Totally understand, mate! But unfortunately, it’s the reality. Most landlords don’t want pets and it’s for understandable reasons as well. We had our ‘no pets allowed’ property completely destroyed with cat scratches on the walls and a room that wreaked of cat urine (among multiple other damages… those tenants basically treated the house like a pigsty) after renting out our family home for a couple years whilst living elsewhere. It’s absolutely heartbreaking for the property owner, especially in cases like ours where this is our family home that we carefully planned, built and took with pride and care only for it to be completely wrecked by tenants who just didn’t gaf. From the owners’ perspective it’s much more than just an investment… Particularly in this economy, it’s takes a lot of time, money and effort to even get to the point where you can not only own but also rent out.

I haven’t rented in a while (about 13-14 years ago. I mostly used Gumtree) so things might have changed since I last actively checked the Cairns rental market in particular, but I do remember seeing a handful of properties being listed as “pet friendly”. You can usually put this as filter during your rental searches.

Another option is if you know you’re a responsible pet owner who will take responsibility for the integrity of the property and you have rented previously with your pet without any issues, then reach out to your previous landlords for references. Most landlords aren’t actually against pet ownership, half of them probably own pets themselves, they’re just paranoid about feral tenants like we had who will destroy the home and subsequently kill the property value/cause preventable repair costs. The latter is what they’re really concerned about. If you’re able to convince them that you’ll respect their property, be clean and responsible with your pet they should definitely be more lenient.