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‘Ody’ slinks past body corporate

Ethan Te Ora

It took 10 months, several false starts and a trip to the Tenancy Tribunal – but Te KororiaNetana-Rakete has been reunited with her favourite flatmate: Odysseus Princess Warrior, Ody for short, a 4-yearold tortoiseshell cat.

‘‘I was stuck with just my husband all that time,’’ Netana-Rakete said. ‘‘I need another female in the house – sorry, husband!’’

The house in question is a one-bedroom apartment, on the third floor of the Sanctum Apartments in central Wellington.

To Ody, the home is nothing but a gym for leaping acrobatics. It’s also a big adjustment, as she learns to be an inside cat again, after several months in the suburbanwilds of Auckland.

Netana-Rakete first rented the apartment with her husband in February, after relocating from Tāmaki Makaurau on her own last December, leaving Ody to stay temporarily with family back home.

At least that was the plan. The advertised ‘‘pet-friendly apartment’’ didn’t turn out that way – the body corporate committee ruling only owner-occupiers in the complex could keep pets.

‘‘They had this bizarre preference: owners can have pets, not tenants,’’ Netana-Rakete remembers.

Unusual, and unlawful, too, as it turned out. The body corporate’s own rules said that ‘‘occupiers’’ in the complex could keep pets, drawing no distinction between owners and renters.

Alistair and Fiona Gillespie, the owners of the apartment, had given permission for Netana-Rakete to keep a cat. When they learned the body corporate committee had turned down the application, they were ‘‘livid’’, Netana-Rakete remembers.

The Gillespies soon decided to take the dispute to the Tenancy Tribunal, on their tenant’s behalf. ‘‘All the paper work was bloody rough,’’ Alistair Gillespie said. It wasn’t cheap either – coming to $3300 for the filing fee.

‘‘We just felt that rules are rules and those rules allowed for a pet to be in the apartment.’’

The couple were once joint managing directors of a body corporate management company, overseeing about 30 apartment complexes in central Wellington, most of them with slightly different rules about pets.

‘‘This body corporate didn’t have a valid reason to turn us down,’’ he said.

The Tribunal hearing was heard in early May. Bill Courtney, the chairperson of the body corporate committee, submitted on behalf of the body corporate.

He argued its rules were not ‘‘prescriptive’’ and the language about ‘‘occupiers’’ in those rules did not give express permission for renters to keep pets.

Courtney cited applications from other renters in the building, which had also been declined. He believed those decisions established a precedent which now superseded the body corporate’s own rules.

Tenancy Tribunal adjudicator Kaye Stirling did not agree.

‘‘As I explained in some detail at the hearing, the registered rules take precedence over any guidelines and practices,’’ she wrote in her decision a few days later.

Stirling ruled that the body corporate must reimburse the Gillespies $3300 for the filing fee and reconsider a new application.

Even with the blessing of the Tribunal, Ody would not make the journey down to Wellington for another four months. Overpriced flights, work commitments and a brush with Covid-19 all conspired to delay her owners.

Until last week.

‘‘My cat is my best mental health worker, as far as I’m concerned,’’ NetanaRakete said. ‘‘I think everyone should be allowed to have a pet, within reasonable circumstances.’’ Reunited at last, NetanaRakete was helping her ‘‘better half’’ adjust to the indoors.

Ody previously lived in an Auckland townhouse with her owners, before enjoying the freedom of the suburbs during her northern exile.

She has adapted to more harsh environments in the past – originally being found abandoned in a shoebox as a kitten.

Netana-Rakete has quickly warmed to the company of her old friend.

‘‘For me, having a pet is sort of like having a flatmate, who always agrees with you,’’ Netana-Rakete said. ‘‘I’m very pro landlords in apartments letting renters have pets.’’

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en-nz

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281685438725915

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