To break into my new neighbours house *THREAD 3: The Final Conundrum*

[Catsos]

I’m really not trying to drag this out 😩 but I seriously need some advice following on from my posts this weekend where my cat (who has a reputation for breaking cat-flaps in the neighbourhood) broke into my new neighbours vacant house while it is being renovated.

Here is the original post if anyone needs more context:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4881905-to-break-into-new-neighbours-house-serious-question-not-trolling

After not being able to get back out the cat-flap he was stuck in there for 48 hours over the bank holiday weekend and then finally released by the builder after various rescue attempts by me.

During that period however some damage occurred to my new neighbours property. I had hoped they would take it all in good spirits as fellow cat owners and we’d laugh about it and be new cat bessie mates but they we’re absolutely seething!!

They have proposed that I pay £1,600!!! for the following:

£800 to replace the rug my cat wee’d on

£400 to replace an area of laminate flooring as apparently the wee has gone into the underlay

I offered to pay £100 for professional rug cleaning, but the wife (who seems very neurotic) says her cats will still be able to smell my cats urine and they don’t want that to stress their cats out when they move them into the new home

£150 for repainting areas of muddy foot prints on the walls where my cat scratched to get out
(again I offered to just wipe them off but the wife insists it is repainted)

£50 to repaint window sils where the crabsticks & icecubes I dropped through the window has damaged the paint

£200 for a new bathroom window vent as I pushed thinly slice honey roasted ham through it

AIBU to think they are being very over the top? I could personally clean/repaint all of these things myself. Should I refuse to pay this amount? I don’t even have this amount available anyway, I would need to get an overdraft.

If this is for real you sound like the sort of person who gives cat owners a bad name. Keep the cat in, or at the very least get a catio, pay your neighbours for the damage the cat has cause and get insurance.

I laughed along with your other threads but come on! They are renovating and your cat has damaged a house that they haven’t yet moved into. It isn’t your fault but it’s not theirs either.

I think you should pay. All the money that they must have spent and you’ve offered to vax and wipe the walls! I think that’s insulting.

2k for the neighbours new house that you threw ham and crab into should be fine if you've saved all those thousands on pet insurance OP

What a fool.

Honestly. You don’t have pet insurance which is not the neighbours issue. Your cat who you know wanders and breaks into other houses gets into an empty house and I agree with others. You do seem to be treating this is a bit of a joke….

Paying the excess on their house insurance is rubbish. Their premiums will now go up if they claim.

I would honestly just pay up.

So they should be lumbered with higher premiums because OP is an irresponsible prat?

@Oioicaptain if OPs neighbours go to court, all these threads will have been summed up and be all over the daily fail and every 'local' paper on slow news day. She's posted pictures of the offender too which will make a nice accompanying picture for all the journos.

Fair enough but the crabsticks and ham were just absolutely fuckin mental tbh. I'd be pissed off.

I'd love to see this £200 cat flap.

I'd offer £200, take it or leave it. And I'll happily represent Mr Whiskers in court. My client is innocent, your honour, he was unlawfully detained by these vicious criminals. He demands compensation in the form of more crab sticks.

I think they are trying it on a bit

You having a laugh??? No way would a person pay after dropping a bit of food and ice through into the house. £1000 for flooring and carpets lol. Go to Wilko and buy cleaning products for pet urine, poo if this is actually true I would be tempted to leave a present in her loo. Tell her your the cat whisperer, and he now knows to use the loo.

@Procrastinatingbecauseithelps nah, the neighbours shouldn't leave the cat flap on the setting in only meaning the cat can access the house but then can't get out. That's pretty irresponsible.

Also they are partly liable because their cat flap was not fit for purpose.

they are chancing with £150 to have the bit of the wall painted, you could offer to buy a tin of paint and do it yourself.

Does that also hold if you damage somebody's expensive professionally-made clothes - can you just tell them you'll get your sewing machine out and knock them something up yourself to replace it?

Personally, we would do painting in our home ourselves; but they are obviously people who value professionals and are willing to pay their prices for an assured quality job. Why ever would they be content with some neighbour patching up their ruined professional job?

And even though we would do our own painting, even we wouldn't trust some random who offered to do a good enough job - especially when they had previously been rude and clearly resented having to do it and were the sort who threw crabsticks and ham into empty house windows and air vents.

By letting you do their repainting, they have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose.

I'm so disapointed in the lack of OP updates. I haven't been this entertained in a fictional thread since the cf parking thread last year where half of MN were planning on flocking to some farmers market in the back and beyond in hope of seeing the OPs brother.

Buy a paint tester pot lol

Any cat couldve got in, maybe you should sue them for stress after their broken cat flap kept your cat hostage! Theyre taking the piss....

For those harping on about pet insurance, isn’t that just for your pet’s illnesses, not if they run amok? It’s just not relevant, here.
and cats are considered to be ungovernable, anyway.

Neighbours should claim on their home insurance.

Remembering my lovely cat who went in, it turned out, my neighbour’s skylight window and was missing in action for a worrying amount of time. When neighbour found her, he carried her upstairs to me but her bladder, bless her, she must have been bursting, gave out and she weed on him. He was lovely about it.

The parking thread was good. Also the "scaffolders" - didn't that go to a 4th thread? Very entertaining.

Sorry, confused you with another poster re: hate crime.

The air vent can be cleaned, I promise. The carpet can also. We've done both successfully.

What's wrong here is people acting like a couple of pieces of food and ice are so terribly destructive that it would cost hundreds to repair. And that paw prints are a big deal.

The floor is the bigger issue and they only asked for 400 pounds for that. The carpet cleaning won't be cheap and will be time consuming. Ours were removed from the house, cleaned via machine and dried on a few warm/dry days on a rooftop. But cost about $250 each for massive rugs including pickup and delivery. (One of which had been peed on by a sick cat. We had 4 cats at the time. Not one of them tried to use the same spot again.)

I did suggest claiming on their house insurance but they kind of said “why should we?” And the wife said it would make their premiums go up next year?

It will. Not sure why they should pay for your stupidity. They probably would have had more sympathy for the accidental damage caused by your cat if you hadn’t deliberately caused more
damage with your ridiculous acts with the crabsticks and ham.

With regards to the £800 rug what fellow cat owner would pay £800 for a rug, I would ask to see the rug that was damaged and would only replace like for like. You are not going to replace and ikea rug with a john lewis one!

They don’t need a new vent, just remove the existing vent take the stale ham out and put it back again.

The wall can be wiped clean. The laminate can be cleaned.

Write them a cheque for £200 + what ever the actual cost of the rug is and tell them you’ll see them in court if they want more.