Man Loses Patience Over Wife’s “Frustratingly Annoying” Cat, Gives Her An Ultimatum

Marriage is all about finding the right compromises. After all, no couple is perfect, but what makes a strong relationship is how the people in it handle difficulties and disagreements. Sometimes this ends up requiring some hard conversations.

A man asked the internet if he was wrong to issue his wife an ultimatum after her rescue cat would not stop terrorizing him at night. We got in touch with cat behavioral specialist LeeAnna Buis to learn more. We also reached out to the man in the story via private message and will update the article when he gets back to us.
More info: Felinebehaviorsolutions.com

Bored Panda got in touch with Certified Feline Training and Behavior Consultant LeeAnna Buis, from Felinebehaviorsolutions.com and she was kind enough to answer some of our questions. In general, you practically can’t avoid running into cats when you go online, so we were curious to hear her opinion on why we as humans like them so much in the 21st century.

“Cats have a wide range of behaviors and reactions that can be entertaining. They’re nothing like what we see from dogs and other common pets. However, many of those behaviors are actually based on negative emotions for the cat. What’s often shown in social media posts, for example, are stress and fear reactions like two cats yowling at each other or a cat suddenly swatting at someone.”

“If you understand what’s fueling those behaviors, you find many of those videos upsetting. If you don’t, it may seem funny to see a cat get puffed up and make crazy sounds. But that’s often a cat in distress. That’s where the divisive nature of cat content grows,” she shared.

This has given rise to the unfortunate fact that many people without experience are seeing and reading about hundreds of cats without exactly knowing enough, so we wanted to hear LeeAnna share some common misconceptions about feline behavior.

“There are so many. But I’d say one of the most damaging is that aggressive cats are entertaining or misbehaving. Most aggression comes from fear. If a cat is fighting back, they’re in a highly stressed state. It’s not about being mean or “bad.” Something has them feeling like they need to defend and protect themselves.”

After all, cats are intelligent creatures, if perhaps a bit selfish. For example, the one in this story has learned, quite clearly, that being loud is the best way to get food whenever it wants. Actually receiving the food is exactly what reinforced and “rewards” this behavior.

Lastly, we also wanted to hear more about her personal relationship with cats and how she started to get acquainted with cat behavior. “They’re part of my family and my career. My relationship with cats has changed considerably since I was young. I used to see my cats as living in “my world.” They were everything to me.”

“But they should follow my rules and live my way. As I learned more about them, I realized that all the stress they were feeling, all the unwanted behavior, and all the damage done to our relationship when, for example, they started house soiling, was my fault. I didn’t understand what they needed and why. I wasn’t respecting their instinctual needs. I didn’t know how to read their body language. Now that I better understand them, I regret those early relationships and work to help other cat people understand and improve their relationships with their cats,” she shared.

In this particular story, the vast majority of readers did side with the husband, as one can see below. It is unclear if this cat’s behavior can be changed or improved, but it’s worth noting that cats are very intelligent animals who can be taught boundaries and rules. Unfortunately, if the husband wants to see these improvements, he will seemingly need to put in all the work himself. The lesson is that if you are getting a cat, particularly an older cat, it might be worth getting in touch with a specialist to learn more about its behavior and how to train it.