Some people enjoy the idea of purchasing a cheaper home that needs renovation, or flipping a house for the sake of selling it for more money one day. But when one woman bought her first home last year, she soon discovered that it was completely unlivable.
Hannah, who goes by the username @it_is_hannah_banana on TikTok, recently detailed the “nightmare” discovery she made in her own house. “The story of how cat pee destroyed my house,” she captioned her video at the time.
She began by showing off various pictures of the house, as she told the harrowing story through text across the screen. The house was first purchased in July 2023 with a furnished basement, but soon after moving in her cat had “noticed something was wrong.”
Hannah’s cat found “dark spots” on the wooden floors and began “spraying” in the living area, which cats typically do to mark their territory. The TikToker decided to ask her father to come over and pull up some of the dark-spotted floorboards, assuming they would need to be replaced.
After he pulled them up, it was discovered that all of the baseboards and the floorboards were “soaked in cat urine.” They were not only darker than usual wood, but also noticeably rotting away. They decided to do more investigating throughout the house and found similar baseboards and floorboards in the bedroom covered in cat urine.
“Found floor joists soaked in what appeared to be many months or even years of cat urine,” text across the screen read, showing more rotting wood. “The smell was putrid and you couldn’t breathe in the room without an N95 mask.”
Eventually, she discovered that there were dark spots all throughout the house, making the problem “much bigger than we thought.” They then found cat urine in the vents, prompting them to isolate all of their belongings in the kitchen before beginning to “tear apart the house.”
“There was so much cat pee it soaked into the ceiling underneath the bedroom floors,” she continued. “My beautiful first house became my worst nightmare.”
Her video went on to receive more than two million views, as many people turned to the comments section to express how bad they felt for the first-time home buyer. Meanwhile, others assumed the home was a “flipped house” gone wrong.
“It was a flipped house, right? They knew and hid it. I hate flippers,” one comment read.
Another commenter agreed, writing: “Must have been a hoarding situation before the house was flipped. I’m so sorry.”
Responding to the comment, the TikToker revealed that the previous owner of the house had many cats when she passed away and they were left alone for “awhile” before being found.
Other commenters pointed out that she could possibly pursue legal action if she wanted to. “Not sure where you are but in the states you can sometimes sue people you purchased your home from if they purposely didn’t disclose damage done to the house and an inspection wouldn’t normally find,” one person suggested.
Another commenter wrote: “Please please sue for non disclosure. It is worth the hassle.”
Since posting her original video, Hannah has posted several videos updating fans and showing further areas of the house affected by the cat urine. Earlier this month, Hannah revealed in a subsequent video that she and her family have finally moved into the upstairs of their house after 10 months of renovations, while they work to remove cat urine from the basement.
“We’re still getting cat pee out of the basement but so glad to be moved back in to the upstairs!” she replied to one TikTok user.
