Years ago, when I was young, I grew up on a farm. Out in the country, it wouldn’t have been a stretch for a farmer to use the “22 cent solution”.

Times have changed, and I live in the city now. Opinions have changed and that would be considered “cruelty to animals”. Although the pound wouldn’t give them any better of a chance.

Anyone that is chastising the OP without personally offering to pick up the cats, should STFU, IMHO. He’s looking to do the best he can with his situation at this time. Telling the OP that you think he’s a bad person for making this decision doesn’t help at all.

Brilliant.

Again the OP isn't talking about "dumping" his pets. He put a post up looking for a great new home for them. If he doesn't find one it sounds like he will go to a "plan B" whatever that might be. But for now I think he is thinking very clearly, has thought about it enough that he can make his own decisions - etc

Had he put a post up here saying "thinking about giving up my cats so I can move in with my girlfriend" and asked what people would do if they were in his shoes then much of this feedback would make sense. But at this point it appears he has already decided what he would like to do. So it seems like a waste of time debating that end of things.

I wish it was a year down the road - after we had our cross country trip behind us - at that point I would seriously consider trying to help him out. For now all I can do is wish him the best of luck and hopefully things will work out for him both with his girlfriend and with finding a great home for his two cats.

Team cat

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That cat has been eating way too much pizza!

Classic widebody.

This thread is totally useless without pictures....

...of the girlfriend.

THANK YOU.

Pablo Says...

Start taking allergy pills right meow.

Seriously. I'm extremely allergic to cats. Had a couple of the little demons for about 30yrs of my life. Took daily allergy pills and dealt with the occasional stuffy day.

I was just thinking this would be a better thread if it were “my cats are allergic to my girlfriend, what should I do?”

Pictures of the GF would be critical then.

1. OP posts pics of girlfriend.
2. Girlfriend discovers thread.
3. Girlfriend dumps OP for seeking life advice on pinball forum.
4. Situation is resolved.

That's not a cat,thats a sausage.

#TeamCat

Violet does not approve of you giving up your kitties for a woman...

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That cat has opposable thumbs!
That’s why he’s so big, he can pick up and hold pizza!

With mostly guys here on Pinside I am just wondering how we made to to over 100 post here without any "pussy jokes". Must be a cleaner bunch of guys then I was around when I was in the auto repair business years ago. Within 5 minutes it would have been trading "two pussies for one" or something along that lines almost instantly then got worse from there.

Anyway thanks for at least keeping things clean here.

Dinosaurs eat man...woman inherits the earth.

Mittens can’t bear to watch!
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We have it all wrong here. Sounds like the girlfriend wants to keep the cats and he doesn't.

She should dump him and keep the cats for herself.

#teamcat

There are a lot of animal experts, girlfriend experts, allergy specialists, and life experts on this forum.

I'm highly allergic to cats. My wife loves cats (so do I, just not their allergens). Fortunately for her we have a large house and the cats rule the upstairs and I just dont go up there. Separate ac and filtration for both levels of the house. It's still far from ideal as part of the house is useless to me and the cats never truly get to be part of the family. Depending on your girlfriends allergy no amount of pills or air filters may allow her to live a decent quality of life with them. So if you dont have enough space for both you have to pick which one makes the most sense for your life. It will suck if you have to rehome them. All you can do is be responsible and find them as good of a home as you can. Good luck and ignore the pinside medical and life experts.

I also love cats, but am extremely allergic.

I took twice weekly allergy shots for over a decade. This allowed me to exist in the same house with them, but I could by no means pet them or otherwise do anything that involved being near them for any length of time. This was a giant time commitment (for the shots) and was much more than a stuffy nose (in severity). When I was 17, I stopped taking shots, and now I am so allergic that my throat closes off and I cannot breathe when I am exposed to them for more than a day or so. I immediately start itching and break out in hives when I am near them, so I have that going for me. Going to others' houses with cats is always a challenge, or working on a game filled with cat hair. I make the best of it, but it is quite scary to be unable to breathe when there is nothing that should be preventing it.

And I don't think I have the most extreme cat allergy on the planet, either. So it can be quite serious.

While mild allergies might go away with time, and perhaps my continual exposure to the allergen (then complete lack thereof) in the form of shots is to blame for my new extreme allergy, this is not going to be the case for everyone with allergies.

I would not mind having another cat, but I do choose to continue living (for now), so no cats in my immediate future. Good luck rehoming your cats, OP.

Allergies? They say it’s not the fur, but the dander. Here’s the remedy.

First, shave the cats.
Then start giving them three baths, every day.
...and then they eventually run away!

J/k Good luck with the situation.

Anyone need a little friend?

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I've had 10 years of shots and am now on the immunity drops instead. No amount of shots or medicine would allow me to live in anything other then misery directly with cats. People that get a little stuffy are mildly allergic to cats at best. If I'm in a room with a cat for more then 10 minutes my eyes start burning, my nose starts running, and my throat starts feeling tight. The symptoms keep getting worse every minute from there on. It all just depends on the OPs girlfriends sensitivity level. Any one that says take a pill or buy an air filter has no clue what serious allergies are.

WTF now cats hate baths?!?! Goddamn millennial cats

We had two long hair cats when my kids were younger and my wife liked keeping them clean so she would give them each a bath about once a week. Those crazy cats loved the water. We had a stream in the back yard and they would walk out into the stream to get a drink of cooler water since that water in the center was always moving from a spring a little ways upstream. The craziest thing is they wouldn't come in out of the rain. So unless we got them inside before it started raining they looked like a couple wet mops when they came in for dinner or came in for the night.

In the past I have seen cats that would put up with water but i have never seen cats that loved it. We had to be careful to put the lid down on the toilet or they would jump in. And my wife could never leave bleach or anything in the wash tub in the laundry room or they would be swimming in it. It was funny & a PITA at the same time.

Anyway - since you were talking about cats and water I thought some people might get a kick out of that story!

What about getting a person to come and walk/ play with your cats a few times per day?

Can we hire you to keep up with cleaning our house.
We have 7 indoor cats and their are dust bunnies floating around all over the place,
as soon as i sweep a room clean, inside of 10 minutes there are twice as many hair/dust bunnies as before.

I bought the Roomba for my dogs, works amazingly well on not carpeted surfaces.

#teamcat

I find it very fucked up when someone gives up their children(pets).

Why wouldn't allergy meds work?

I can't imagine the girlfriend being as cute as that.

That's a really cute cat! I hope you can find them a good house. It really sounds like you have tried many ways to make this work out (allergy wise) but often times life gives us hard choices.

Life gets in the way of a lot of things. There was a family recently that we helped find a home for their large dog due to one of their moms being elderly and having to live with them or go to a nursing home. They chose to care for the parent at home due to them not being able to afford a decent nursing home and not wanting to stuff her in a bad one to wait for death. The parent is highly allergic and their was major concerns about the dog knocking her over which in the parents condition could be deadly. Lots of good people have to make very hard difficult decisions every day in life. But be sure to keep waving your finger and judging them.

Equating pets with children - while sweet in some small way - seems a little off.

**fixed

Keeping the dog seems to fix both the needing to re-home the dog and the parent issue. This was a self correcting problem.

#teamcat

There’s a reason there’s a cat themed pin and not a girlfriend one

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Awesome! You can look forward to crying & watching this whilst your GF explains to you exactly the correct way to clean the house in mind numbing fucking detail.

My friends have had a pet sitting business for over 20 years.
The wife is allergic to cats.
They own several cats and dogs themselves.
I knew she was taking something to deal with it and just contacted her, here's her reply...

"Any over the counter anti-histamine. I currently use Claritin, and the thing that actually helped the allergy was to start living with cats."

I'm gonna stay REEAAALLLY polite here and say to have your GF move in, take some Claritin, and take the effort to make this work.
After a substantial amount of time (9-12 months) see how she feels, then make the choice to re-home the cats.

My 2 elderly cats passed away last year. One was 16 that I'd had since she was brought home by a now ex-GF at 8 weeks old.
She was like my child, and I miss both cats greatly (ex-girlfriends, not so much).
I would have NEVER ever considered getting rid of my pets for a relationship, and neither should you.

It's already been said a few times, but I just want to cast another vote here for developing allergy tolerance. I had a great gf who had a pair of amazing cats, and I was a sneezing sniffling eye-watering mess for a couple of weeks, it slowly got better...a couple of months later, very little allergic response. I could pet them, have them hang out on my lap, no worries. Barely any sniffles. If you really like both the person and the cats, you just jump in and adapt.

x1000000

Do these cats have names? It can't just be species 14221 : Cat

#teamcat is trending