The Landlady: Outta space

Life is currently a little cramped at Landlady Towers. Not only do I have four lodgers, I am also helping out a couple of friends in need of a place to stay for various reasons. One friend has been waiting for three months trying to complete on the purchase of his first flat. Three months is an unreasonable amount of time to wait for anything, in my opinion, but it would appear that in spite of modern technology, conveyancing solicitors still proceed at the pace of a lame sloth.

My friend, who’s just started a part-time job in Churchill Square, needs a place to stay on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, and has been sofa surfing in an indefinite manner. Landlady Towers is his last resort – I think it’s the last resort of many people – but luckily, The Small Daughter stays with her father from Wednesday to Saturday, so he can have her room. It currently smells of old feet, but any port in a storm.

Billeting my other friend is slightly more complicated, in that he only needs somewhere to stay for a few days while his landlord renovates his flat. The problem is that he need to hide his cats from the landlord, as pets are a definite no no.

The problem is that he needs to hide his cats from the landlord

Even though I would go as far as to say that I actively dislike cats, I can see that they’re not the easiest creatures to hide as they do pretty much what they like, so against my better judgement, I’m willing to help out.

One cat horror story that is etched on my mind is that of an old friend of mine who had a lovely flat in Notting Hill. In the ‘80s, a little down on his uppers, he decided to let out his spare room and placed an advert firmly specifying that pets were not allowed. A very attractive potential tenant turned up to view the room and with a combination of charm and womanly wiles, convinced my friend that she and her ‘well behaved’ cat would be the ideal housemates.

Being a bloke, my friend fell for it. Of course on moving day, the first thing the cat did when released from his cat container was deposit a large, liquid turd on my friend’s feather pillow. I do believe that there’s no such thing as a well behaved cat.