My (29F) cat (2F) is bullying this guy I'm seeing (32M). He says that if I don't get rid of her, he'll leave. I feel like I should care more than I currently do. (TW, animal death)

So, context.

My town has a pretty bad hawk problem. As a result, it's pretty much a requirement for all pets to be indoor pets, and a lot of the smaller prey animal populations are suffering as a result.

Please don't ask me why this happened. I don't know. I assume the hawks were always here, but I could be wrong.

(TW: Animal Death)

About two-ish years ago, my ex fiance found a trail of dead kittens just outside my apartment complex. I went with him to investigate and found their mother, who was near death, with four kittens hiding under her body (the litter initially contained nine kittens, we think, but we aren't sure). The mother died shortly after we found them, and so my ex took them in.

Unfortunately, my ex is simultaneously very cheap and very stupid. He bought puppy food because it was cheaper than kitten food, not knowing that puppy food is cheaper because it's less expensive to make due to the lack of taurine. As a result, three of the kittens also died. The last kitten was starving, still injured, and covered in fleas. My ex asked me to do something about it because he didn't know what to do. I ended up taking her in as a last resort, despite the fact that the vet told me she would probably die. I couldn't bear to do nothing, even if she ended up dying anyway.

She and her mother were both ear-tipped, so I knew she'd been vaccinated, that the mama had been spayed, and that the kitten was probably feral (I later found out my kitten had been spayed as well - she was small for being four months old). I kept her in my bathroom on a heating pad, fed her kitten food mixed with formula, and free-fed until she got her weight up. In the process, she scratched me so badly my therapist asked me if I was self harming, even though I don't have a history of self harm. I now have horrible scars up my arms from the experience.

I named her Mopsy. She's gorgeous. I love her very much.

She was very mean to me for the first three weeks, while she was recovering from her injuries and didn't want to be bothered (unfortunately her wounds were deep enough that she had to go on oral antibiotics and had to get them disinfected with antibiotic ointment twice daily). She then decided that I was her new mommy, and has yet to be disabused of that notion. She loves pets, salmon-flavored treats, posing for the camera during Zoom calls, and getting her teeth brushed (I don't know why, she's a very weird cat), and will smack you if you don't pet her exactly when she wants to be petted.

Since then, I've had some friends over, mostly women, and have casually dated while I built up my career (I'm bisexual with a strong preference for women). Unfortunately, since her only real experience with men has been my ex being stupid, she dislikes men a lot. Most of the men in my life know this and are aware of this.

About six months ago, I started dating Mike (32M). It was a casual thing, mostly just something I could do until I felt comfortable going out to gay bars and dating apps again. I don't particularly like him, as he doesn't think women are particularly suited to STEM professions and sees my career as an example of a fish riding a bicycle, but we're very sexually compatible, and so I decided to see him on a very casual basis. We see one another once every two weeks, maybe, and get COVID and STD tests about once a month (since we both need to do this for work anyway). In my mind, we were only exclusive for pandemic reasons, as we've never had a deep conversation that didn't result in either an argument or very rough sex.

Unfortunately, Mopsy doesn't like Mike. At all. She has made it known that she doesn't like Mike. She hasn't attacked him, but when he tries to pet her, she hisses and bats at his hand (which honestly is very well behaved for how she could be - once again, my arms are baaaaaad). I suspect it's a trauma thing, but acknowledge that I could be wrong.

He's now saying he'll leave me if I don't get rid of her. He apparently thinks we're in a relationship, even though I told him from the beginning that I'm only interested in dating women right now. We got into a huge fight over it, after which he cried and I had to awkwardly comfort him over it.

I get that he has a right to be with women whose pets don't absolutely loathe him. I also have to acknowledge that I probably haven't been considerate of his emotional needs considering the fact that he apparently considered me his girlfriend all along. In fact, I've probably been very inconsiderate of him, considering the fact that I've been basically acting like I was single this whole time (because I thought I was) - nothing that would constitute cheating, per se, but would definitely be disrespectful of a potential partner in my eyes (ie, posting pictures of myself with attractive women on social media, following attractive girls on Instagram, things like that).

I'm not going to give Mopsy away, and am probably going to break up with him just because of the bad communication and the fact that I didn't even know we were dating, but I feel like the fact that I don't care about his feelings on the matter says a lot about me as a human being. Am I being cruel here? How do I go about handling this?

TL;DR: My cat, who is a feral rescue, dislikes this guy I've been casually seeing. Apparently he thinks we're more serious than we are, because he told me to get rid of her in order for the relationship to continue. I'm not going to, and also find it very concerning that he thinks we're serious when we never had that conversation, but I want to be sure that this "what the fuck are you talking about my guy" response isn't unwarranted.

Submitted July 24, 2021 at 02:53AM by sycoraxthelost https://ift.tt/2UJWJev