Rotten smell in hallway, neighbours away and I’m concerned about missing cat

[ohyesido]

Just that really. I’ve noticed a nasty fishy smell in the hallway of the apartment building I live in. My neighbours are away, they regularly go to their home country in Eastern Europe. Haven’t seen them for a couple of weeks.

This is relevant because they have a very friendly cat who I have not seen for a while and I know they won’t have taken her with them

i am thinking the worst, what should i do? DH says I should ring 101, would they care?

What part do you find so unbelievable? There are no purple dragons or pixies or mythical creatures involved? Maggots and cats are not so unusual

Instead of calling the police, you could very well end up being arrested by them instead 👀

Ok... so you thought the neighbour and/or their cat was dead inside the flat. But instead of calling the police, you tried to break in.
Let's just say, for arguments sake, that you found the neighbour bludgened to death. Your fingerprints and DNA are now all over the flat. You have to call the police and explain that you broke in, found a dead body, and then called them rather than call them based on your concerns. They will have to investigate, and if there is any suspicion that you were involved, your prints/DNA all over the place will help - yes, you were there 'after' the death, but then a good murderer would make sure their prints and DNA were put there after the kill, too.
Yes, I watch too much detective stuff.
No, I would not recommend breaking in to see if there's a dead body (person or feline). That's what the police are for - to investigate and deal with stuff.

This is so anticlimactic

Why not a dead body 😩

I think it’s you who is bored?

noticed smell, concerned for cat
DH got home, attempted access to alleviate concerns
had dinner
spoke to old boy neighbour who said it’s not dead feline it’s maggots due to food bin left open.

agreed I will contact council to see if they can advise on initial action due to hygiene risk.

any plot holes?

For what?

Yeah. We need to know how the neighbour knows it’s a maggot-y bin, and also how he got in and why he didn’t remove it.

I don’t know how he got in, or if indeed he got in. I only know that he seems convinced that it’s not a dead cat it’s an infestation

The attempted break in

All those three.

And why op thought breaking in was better than ringing the police.

Are you really not sure?

What exactly are you expecting environmental health or the council to do for someone forgetting to put their bin out?

okay…not sure if they’ll be too concerned about that given we weren’t planning to rob the place

An infestation of flies.
In a flat where nobody has been seen for a while.
With an awful smell.
And, quite possibly, a dead body infested with maggots.

Yeah, Environmental Health isn't going to help. Contact the police, let them deal with it. If it's just a bin, they can sort it out. If it's a dead body, they can sort that out instead. But leaving it to environmental health will mean waiting until Monday for a response, and that smell is not going to get better.

I think you’re taking the attempted break in out of context.

if I was going to make it up, surely I would have ended it slightly more dramatically than a food bin?

Op you are either making this up or have been a bit naive.

Don't enter someone else's property again unless it is a time-pressured emergency, which this plainly wasn't: whatever the smell was was past saving.

@ohyesido Well they were interested enough to follow you

You're obsessed with burglars and going on about it like a dog with a bone!

Obsessed I don't even think I've written the word burglar? I freely admit I'm just bored on a Friday evening and therefore engaging in this nonsense by pointing out trying to enter a property without permission or in an emergency which this was not is quite literally the definition of breaking in.

You get maggots on any dead body, human cat or food.

I personally don't think a bin would put out that much smell.

Hi folks

Can we please avoid making personal attacks? We've deleted quite a few now, and we'd like to draw a line. Please do keep things civil and post within talk guidelines.

🤭 The app I use for my cat sitter is called Cat in a Flat!

OP - for goodness sake, call the police and leave alone, this is suspicious enough that something horrible may have happened and you don’t want to have to deal with the immediate of that. Let the police do what they are trained to do.