cat urine

[poe_me]

What is the name of your state? California
I had a situation with a new tenant come up and am trying to figure out who is at fault so that I can do the right thing. Tenant signs lease, looks at place, arranges to have friends move him in since he had to work that day. Next day he arrives at the place to technically move in. Smell of cat urine is overwhelming. Two days before the friends moved the stuff in, I had the entire place cleaned by professionals and also had a truck mounted pro carpet cleaner in (the previous tenant had a cat). By the end of both of those the place was immaculate. Even before I had everything cleaned, there was no cat urine smell.

So how did the cat urine get in there? My guess and only plausible explaination is that there are 2 cats that "live" on the premesis. I say "live" because they come and go over the neighboorhood and do not live in my other tenants' units and they just showed up on the premesis one day. But I think the one tenant may feed them from time to time since she feels sorry for them. And I think that the previous tenant in this unit used to let them come into his unit. If so, they may be used to coming into the unit and when the movers were moving stuff in, they snuck in and urinated. Maybe they were mad the old stuff was gone and that it smelled fresh, so they wanted to mark their territory...who knows. i cannot think of any other way this could have happened. The new tenant was told about the 2 cats and the living situation and there was a verbal confirmation that that was fine. So who is at fault?:
-The previous tenant for training them to come in?
-The new tenant for he was in posession of the unit at the time of urination?
-The new tenant's movers (ie the new tenant since they are friends) for letting the cat in?
-The landlord (me) for not warning the new tenant to watch out for those cats trying to sneak in?
-The other tenant for making the stray cats feel at home on the premesis?


Thanks in advance for your take on this odd situation...What is the name of your state?

 

[justalayman]

since all you have is speculation with absolutely no facts to back up any of the scenarios,

I vote for the smell was a result of urine already in the apartment and either temp change or lack of air movement or walking across the crpet where is sits in the padding or subfloor caused it to become more noticable.

So, prove any one of them and rea;zie without proof of yours, mine is the most plausible so you end up taking it on this one.

Animal urine often soaks well into the carpeting, padding and even into the actual floor structure if it is not prevented. You may simply have a case of the urine simply being worked back up through the carpet and is now noticable.

 

[PghREA]

The carpet company wet the carpet as part of the cleaning process and the damp carpets activated the smell. The smell will probably go away when the carpets are throughly dry and the rooms are aired out. If not, have the carpet company come back and neutralize the carpets.

 

[Nu2Jersey]

I'm dealing with the samething as we speak. The urine has been found in the subflooring. The oder will not go away. During high humidty times the oder will be activated. During high heat the oder will be activated. You can find out where it is by using a black light in the dark. The urine will glow in the dark. And if its there... the offending source should be removed (to be sure it's gone). My problem/source was in the subflooring the landlord refused to replace it.