The Previous Owners

[Andara Bledin]

So, as done of you know, my boyfriend and I are the proud owners of a house.

There are many reasons to dislike this guy, most of which are related to dicking us around during the whole purchasing of said house. Fine, whatever. We can deal.

And then we found something particularly awful. Unfortunately, we found it several hours after one of our cats.

There was a fucking glue trap under the bathroom sink.

First of, those things are offensive just by their very existence. My work knows that if there is ever a mouse in one of the ones there and I see it, I'm out for the day. A manager from a former workplace objected on less moral grounds after finding part of a mouse skin in one.

So. Two of our cats spent last night in the house. We brought the third over this morning. We go home after work today and pack essentials, like the fridge, etc., and head back over. For a while, we can't find our third cat. It's not a big house so I take a tour and spot him under the counter under the the sink in the bathroom. We didn't even know there was a space there.

We decide to leave him there until everything is in, them I go to pull him out. Almost immediately I'm seeing red. He must have sat in that fucking trap for hours. It's deep in between the pads of both front paws and I'm going to have to take scissors to him to get any more of that shit off. He's already hurt himself trying to get away from it and he bit me a good one while I was doing what I could.

If the rat bayard former owner had any money, I'd go to an emergency very and send him the bill. I may have to go anyway. I am so fucking poissed off right now.

^-.-^

[HYHYBT]

Poor kitty!

[tropicsgoddess]

Poor kitty! I hope he/she's gonna be okay.

[gremcint]

would soaking her feet in something help, maybe nail polish remover, I don't think that would be harmful as long as you washed the cats feet thoroughly afterwards, maybe even just vinegar would help.

I'm not really familiar with glue traps so I don't know what i'd suggest for them.

[Andara Bledin]

Now that I've had a chance to get online with something other than my cell phone (no 'net till Monday at least), I've found several suggestions that include fish oil and peanut butter oil to break down the stuff.

However, I did manage to pull most of it off his skin and into his fur, where it's picking up every bit of dust he can find, which makes it very easy to clip off if we can pin him down to do it. He's a very squirmy cat.

He nipped me at one point last night, while I was working on him. An upper fang went in just next to my fingernail (probably glanced off of it), and as it didn't seem to be bleeding much, I ignored it until I was done with that pass. Went to rinse my hands off (yet again) and wondered why there was so much blood going down the drain. Turned my finger over to find that he'd sunk a bottom fang nice and deep into the side of my finger. And it's my index finger, so that puncture is going to annoy the ever-loving crap out of me for the next few days. And I still have several trips of moving stuff to do this weekend. >_< Thankfully, I'm pretty resistant to cat-based injuries and other than the punctures themselves, I'm ok.

I still hate the old owner, though. The toilet runs constantly, and the asshole had turned the water to it off when anyone would inspect the place so you couldn't tell. I had wondered why it was that nobody was allowed to be on the property when he wasn't there (despite the fact that there were people living there who could have supervised). And he left the sprinklers in the front yard on. Who the hell pulls that sort of shit?!?

But my favorite was that he'd gotten the inspection report from the city on August 15th, but didn't pass it on to our realtors until August 29th (after they'd been hounding his agents for two weeks to send it over), and then got on our case to get everything signed and done in the next 2 days. Asshole. Thankfully, other than the fact that we have to replace all of the windows that had been previously replaced because nobody had pulled permits to work on anything in the 80+ years the house has been standing, and so those all have to be redone, there's nothing major that needs work that we don't already know about.

^-.-^

[MaggieTheCat]

Poor kitty! I hope he, and you are both okay. Didn't you have a private inspection done? When we bought our house, we hired an inspector who came over and checked everything out while we were there. He flushed all the toilets, etc. He would've known if the water had been turned off. Sorry the previous owner was such a dick in your case.

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah, we had an inspection done. He mostly found the sorts of things we'd expected. But he wouldn't have said anything about a lone glue trap under a sink in a house that was still occupied. I imagine, much like us, he would have expected them to actually clear everything out when they vacated. We didn't even get the keys until a couple of days after they were supposed to be out, but part of that was due to it being a weekend.

^-.-^

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I can't think of a more useless waste of money than a home inspector. The fact that you pretty much can't sell or buy a house without one to me seems like quite a pretty little racket.

I have never had to remove glue trap glue, and not being the sort of person to ever use a glue trap, I hope I never do. But I do have to deal with a lot of pine tar in the summer and baby oil, skin so soft, or even WD 40 will take it right off. Probably go the straight mineral oil route (or heck, even try olive oil) if I had to get it off of an animal.

[the_std]

I dunno, I believe that if you buy a house without a home inspector, you're rolling some pretty heavy dice. There are so many things in a house that could be jeopardized and cost you some serious, SERIOUS cash and you couldn't even see it. Most people aren't trained to look for the warning signs of things like dry rot in roof rafters, or poor ventilation/air circulation, or what shingles look like when they should be replaced.

I would personally never buy a house without a good home inspector because I recognize my ignorance on the subject. It's also a smart idea on the seller's part, because then they can sign off saying a home inspection was done and therefore are far less liable if serious problems crop up later on.

So I'm not quite sure how it qualifies as a racket.

[bara]

Sorry about your kitty. I hope he is allright.

That being said, a good home inspector is essential when buying a house. The key word there is 'good', as there are a lot of bad ones. The way some house are constructed it may not even be a bad idea to rip out a wall or two, thats where the damage will be. Paint can cover up a lot of damage.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

So I'm not quite sure how it qualifies as a racket.

Because the one that inspected the house we bought didn't do much more than scratch his nuts and charge us a hefty fee.

[Andara Bledin]

Our inspector was awesome.

He took pictures of everything and then sat on the porch and went over everything that he saw, what might be problems, what he couldn't check out because of other issues (eg. the underside of the house is inaccessible, which is one of the first things we'll be fixing), and he listened to what we had to say about some of what we saw. Part of his thing was to give us a binder with everything that was in the inspection report, including the pictures.

Our inspector was provided by our real estate agents.

^-.-^

[the_std]

Because the one that inspected the house we bought didn't do much more than scratch his nuts and charge us a hefty fee.

Well, that sucks. You got a bad inspector. I'm not sure what it's like where you live, but here, you can choose your own inspector. It's worthwhile to do the research and find a good one, cause they are well worth every penny.

But your bad experience does not a racket make.

[protege]

You can pick your own home inspector here in Pennsylvania as well. However, there are no regulations that inspectors have to follow. Nor is there any qualification standards--any schmuck with a pickup could set up shop as a "home inspector." Like the others have said, there are good ones, and bad ones. I got lucky with mine--the firm I went with came highly recommended.