Landlord blamed tenants' cat for peeing in the bathroom causing the ceiling below to collapse!

NEWS AND VIEWS: This is an extraordinary story and quite ridiculous. A couple were staying in a housing association home - the landlords. In the UK, housing association homes are low rental homes supported by the organisation which owns them. They are a bit like publicly owned properties in other countries. And therefore, this couple were tenants paying a low rent.

They have a cat. And they had a leak from the ceiling above the hallway at the entrance to their home. They mentioned this to the housing association who sent out a tradesman to have a look at it.

That tradesman said that their cat had been peeing in the bathroom and it had caused the roof below to collapse. This was a ridiculous suggestion because a domestic cat cannot produce enough urine to have "water" leaking through the ceiling onto the floor below. 

And that's what the tenants saw. Domestic cats can simply not produce enough liquid to cause a ceiling to collapse. This is common sense and as mentioned it is idiotic to suggest otherwise.

Because the ceiling collapsed as it wasn't repaired, the pair had to leave the property and live in a hotel nearby while it was fully investigated and repaired.

The housing association have now admitted that it was a leak in a heating pipe which caused the damage. They apologised and confirmed that the safety of their tenants are their primary concern.

Details:

• Housing association: Golding Homes
• The Tenants: Stacey Sell and her partner Mark Twaites plus 2 kids.
• Location: Maidstone, Kent, UK.
• Source: Mirror newspaper.

Feline Excess Urination

A person visiting a major website about the domestic cat said that he was on a fixed retirement income, had not taken his domestic cat to the veterinary surgeon and that his cat was urinating much more than normal and he wondered why. He said that he was going through about 90 lbs of cat litter every month compared to 35 pounds normally and he wanted some advice.

The obvious answer is to take the cat to the vet but it is amazing how often people don't want to do that and they ask questions on the Internet and hope to get a good answer and fix the problem which is highly unlikely, meanwhile his cat is suffering.

One of the feline diseases that causes this is diabetes. The cat does not produce enough insulin. This results in an elevated blood sugar level. In turn, excess glucose is eliminated by the kidneys resulting in frequent urination. As a result, the cat drink more water.

Another disease that causes a cat to drink more water and urinate more often is kidney disease. Both diabetes and kidney disease are fairly commonplace amongst the domestic cat population. And both of these diseases cannot be cured by a cat caretaker. They both require careful handling and a proper diagnosis.

Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease can result in frequent urination and passing blood. The cat may urinate outside of the litter box.

Increased drinking and urination with very dilute urine may indicate that a cat has Cushing's disease. About 75% of cats with Cushing's disease also have diabetes mellitus. This is not a complete list.

There's no doubt that when a cat is consistently peeing more than normal, as a matter of urgency, the cat's owner should take her/his cat to the vet.