THE CALL NO BROKER WANTS TO GET

Once upon a time, a Broker was having lunch with his family on a weekday. It was his mother’s birthday.

In the middle of lunch, he casually glanced at his phone and noticed several missed calls from unknown numbers. Then he saw another missed call from the owner of a property he was handling. That got his attention. The owner was the type of client who almost never called, so the Broker stepped away from the table and called him back first.

The client answered and said the building admin had been trying to reach him. They had also been calling his brother. Apparently, neighbors had complained about a foul smell coming from the unit. A very foul smell.

The Broker froze because he knew who lived there. The tenant stayed in the unit with her elderly mother, and the last thing he remembered hearing was that she had been sick and had been traveling back and forth to the US for treatment.

His mind immediately went somewhere he did not want it to go. A foul smell. An elderly woman. Sick. Could the smell be coming from a decomposing...

Oh Lord. Please, no.

He called one of the unknown numbers back. It was the building admin.

The admin explained that the smell had become so strong that neighbors were already complaining. It had apparently spread far enough to be noticed from the other end of the building. The Broker braced himself for what came next.

Then the admin said they believed they had found the source.

It turned out to be a cat that had been left alone in the unit, and the smell was coming from its urine. The Broker had spent the last few minutes imagining the absolute worst, so hearing that it was cat pee felt like unexpectedly good news.

And that was how a peaceful birthday lunch briefly turned into a horror story… with a surprisingly feline ending.

...Little did he know, that feline ending would eventually turn into a P250,000 problem...