I told my girlfriend we’d never get a cat. Now we have two

Here are some of the reasons I gave my girlfriend as to why I did not want cats. We live in a one-bedroom apartment without a logical place to put a litter box. I love our couch, which would surely be destroyed. I prefer dogs. Last, and perhaps most importantly, I am allergic to cats (most cats, at least). There were more reasons, but I consider these to be the highlights.

Joshua Smithe with partner Lily and their their adopted family, Sufjan (left) and Frances.

Anyhow, after adopting our second cat last week, I thought I would take some time to reflect on how we found ourselves here. My girlfriend, quite obviously, is a cat lover. She grew up around cats and has always had cats in her life. When she moved out of home in the Yarra Valley to the big city, one of the family cats even joined her for a while to help with the adjustment. Since that grump of a cat – which I was moderately allergic to, and mildly afraid of – returned to the quiet of the east, my girlfriend had been catless. We live together now, and not long after we moved in, negotiations about cat ownership began.

Having always been “a dog person” (not a mutant half-man/ half-dog creature, but rather a person who likes dogs), my position was clear: I did not want one. My unwavering resistance eventually cornered my girlfriend into the following position, which she described to a group of our friends one day. “If Josh and I ever break up, I’ll get a cat. If we don’t, then I have Josh. It’s a win-win.”

This should have felt like a victory. But instead, hearing this declaration – though I didn’t admit it at the time – a troubling realisation awoke in me. This was not really a “win-win” for her. It was more like a “win-pretty good outcome but ultimately never experiencing the middle section of the Venn diagram where I am both with my soulmate and living out the life I would dream of for myself”. There was a quiet sadness behind her words, that if all goes well between us, and my position remains unchanged, that she would leave behind her love for cats forever, just to be with me.

We are told time and time again that relationships are all about compromise. “Relationships are all about compromise,” a great aunt or some other distant relative will declare obnoxiously at a casual family function. But what is often not included in this unsolicited advice is when to compromise, how often, and how to handle the situation where two peoples’ preferences in a relationship directly oppose one another. My girlfriend and I are not married, which I’m sure you can tell by my very grown-up use of the term “girlfriend” thus far, so the old adage of “happy wife, happy life” could not be applied here to resolve things simply.

And so I found myself thinking about this problem more deeply. When it comes to the big decisions in a relationship, how are differing wants and needs woven together to make a life that leaves each partner both satisfied and happy?

Over the course of a life with someone, there will be many important choices—where to live, whether to have children, what to have for dinner (I am a frequent proponent of pasta). Without questioning the preconceived ideas we have about ourselves and the trajectory of our lives, it is all too easy for the phrases I’ve always wanted to … and I would never … to rub up against one another, leading one partner to potentially forgo a life experience that is deeply important to them. Every big decision in a relationship – at least in a healthy one – comes with discussion, but what occurred to me was that, where possible, the victor in these stand-offs should be: the person who stands to gain joy, not the person (me) who wants to limit the downside.

The search for a cat began. Because we are morally conscious individuals, we decided to adopt (all right, I admit it was cheaper to adopt a cat instead of going to a breeder, though the moral factor was an added bonus). We found one I wasn’t allergic to, and within days the chorus of “I told you you could love a cat” was in tune. I quickly became the cliche we see all too often in internet videos with titles like “My dad with the cat he said he didn’t want”, usually portraying a middle-aged man in a button-up shirt and chinos loving a cat as if it were his first-born grandchild.

Months later, I would accept the argument of “he needs a friend”, and now our cat tally stands at two, Sufjan and Frances.

Love and other catastrophes: Lily with Sufjan. 

The destruction of our couch has been a smallish price to pay for my girlfriend’s joy when she comes home to our cats, and for my discovery that “relationships are all about compromise” is a rule that doesn’t work – especially for the one whose wishes are most compromised – when the lens is shifted to how to maximise happiness.

And, as the saying goes, everyone talks about their first love, but no one talks about the first cat they get in their 20s that teaches them the true meaning of unconditional love.

Joshua Smithe is a freelance writer.