In her post on the Reddit website she screams “I hate my boyfriend’s cat”. And, by God, does she hate his cat. Below her rant there are many comments by like-minded women. Her Reddit username is u/Italiana. I guess she is a fiery Italian. She lives in the US as far as I can tell.
In my opinion, her hatred is redirected. It is redirected away from her boyfriend – who she’s annoyed with for being kind to the cat who gets in the way of their relationship – to their cat. And she humanises the cat (anthropomorphises the cat). She sees the cat as a person getting in the way, messing up her relationship with her boyfriend.
I can tell that because she uses language such as:
He fucking knows better and thinks he’s fucking smart about it!!!!!! I’ve also told him his cat doesn’t give a shit about him as an owner.
It is as clear as day that she is directing her anger at a small fluffy human (aka the cat) when she should be directing it at him, her boyfriend. But she can’t be angry at him because it will hurt the relationship. She also hates cats. She’s mad as hell.
Once you start treating cats as humans rather than as a different species to be respected you go down a road which can lead to problems in the human-to-cat relationship. It is so much more sensible to learn to understand cats and respect them for their feline character and behaviour.
There is no point bitching about your boyfriend’s cat who you hate because you’d rather he spent more time with you and not ‘the cat’. Damn it you’re jealous. If you want something to change but your boyfriend refuses to do anything such as get rid of the cat then you should leave the relationship and the apartment and start over (the boyfriend should not abandon the cat because of her ranting).
It is not fair on the cat nor the boyfriend or indeed yourself. Your hatred of the cat may lead to abuse. They’ll be tension in the apartment that your cat will sense. He may overgroom as a result. It may end up with the cat being abandoned. One commenter recommended it. She wants to kill the cat. What if….? What if things deteriorated? It might happen. The cat’s mental health may suffer.
Link to Reddit post – this may disappear over time and if so I apologise but I have no control over the viability of the link.
