My partner and myself are currently living with a couple in a unit. (The girl is on the lease, the guy isn't) when leasing the place I was aware that my roommates had two kittens. To cut a long story short, my room mates didn't furnish the house what so ever my partner did, not because he wanted too just because they had nothing and he had to. Nearly everything that is in the house belongs to him and was bought entirely by him. Now the two kittens have urinated all over my partners couch, unfortunately you cannot take the cushions off the couch so it will be extremely difficult too clean and my partner and I believe that as the owners of the pets, (regardless if we had agreed to live with the kittens or not) that they are liable towards the damages done too his couch and should pay too get the couch professionally cleaned. We did not agree too take any responsibility for the actions of the cats or take on any form of ownership of the pets and we had advised them previously that they should clean up after them better as they urinate on our stuff because there litter boxes are always dirty. I said that I am happy too retrieve quotes from various cleaning places too find how much it will cost too have the couch cleaned and present them with the cheapest but they bluntly refuse too take any responsibility towards the actions of the cats and believe that 'kittens will be kittens' and it's not there responsibility to maintain what they do and it's completely our problem as we had agreed to live with the kittens in the first place. I have looked through various acts and policies regarding pet ownership and unfortunately with cats not a lot is covered, I thought I would ask for opinions and hopefully get some concrete legal advice regarding this issue before I contact a solicitor.
I live in New South Wales in Australia as well.
Answer by RandomChick62
I don't know what the laws are like in Australia but here in Canada, if you're living with someone with cats it doesn't matter if you agreed to take responsibility or not for their actions, there's not much you can do. Unless you have some kind of written proof they agreed to pay for any damages to your stuff (not to mention any permanent damage to the unit itself, which you may end up having to pay for). You may need to just cut your loses, take what you can that's not too damaged and move out.
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Orignal From: Desperate for Legal Advice - Damages from room mates pets!?
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