleanup cat pee from a carpet. It is almost impossible to clean cat pee off objects because it’s very pungent and it’s almost impossible to clean cat pee from a carpet without leaving some nasty smells. That’s the nature of cat urine. It is very enduring. It has to be because it’s a signal to other cats in an area and therefore urine sprayed against a fence for example has to withstand weather conditions.

The best cat pee killers are enzyme-based. But they are not always one hundred per cent successful.

I’m talking here are about a cat living indoors and outdoors. When a cat lives full-time indoors the boundaries of their home range are the four walls and they will pee outside the litter box on carpet and furniture.

The scenario set as described is one which can lead to inappropriate elimination i.e. peeing in the wrong place by a confined domestic cat. That is the ultimate point and you don’t want to get into County Court litigation about it. You simply avoid renting an apartment with a full-time indoor cat. I don’t think it works very well and it is liable to go horribly wrong as this story indicates.

There isn’t an easy solution because if you have a cat and you need to rent then the cat will be put through difficult times normally. Ultimately if you live as a nomad going from one property to another it is probably better that you don’t live with a cat.

Humans are able to do this but cats are wedded to one area. It’s sometimes argued that a cat can become so wedded to their home that when the family moves home it can almost be better to leave the cat behind at that home to live with the new owner of the home if it is practical and appropriate. That’s an extreme point but the argument is that a domestic cat can be more attached to their home range than they are to their human caregiver.

Picture credit: By Twobster7 – self-made Own work, copyleft, attribution required (Multi-license GFDL, all CC-BY-SA), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8268945

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