In the popular Bay Area in San Francisco, where the houses are scarce and the rents come out of the pan, two cats single-handedly live in a studio.
Louise and Tina are the cats of student Victoria Amith, who could not take the animals to her student room. Because the cats could not get along with the dog of her father’s fiancée, fatherly decided to put the cats in the studio of a friend. That costs him $1,500 per month, takes the man for granted. “It is a temporary solution.”
Despite the ‘temporary’ nature of the arrangement, the cats have been in the studio since July last year, in the backyard of David Callish in San Jose, in the middle of the popular Bay Area.
“I have never planned this,” says the landlord. “It’s just that people keep a lot of their pets: they are part of the family so I wanted to help my friend.”
Kittens
That friend is the 43-year-old David Good, who could not get over his heart to get rid of the cats he had given as kittens to his then young daughter. The now 18-year-old Victoria left for southern California last summer to study at Azusa Pacific University, but is not allowed to keep pets in her student room.
Because her father and his fiancé went to live in a new apartment and the cats could not handle the dog of the woman, Good decided to find a different solution for the animals.
Overheated housing market
Around that time, David Callish wanted to rent out his studio-converted garden house via AirBnB, where Good convinced him to rent the house to him for the cats. Callish agreed because he wanted to help his friend out of the fire. “It’s a crazy situation,” says the man, who is aware of the overheated housing market in the Bay Area, where house prices have risen so that people have to live in cars, campers and tents because they do not have high rental and can afford house prices.
“I feel bad about the ‘wasting’ of living space for cats, but this situation arose and I wanted to help my friend’, says Callish. The $1,500 he receives every month for housing the animals is easily earned. “I actually have two tenants who do not bother about anything. It is fantastic, they are very quiet. The only problem is that the place now stinks…”
Crazy cat lady
Victoria Amith, the owner of the cats, is happy with the temporary solution and visits her animals every time she goes home. In between, her father and Callish regularly send her photos of Tina and Louise, who have “the most beautiful cat apartment in the world.” The girl hopes to find accommodation next year where she can also accommodate her cats. “I love my cats so much,” she says. “I’m really a crazy cat lady!”
