Ooops

Landlord's mother + daughter (who translated) came to inspect the flat today.
ihkelele (and maybe others, too), you'll know exactly what I mean when I say that they remind me a lot of the typical Northern Italian Signora, complete with part-real, part-fake tan and execrable manners. Sympathy coefficient went right through the floor.

Anyway, what they'd really come to see wasn't the flat but the couch. Now ze boyz are quite well-behaved and usually do their scratching on the scatching post, but sometimes, alas, they also use the couch. It's not badly damaged, and not everywhere, but some places are a little, well, fluffy.
I'd of course been aware of that and ready to pay for re-upholstering the scratched bits, i.e. the basic structure, since the cushions (both for sitting on and leaning against) are completely undamaged.
What I hadn't been prepared for was the startling revelation that this is a B&B designer couch ("Charles" by Antonio Citterio), which costs an obscene amount of money. (I looked it up. It does.) It doesn't *look* expensive -- in fact, Gabriele and I joked time and again about it being cheap crap Made in Turkey -- which may be partly due to the fact that the colour is... well, it's part mustard yellow and part fraise pink, which doesn't scream EXPENSIVE! at the top of its lungs, and the fabric just looks cheap.

Had I known that it's a hair-raisingly expensive couch, I would of course have covered it. I'm not saying it's not my fault, but considering that the kitchen is anything but designer stuff (really), the lampshades the cheapest crap I've ever seen in my life, and the carpets dirt cheap, too, I would never have dreamed that the couch was the one real diamond amongst the rhinestones. I mean, who is stupid enough to put a € 20.000 couch into a flat they're about to let to somebody with cats? (Or children, for that matter. Or any human being.)

The deed, however, is done, and now I hope that my liability insurance will cover the costs. It seems like a pretty straightforward matter, but what is ever straightforward when it comes to insurance claims? If the insurance refuses to pay, the landlord will have to use the safety deposit and pay the rest out of his own pocket. I don't feel good about it, but I also feel that a simple "Be careful with the couch, it's a designer piece" would have avoided all that trouble in the first place.

Well, it's useless to worry about it now. I'll call my insurance company on Monday and ask how I ought to proceed -- they'll need photos and a copy of the rent contract, I suppose, and then we'll see. I already told the landlord's mother to get a quote for having the scratched parts upholstered.

Just, grrrrrrrr...