Getting Catty
The past couple of months, my wife has been complaining about our cats. She’s been claiming that the cats wake her up constantly and that she’s frustrated every night that she “has to get up and open the door for the cats,” or “the cats keep making noises,” or “the cats keep jumping on her.” It got to the point where she started saying she wants me to get rid of them.
I told her I’ve never seen or heard any of this, but she claims I sleep through it all. She kept telling me she was getting less and less sleep and kept acting aggressive, blaming lack of sleep on the cats, and saying that if I didn’t get rid of them, she’d leave me. I legitimately started considering giving the cats to my sister. And then I noticed a detail that changed everything.
One morning, she claimed she had gotten up multiple times throughout the night to help the cats. She listed a bunch of times. I thought it was weird, because I had been up until 4 am and she claimed that she “got up at 1 am to open the door for them, and a few times around 3 am because they were meowing and jumping on her.” I was in the bedroom the entire time while she slept, and I know none of that happened.
Things weren’t adding up, so I decided to run a test. I waited until she said she was going to bed, then I let the cats out of our bedroom, lowered my phone brightness, and faked going to sleep. I just laid there in bed for the entire night, bored, but I definitely did not fall asleep. I made sure to make timestamps every 30 minutes on my phone through Discord just to be sure.
I marked down every noise my cats made. One cat had jumped down from something and made a little sound at 3:18 am, and one ate food relatively quietly by the bedroom door at 4:57 am. Other than that, nothing happened. Sure enough, my wife slept from 11 pm until 9 am, and that morning she claimed she had woken up “at least seven times” to open doors and from cat noises and cats jumping on her.
At this point, I was angry she was clearly lying to me. I was exhausted and fed up with the lies, so I just bluntly called her out on it. I told her, “That’s funny. I stayed up all night to monitor the cats, and they weren’t even in the room at all last night. I have timestamps and everything. So you’ve been lying to me and trying to convince me to get rid of my cats? Why?” I couldn’t believe her response.
She just sat there quietly shaking, then got up and left without answering. She came back hours later and ignored me whenever I talked, and when I asked her how I’m the bad-guy in this situation, she finally said that I was treating her like a child by lying about sleeping and staying up all night just to see if she was lying or not and that making timestamps and everything as if I was an investigator. She said I was “going too far.”
I did it because she was threatening to make me get rid of my cats or she’d leave me, and her claims didn’t add up. Anyway, I got a call from the hospital this morning, asking me to head over for some “family therapy.” Apparently she finally wanted to talk. She revealed the reason at last, and it made me want to scream. She’s not cheating. She’s not sick physically or mentally. She’s not bored of the relationship and looking for an “out.”
According to her, one of the cats stepped on her laptop and ruined a story she was writing. She’s hated both cats ever since. I mean that sucks, but it’s not worth trying to emotionally blackmail me into getting rid of them. I asked her why she didn’t just tell me the truth and why she’d been lying and refused to talk about it when I’d asked.
Her answer was “Because you wouldn’t have gotten rid of them otherwise.” She explained that when she saw I wasn’t willing to abandon them for her, she took offense and made it a “goal” to have me pick her over them. Sickening. Don’t know why she actually admitted to it all. The woman with us asked me how I felt about all of it, and I just told the truth.
I told her it was a nice run, but I’m probably going to want a divorce. I was asked why, and I told them. I’ve seen a new hateful, malicious side of her that I want nothing to do with. She was so set on getting rid of the cats over a fanfiction being ruined that she manipulated her husband. My wife started shouting at me that I’ve betrayed her and that I’m “scum” for choosing animals over her.
At least cats don’t give ultimatums like she gave. I’m almost sure I’m going for divorce. I’m very worried about having her in the same house as my cats. I want my cats safe. I don’t want to worry about them being harmed or “disappearing.” Screw that. Not how I wanted it to end, but life isn’t always nice.