Snowball. One of the strangest applications I ever received was for a one bedroom apartment in Rockridge from a well-dressed, middle-aged woman. She walked through the apartment, filled out an application form and handed it to me. The first thing I noticed was that she answered ‘Name of Applicant’ with ‘Snowball.’ I said: “Is your name Snowball?” She said: “No. Snowball is the name of my cat.” I said: “But you wrote ‘Snowball’ after ‘Name of Applicant’.” She said: “Yes. That’s right.” I was confused by that. Then I read the rest of her application form and discovered that all of the information on the form was about her cat, nothing about herself. For example, after ‘Previous address’ she wrote ‘Berkeley Humane Society animal shelter.’ I said: “I don’t understand. Do you want me to put the lease in your cat’s name?” She said: “Yes.” At that point, I knew that I was not going to rent my apartment to this woman, but I was curious to know what she was thinking. I said: “Why do you want the lease in your cat’s name?” She said: “Well, as I understand the law, if the lease is in my name, then I’ll be responsible for paying the rent.” I thought about that and said: “Yes. That’s right.” She said: “Well, that’s why I want the lease in my cat’s name.” I nodded my head to indicate that I understood her line of reasoning. I thanked her for her application, but I rented my apartment to someone else.

Renting to Cats. I wonder if this woman ever found a landlord who was willing to rent an apartment to her cat. I have read stories about people who rented apartments for their pets, but I’ve never heard of a lease where only the pet was responsible for paying the rent. I thought about this woman recently when I saw a story in the news about a man who rented a furnished studio apartment in Silicon Valley for his daughter’s 2 cats. Just the cats live in the apartment. The rent is $1,500 a month. Here’s a You Tube video interview with the landlord: Silicon Valley Apartment For Cats.  In the video, the landlord says that renting his apartment to these cats is “great” because cats: “don’t have opposable thumbs” and “they’ve never heard of Trump.” Well, that’s true, but does that really make cats great tenants? I think that all of my tenants have opposable thumbs and have heard of Donald Trump.