Are We Breaking Up Over This?
I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but here we go. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for seven months. She’s amazing and we’re super compatible in a lot of ways.
She is an outspoken vegan, and she made it clear at the start of our relationship that it was important to her that any potential partner had similar values.
Me, already being a pescatarian, had little difficulty transitioning to a fully plant-based diet. My girlfriend was proud of me for taking my first steps and everything seemed well. We became “the vegan couple” on our college campus. But a horrific problem has come up.
See, then there is my cat, Mittens…I’ve had her for three years and I adore her. She’s such a sweet and cuddly cat.
However, my girlfriend was always a little apprehensive around her, and she blamed it on not growing up around cats.
After a while, we sort of made a tacit agreement to mostly hang out at her apartment instead of mine, so Mittens never really came up again in conversation. Until, well… We began seriously looking at either buying a new apartment together or having one of us move in with the other.
However, after a lot of talking and planning, my girlfriend sat me down and dropped a big reveal on me. She said that with this next phase of the relationship, she did not see a future with me unless I was willing to give away Mittens.
She said that she believed owning a cat is unconscionable for vegans, because they hunt mice and eat meat, and because the very act of owning a pet is against vegan principles. I was stunned.
I told her that I was absolutely not willing to give up Mittens, and Mitten had no choice but to eat meat, so I was reducing harm as much as possible by buying reputable brands of cat food. Plenty of vegans own cats and think along those same lines.
My girlfriend got mad and said, “How much flesh does your cat eat? How many animals perished to make all that food?
Would you be okay with that being human flesh?” I got mad and told my girlfriend that I would have really appreciated her telling me about her cat opinions before we got serious.
She went on and on about cats hurting animals. I ended the conversation there. I was so angry that I left my girlfriend’s apartment, and I snuggled with Mittens when I got home! Although the mood soured a bit when my girlfriend sent me a link advocating for the eradication of domestic cats. Sigh.
I think it goes without saying that I am not going to get rid of my cat. However, it pains me to think that an otherwise wonderful relationship could be ending because of a difference in ideology.
I don’t even really understand where my girlfriend is coming from because like I said, a lot of vegans own cats and they make it work.
Now granted, cat ownership can be a controversial topic in vegan circles and I probably would not have gotten a cat if I had been vegan at the time, but I have Mittens now, and she deserves to eat.
Yes, I’ve researched vegan cat food, but Mittens has some digestive issues and my vet strongly cautions against it.
I’ve talked to some of my vegan and vegetarian friends, and they all think my girlfriend has lost her mind. Some have suggested that it’s not about Mittens and my girlfriend just wants an excuse to end it. So, we broke up, obviously. I would never, ever give up my cat Mittens.
Many also said that this situation was about control, not veganism, and looking back, I do see a pattern of control on my girlfriend’s part. I was blind to it, I guess.
I called my girlfriend and said I was not willing to give up Mittens under any circumstances, and given the recent issues we’d had, and our incompatible views, I thought it was best that we parted ways. I said she deserved a partner that shared her values.
She then asked if we were breaking up, I said yes. There was some anger on her end, but otherwise the situation actually went better than I expected.