[erroneousfunk]

My husband and I replaced a carpet in our last apartment ourselves before move out (hired a professional, got it matched exactly with the rest of the carpets, replaced carpet pad as well, cleaned concrete subfloor) because our cat decided that one corner of the living room was an appropriate place to urinate.

She's usually a well-behaved cat, never did anything like this before, and we tried everything we could think of to get her to stop. We spent over a year and hundreds of dollars trying to repeatedly clean the spot, shampooing, steaming, enzymes, but nothing worked.

Our deposit was only $500, but we spent about $1600 replacing the carpet (it was the right thing to do and, like you said, they can sue us). There was NOTHING you could do to get that out besides just replacing it. And that was just one room. Multiply by 5 or 6 for replacing carpets all over the house, and that's more than a landlord can even reasonably hold as a security deposit. And what if we had had a wood subfloor instead of concrete? That would quickly get into the 5 figures.

It seemed like an ideal pet situation -- good cat, no history of urinating outside the litter box, responsible pet owners, regular vet checkups, doing everything we could to try and clean and get her to stop, cared very much about the cleanliness of our living space, but we STILL had to replace the carpet.

Honestly, especially after that experience, I don't blame landlords at all. I own a house now and don't think I'd ever want to, say, rent a room to a stranger with a cat. And I have a cat!