'Ex-boyfriend wanted me to give up my cats, and that’s why he’s an ex': Girlfriend thinks the man she's dating is "the one" until, out of nowhere, he asks her to get rid of her cats, quit her job, and move to another state

Usually, it's not the cat who needs rehoming, it's the partner who wants you to abandon your cat.

We think that everyone can agree that one of the golden rules when it comes to dating is setting expectations early. Where in the country do you want to live long-term? Do you see yourself ever getting married? Are kids something that you would want to have someday in the future? And - perhaps the most important one - do you like cats? And we say that it is the most important because we think that it is often the most overlooked, despite the fact that if your partner wants you to get rid of your cats somewhere down the line in the relationship, that is a dealbreaker just as much as any of the other things.

We tell cat owners to find out what the person they are dating thinks about their cats as soon as possible. You don't want to date someone who hates cats for three weeks, let alone three years. Of course, you would expect someone to just… tell you, from the get-go, what they think about your cats, but unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. Bring it up. Facing the ultimatum - "it's either me or the cat" - might be very simple but it sure as heck is not easy.

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"Ex-boyfriend wanted me to give up my cats"

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"And that’s why he’s an ex."

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The fact that you made the right choice is so obvious in cases like these. One of the things that we hate the most in the world is when people with cats get dragged into a relationship where the other person doesn't have cats, doesn't understand cats and doesn't want anything to do with cats in the future. It is such an easy situation to avoid. A little bit of honesty would have solved the entire problem. If he had just told you this in the beginning, you would not have even gotten to the point in the relationship where you would consider him “the one”. A little bit of honesty. That's all. But he didn't give you even that. Good riddance.
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It does not matter that they are not literally our children. They are family. They depend on us. They love us, and we love them. And you know what? Our partners don't even have to feel the same way that we do about our pets. They just have to respect it. They have to understand it enough to not heartlessly ask us to get rid of our pets one day out of the blue. We don't think that's too much to ask for.
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