Just when you think things can’t get any weirder in Silicon Valley, someone goes and rents an apartment to a pair of cats.
Louise and Tina are the feline tenants of a 425-square-foot studio in San Jose. They pay $1,500 per month for rent in the apartment that includes a bathroom, sink, and television, ABC & News reports.
If nothing else, they’re good negotiators. The average studio in that city goes for about $1,900 per month.
The cats belong to Victoria Amith, an Azusa Pacific University student who’s the friend of the landlord’s daughter. As she was leaving for college, her father was moving as well, and they needed a place to keep the pets. That’s when David Callisch came to the rescue.
Callish had planned to use the space as an Airbnb rental, but when he learned he could help his daughter’s friend, Louise and Tina moved in. And Amith, currently a freshman, sometimes comes to visit. (Technically, her dad—not the cats—pays the rent.)
“This wasn’t my life long vision or dream to have cats as tenants,” Callisch said. “It just worked out that way. … They don’t drink. They don’t smoke. They don’t play loud music.”
Odd as it sounds, cats as tenants isn’t the oddest thing to happen of late in the Silicon Valley real estate market. For instance, last April, someone put a fire-ravaged home in San Jose up for sale with an $800,000 asking price.
It sold in May for $938,000, according to public records.