Tag Archives: cats

MORE CAT TALES.

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Landlords and Catnip.  Catnip is easy to grow. It is green all year round (at least here in the Bay Area), and it has pretty pink and white flowers with purple spots. Catnip has a pleasant fragrance, and its aroma repels garden pests, like aphids. Catnip might seem like an ideal plant for use as ornamental ground vegetation, but it’s not. The photo below shows what happens when a landlord plants catnip around his building.


Cat Security Guard. There is a sign in front of the security guard station in the photo below that says in Turkish that no one can enter this building without showing an entry pass to the security guard. Surprisingly, many people did show their entry passes to the cat as they entered the building.


Civet Cat Coffee. San Francisco has the most billionaires per capita of any city on Earth – and by a huge margin. In San Francisco, there is one billionaire for every 11,000 people. In New York City, Dubai, and Hong Kong; there is one billionaire for every 80,000 to 100,000 people. Very rich people in San Francisco buy some astonishing stuff, like civet cat coffee. It is made from coffee beans that were eaten by civet cats. Civet cats eat coffee berries but cannot digest the beans inside and expel them in their poop. These beans are hand gathered from the cat poop, washed, dried, and shipped to coffee roasters. There are several places in San Francisco’s financial district where you can buy 100% civet cat coffee. It costs around $70 a cup. You can also buy civet coffee on Amazon for $700 a pound. Here is how to buy it. https://www.amazon.com/Weasel-Coffee-Special-Organic-Arabica/dp/B08HZ9PB42 Amazon calls it Vietnamese weasel coffee, but it’s the same thing as civet coffee. You can find much cheaper civet coffee on the market, but it isn’t 100% pure. The cheap stuff is a mixture of a few civet beans and a lot of regular coffee beans. (By the way, civet coffee is not kosher. A rabbi familiar with this product once told me at a trade show: “You cannot make kosher food from something that came out of a cat’s rear end.”) If someone offered me a cup of civet coffee, I would turn them down because I would be thinking about how it is produced. Would you drink it?

WORST APPLICATION EVER. A couple of cat tales.

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DO YOU RENT TO CATS? I once got a phone call from a woman inquiring about an apartment I had for rent. She said: “I saw your ad for a 1-bedroom apartment for rent. I have a question. Do you rent to cats?” I thought that was an oddly worded question, so I phrased my answer carefully. I said: “No, I don’t rent to cats, but I do rent apartments to people with cats.” The woman said, in a dejected voice: “Oh, that’s too bad” and hung up the phone. I never heard from her again. Although this happened many years ago, I still think about this incident occasionally and wonder what was on this woman’s mind.

A GERMAN SHEPHERD IS NOT A CAT. On another occasion, a man applied for this same apartment. On his application form, he answered the question: ‘Do you have a pet?’ with ‘Yes. Cat’. I asked him some questions about his cat, but he gave me evasive answers, so I told him that I wanted to see his cat. I asked him: “Do you have a photo of your cat on your cell phone?” He reluctantly said that he did and pulled up a picture. I looked at the photo and said: “This is a photo of you standing next to a German shepherd.” He said: “Yeah. Her name is Sophie.” I said: “I don’t understand. A German shepherd is a dog. Why did you tell me that you have a cat?” He said: “Well, in your ad, you checked off that a cat was OK, but you didn’t check off that a dog was OK.”  I said: “So you thought that if we agreed to call your German shepherd a cat, then that would make it a cat.” He said that was his line of thinking. I decided to rent the place to somebody else.

EPIDEMICS AND CATS.

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The deadliest epidemic in human history was the Black Death in the 14th Century. There are a lot of historians who believe that the staggering death toll in Europe from the Black Death as well as many other epidemics was due to the disappearance of cats. In the Middle Ages, people associated cats with Satan. It could be dangerous to own a cat. In many places, owning a cat was considered evidence that a person was a witch, and that was punishable by death. Over the past 1,000 years, many European countries developed religious holidays and festivals in which cats were tortured or killed. Many cat-killing holidays are still celebrated in Europe, although now without actually killing cats, like Kattenstoet in Belgium. This year, the Danish holiday of Fastelavn will fall on February 14. It is celebrated all over Denmark. Fastelavn is like a carnival based on torturing cats. Traditionally, a cat was sealed inside a barrel. Then, children dressed in costumes would hit the barrel with clubs and bats to terrorize the cat before knocking it unconscious or killing it. Danes stopped doing that in the late 1800s. Now, Danish children just hit a picture of cats on barrels filled with candy. They hit the cats until the candy falls out of the barrel. It’s like a Danish pinata. See pictures below. I have never figured out why so many people associate cats with evil. I think this may have something to do with the aloof and independent nature of cats, but that’s just a guess.

CAT AND MOUSE CARTOONS.

In cat and mouse cartoons, the mice always outwit the cat and terrible things happen to the cat. That’s true in Tom & Jerry cartoons, Speedy Gonzales vs. Sylvester cartoons, Hubie & Bert vs. Claude Cat, the mice who are Cinderella’s friends vs. Lucifer the cat, plus TV shows such as Dixie & Pixie vs. Mr. Jinx, and most violent of all – Itchy & Scratchy on The Simpsons. However, we human beings are very lucky to have cats. Cats kill over 20 billion rodents a year. Without cats, the rodent population of the world would explode, creating famine and epidemics. Even now, staggering amounts of grain are eaten by rodents, especially in poor countries. In Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, 50% of all the grain produced is eaten by rodents. Rodents are also the principal carriers of more than 60 diseases. I understand why people root for the little guy in cat and mouse cartoons, but humanity would be in a lot of trouble if mice and rats could actually outwit cats.

WORST APPLICANT EVER. ‘Snowball’

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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.

SILICON VALLEY LANDLORD RENTS APARTMENT TO 2 CATS.

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Did you hear about this? A landlord in San Jose rented an apartment to 2 cats. See: Renting Apartment to Cats. The cats belong to a girl whose father pays the rent. High paid, high tech people in the Bay Area are famous for spending a lot of money on their pampered pets. That includes cat personal shoppers, dog bakeries, dog and cat psychiatrists, pet spas, pet party planners, and dog massage and stress relief clinics. I’ve been to Le Marcel Dog Bakery in San Francisco. The stuff they make is really beautiful but expensive. I once met a cat personal shopper. She buys and makes custom-made products for cats. Custom-made play and sleeping structures for cats can cost thousands of dollars.

Worst Application Ever

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Do You Rent To Cats? Many years ago, I rented an apartment in Oakland. The day after I posted my listing, I got a phone call from a woman who said: “I saw your ad for a one-bedroom apartment on McAuley Street. I have a question. Do you rent to cats?” I thought that was an oddly worded question so I was careful how I answered her. I said: “No, I don’t rent apartments to cats, but I do rent apartments to people with cats.” The woman said, in a dejected tone of voice: “Oh, that’s too bad” and hung up the phone. I never heard from her again. Although this happened many years ago, I still think about that woman every now and then and wonder what was on her mind.