Dirty Kitty Things
A cat-hater takes up with the cat-obsessed in my Advice Goddess column I just posted. Here's his question:
My girlfriend of eight months is so attached to her cat that she takes it with her when she goes to the toilet. She also lets it sleep in the bed and drink out of the bathroom sink. She has cat knickknacky things everywhere, and worse, cat hair everywhere -- on the bed, on counters, on clothes and food. To me, cats are filthy animals that cover themselves with spit, lick their behinds, track used kitty litter all over, and shed hair and dander. I think about our future together, and wonder whether she'd give up a cat to be with me. You may think this sounds unreasonable, but I equate living with a cat to asking a woman to move into a house with a dirt floor. --Catastrophe
And here's an excerpt from my answer:
...Here she is, an adult woman who decorates like she got drunk and went on a spending binge at Hallmark, who seasons her food with cat hair, and who can’t pry herself away from little Poopsy to take a private trip to the john. And here you are, a guy who sees the housecat as the next best thing to an open petri dish of typhus. Yet, somehow, this doesn’t stop you from wondering whether you can have a future together. And maybe you can; most likely, the Hobbesian kind: “Nasty, brutish, and short.”Hey, wait, don’t all relationships take compromise? Sure they do. But, making “Filthy Animal Seeks Good Home” signs isn’t a compromise; it’s a declaration of war. She clearly sees this cat as her furry, four-legged child. Ever let a mother know you find her child vile and ill-behaved, and only fit to live under the porch? Okay, maybe you were tempted once or twice, as we all are, but came to your senses. In this case, if you just weren’t keen on cats, or you like them, but have allergies, maybe you could stay together by living apart. But, as odious as you find cats, not to mention her relationship with her cat, you two are about as sensibly paired as a Buddhist and a gun nut, or a vegan who mutters “Murderer!” every time his partner takes a bite of steak.
Love has its limitations; among them, its failure to double as turbo Febreze, not only making persistent pet odors go away, but making persistent pets disappear with them. For future reference, while it’s important to figure out what you want in a woman, it’s kind and responsible to figure out what gives you the dry heaves. In other words, you aren’t wrong for being a cat-loathing germ freak, just for taking eight months to determine that the only way you two could live happily ever after is with the intervention of a taxidermist.
The entire thing is here.
90% of all single women in L.A. have cats, it seems. Many even post a big photo of their cat in the online personal ads, clearly not realizing that from the point of view of attracting a man, they might as well post an image of castration.
LYT at August 22, 2006 2:30 PM
(Oh oh. Something tells me I should apologize.)
Paul Hrissikopoulos at August 23, 2006 10:47 AM
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