Can You Be Evicted For Keeping A 500 Pound Bengal Tiger In Your Apartment?

Yes you can. A man was evicted from his apartment in a high-rise apartment house in New York City after the manager discovered that the tenant had a Bengal tiger in his apartment and called the police. The police were reluctant to enter the apartment through the front door, so a policeman with a rifle was lowered from the roof of the building on a rope. The policeman shot the tiger with a tranquilizing dart through a window. tiger

When the tiger was sedated, animal control officers entered the apartment and removed the tiger. The tenant fought the eviction. He told the judge that his lease allowed him to have a cat, and a tiger is a cat. The judge agreed that a tiger is a cat but evicted the tenant anyway. The judge said that a reasonable person would know that a lease provision allowing a tenant to have a cat was not intended to apply to a 500 pound Bengal tiger. I think the judge was right, but I may be prejudiced because I do not allow Bengal tigers in my apartments. (I wonder how long it would take my insurance company to cancel my policies if they discovered that there were Bengal tigers in my buildings.)


220 Volts For Kitty Cat. I frequently advise other landlords to ask questions when an applicant for an apartment says that he has a cat. I do this myself. Many years ago, I got an application to rent a house on Shafter Avenue in Oakland from a man who told me that he had a cat named ‘Kitty Cat.’ Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to that. Later in the interview, the applicant asked me if the garage had a 220 volt electrical outlet. I said ‘No.’ He asked me if he could get a 220 volt outlet installed in the garage. He offered to pay for it himself. His question piqued my curiosity. I wanted to know why he wanted a 220 volt electrical outlet. I have been in this business for over 40 years, and I have never seen a 220 volt outlet in a garage. The man said that he had a 50 cubic foot commercial freezer, and it ran on 220 volts. I was astonished. That is a huge freezer. It’s the kind of freezer is made for restaurants and hotels, not home use. I asked him why he owned such a big freezer. He said: “Oh, it’s not for me. It’s for Kitty Cat.” I thought the guy was crazy! People don’t buy industrial freezers for their cats. Something was very wrong with this guy’s story. I asked the guy a series of questions about his freezer and his cat, but answers seemed deliberately evasive. Finally, I told the guy that I had to see this cat. I asked the applicant if he had a photograph of his cat with him. He said he did. He showed me a photo of ‘Kitty Cat’ that he kept in his wallet. That is how I found out that ‘Kitty Cat’ was actually a mountain lion. He told me that ‘Kitty Cat’ ate 10 pounds of horsemeat a day, which is why he owned a commercial freezer. The freezer held 500 pounds of horsemeat. I thanked the guy for his application and sent him on his way. I decided to rent the house to somebody else.

siamesecatThe woman that I wound up renting the house to also had a cat, but her cat weighed 6 pounds. Even though this all happened a long time ago, I still remember her cat. It was a cross-eyed white Siamese cat with black ears. The cat was friendly, but whenever I was in the house, the cat would sit on the kitchen countertop and stare at me intently and cross-eyed until I left. That cat’s stare was downright spooky! Well – now I ask questions about cats!