I assume Pickles is happy in her spare bedroom. I leave the door open but she shows no desire to leave.

This is happy and sad. Happy because you are willing to open your home and your heart to Pickles, and sad because her last owner obviously misses her.

The last owner took Pickles in not knowing their landlord had a "no pets" rule. Landlords, eh?

Bonnie is the whole reason I took this place...I will give my landlord that. He has a really sweet dog, and in moments he doesn't know people are watching he will hug that dog and pet him. I keep saying he can't be all bad if he's that good to the dog...but he IS a lousy landlord.

I guess he's an amateur. He's taken on something he's not really competent to do.

ohhh....he isn't competent to be a landlord because he won't hire anyone to fix anything. If he'd hired the roof fixed, instead of doing it himself and relining the freaking skylight...grrrr.

People go into landlording because they think it's easy money- and it isn't- not if you do it properly.

This man knows nothing about what should come first. When I started complaining about the water, it was November. He could have had the roof mended (but he does his OWN WORK). He also owns the house next door. He's had a backhoe over there, and he also has a cherry picker truck. Both of them he bought. He never had the driveway cleared (that part was in the lease) which is why I have problems with my wrist right now. He had a Hummer - which recently disappeared. I watched as he worked on the house next door but totally neglected my place - except for his supposed fixing of the skylight and then the roof. AND the apartment was over an unheated basement so I was aways cold. All in all, being a tenant in one of his building was flat out awful. But it was a place to go in a hurry, when I had to get out of the Crazy Old Drunk's place.
Not my problem any more.

Someone gave me a cat years ago, it took her months before she came out. After that she was the sweetest.

We'll see how it goes. There's no great hurry.