I'm not sure if this is going in the right forum, so please feel free to move this!
All right, here's the situation. My boyfriend and I and our two cats have lived in a wonderful apartment for almost a year now, and we really like this place -- and would be unable to find someplace this nice for as little as we're currently paying. Technically speaking, the building has a no-pets policy, but it's not enforced and our landlady knows we have the cats; she's met them and thinks they're great (they helped resolve a rodent problem a little while ago). The woman downstairs moved in about four months after us, and every time we've spoken to her, she was aware of how noisy our cats are (especially at night), but claimed she was fine with that, that they were just being cats and she "loves all animals and all life," in her own words.
Up until today, apparently, when she decided to leave us a snarky little note about how patient she's been with how noisy our cats are, and we have one night to resolve the situation. She expects the cats to be quieter TONIGHT.
Now, we have tried to calm the cats down at night, but Spike is naturally energetic (and he's brain-damaged, so he forgets where he left us, what he was doing, and where he's going) and it doesn't seem to matter what we do, he just likes racing around like a maniac late at night. We play with him before bedtime, he gets fed before bedtime (scheduled feedings: neither of our cats work well with free-feeding) ... Nothing seems to calm him down, and since I don't believe there's anything wrong with him, I'm not going to medicate him (the woman downstairs suggested we tranquilize him at night!
I don't THINK so!).
Anyway, the only thing we can think of to do -- because if we don't quiet the cats down at night, this woman will complain to our landlady and that's a legitimate excuse to force us to get rid of the cats or move out, because it interferes with this woman's quality of life -- is to shut both cats up in our bathroom at night. It's a decently-sized bathroom (bigger than my sister's bedroom back home, actually!), with a window overlooking the yard where the cats can watch squirrels and sniff the night air. I've put a scratching post, two blankets and a litterbox in there (we already keep a water dish in the bathroom for the cats; for some reason, Oz thinks the water tastes better in this dish than in the one in the kitchen). They'd be shut up in there for about 7 hours, with occasional visits from me and my small bladder.
Does this sound like an acceptable (if not ideal) solution? We can't shut the cats up in our bedroom because the door won't fasten properly (and the frame is too hard to install a lock) and the (entirely necessary) air conditioner freaks them both out. There are no other rooms in our apartment where we could put the cats; I'd like to talk to our landlady about installing a folding door on the living room door (the downstairs tenant's apartment is ONLY covered by our living room; everywhere else in my apartment is over another, uncomplaining tenant's apartment), but I'm afraid if I bring the subject up with our landlady, her response will be to tell us to get rid of the cats, and that's not gonna happen.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with this, or how to improve the bathroom for our cats? I hate the idea of shutting them up all night, even if the room is pretty big, but I can't see any way out of this; our landlady likes the downstairs tenant, so she isn't going to side with us in this matter.
Sorry this is so long ... I'm just really, really frustrated by the whole situation. I mean, couldn't she have mentioned this EIGHT MONTHS AGO when she first moved in, instead of continually telling us the cats didn't bother her at all? Grrrr ...
All right, here's the situation. My boyfriend and I and our two cats have lived in a wonderful apartment for almost a year now, and we really like this place -- and would be unable to find someplace this nice for as little as we're currently paying. Technically speaking, the building has a no-pets policy, but it's not enforced and our landlady knows we have the cats; she's met them and thinks they're great (they helped resolve a rodent problem a little while ago). The woman downstairs moved in about four months after us, and every time we've spoken to her, she was aware of how noisy our cats are (especially at night), but claimed she was fine with that, that they were just being cats and she "loves all animals and all life," in her own words.
Up until today, apparently, when she decided to leave us a snarky little note about how patient she's been with how noisy our cats are, and we have one night to resolve the situation. She expects the cats to be quieter TONIGHT.
Now, we have tried to calm the cats down at night, but Spike is naturally energetic (and he's brain-damaged, so he forgets where he left us, what he was doing, and where he's going) and it doesn't seem to matter what we do, he just likes racing around like a maniac late at night. We play with him before bedtime, he gets fed before bedtime (scheduled feedings: neither of our cats work well with free-feeding) ... Nothing seems to calm him down, and since I don't believe there's anything wrong with him, I'm not going to medicate him (the woman downstairs suggested we tranquilize him at night!
Anyway, the only thing we can think of to do -- because if we don't quiet the cats down at night, this woman will complain to our landlady and that's a legitimate excuse to force us to get rid of the cats or move out, because it interferes with this woman's quality of life -- is to shut both cats up in our bathroom at night. It's a decently-sized bathroom (bigger than my sister's bedroom back home, actually!), with a window overlooking the yard where the cats can watch squirrels and sniff the night air. I've put a scratching post, two blankets and a litterbox in there (we already keep a water dish in the bathroom for the cats; for some reason, Oz thinks the water tastes better in this dish than in the one in the kitchen). They'd be shut up in there for about 7 hours, with occasional visits from me and my small bladder.
Does this sound like an acceptable (if not ideal) solution? We can't shut the cats up in our bedroom because the door won't fasten properly (and the frame is too hard to install a lock) and the (entirely necessary) air conditioner freaks them both out. There are no other rooms in our apartment where we could put the cats; I'd like to talk to our landlady about installing a folding door on the living room door (the downstairs tenant's apartment is ONLY covered by our living room; everywhere else in my apartment is over another, uncomplaining tenant's apartment), but I'm afraid if I bring the subject up with our landlady, her response will be to tell us to get rid of the cats, and that's not gonna happen.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with this, or how to improve the bathroom for our cats? I hate the idea of shutting them up all night, even if the room is pretty big, but I can't see any way out of this; our landlady likes the downstairs tenant, so she isn't going to side with us in this matter.
Sorry this is so long ... I'm just really, really frustrated by the whole situation. I mean, couldn't she have mentioned this EIGHT MONTHS AGO when she first moved in, instead of continually telling us the cats didn't bother her at all? Grrrr ...