Apartment Life #32

This is a new weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 20 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 20 years here in a weekly blog post.

This is a hole on the outside wall of my apartment building. It's called the clean out and that's where plumber's go in to access the plumbing if they have to snake out a line. These clean outs are outside every apartment so the plumber can get to each apartment's plumbing line's if there's a backup and he has to use the snake to clear it. 

So now that you know what they are, I can tell you what has happened with them. The opening is small and right at the opening are the plumbing lines so there's no way for anyone to crawl in there. But when maintenance or the plumber doesn't replace the board that covers the hole and it's left open like this, sometimes stray cats in the area will crawl in there and start urinating in there right under our apartments. In the summer time the smell can get bad so when we see the covers off, we usually say something to maintenance so they will nail them back on.

This is how it's supposed to look with the boards up covering the hole. 

So a few months back when I saw it was off, I told the maintenance guy when I saw him in a vacant apartment. He said he'd get to it when he gets to it. 4 days went by before it was finally replaced. Now it might not seem like a big deal but twice in the 20 years that we've lived here, an older stay cat has wondered in there and died. And because it's impossible to crawl in there... the maintenance and the manager informed us that we would just have to deal with the smell until it went away which was months. Not even kidding. In the summer when the temperatures reach 117F, it just makes the smells coming from under the buildings even worst. So if I see the cover off of these holes, I say something. I would have nailed that board up my damn self if they had left it out there in the dirt. But no such luck. He finally put the board back up but that night I heard a cat meowing when I was in my bathroom. My daughter came over the next morning and she heard the cat meowing when she was in the bathroom too so Ken went out with a hammer and pried the board off so the cat could get out. If we had waited for the maintenance guy to do it, who knows how many days that would have taken. As soon as ken removed the board we stopped hearing the cat meowing, so I'm assuming it got out. I never saw it.

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.