If you have cats, you know that when they aren't napping, they often like to play at all hours of the day and night. Cats are crepuscular, meaning that they are most active as the sun rises and sets, but a lot of cat people often report that their cats are super active in the middle of the night, and they don't know why.
It turns out our own work schedules might be part of the problem. Because the first time many cat owners play with their pet is when they're returning home in the evening, and it resets the cat's internal clock. That means your cat will be super ready to play at night, when you're probably ready to wind down.
One man recently shared on Reddit that his wife is taking advantage of this common cat reality and keeps telling him that his cats are keeping her up at night. He didn't buy it, so he decided to stay up all night and see what happens.
The issue has been going on for a while.
He begins by saying that his wife has been complaining about his cats for a while:
"The past couple of months, my wife has been complaining about our cats. She's been claiming that the cats wake her up constantly and that she's frustrated every night that she 'has to get up and open the door for the cats' or 'the cats keep making noises' or 'the cats keep jumping on her.'"
She said she wants the cats gone.
Things got so bad that she even said she wants the cats out:
"It got to the point where she started saying she wants me to get rid of them. I told her I've never seen or heard any of this, but she claims I sleep through it all."
She even said she'd leave if they didn't.
She basically told him it comes down to a choice: The cats go, or she goes.
"She kept telling me she was getting less and less sleep and kept acting aggressive, blaming lack of sleep from the cats, and that if I didn't get rid of them, she'd leave me. I legitimately started considering giving the cats to my sister, until I noticed something."
But then something odd happened.
One day, her story didn't match up:
"One morning she claimed she had gotten up multiple times throughout the night to help the cats. She listed a bunch of times. I thought it was weird, because I had been up until 4am, and she claimed that she 'got up at 1am to open the door for them, and a few times around 3am because they were meowing and jumping on her.' I was in the bedroom the entire time while she slept, and I know none of that happened. Things weren’t adding up, so I decided to run a test."
So he stayed up all night.
He hatched a plan:
"I waited until she said she was going to bed, then I let the cats out of our bedroom, lowered my phone brightness, and faked going to sleep. I just laid there in bed for the entire night, bored, but I definately did not fall asleep. I made sure to make timestamps every 30 minutes on my phone through Discord just to be sure."
He even tracked every sound they made.
"I marked down every noise my cats made. One cat had jumped down from something and made a little sound at 3:18am, and one ate food relatively quietly by the bedroom door at 4:57am. Other than that, nothing happened."
His wife slept straight through the night.
It turns out … his wife never woke up. Not once.
"Sure enough, my wife slept from 11pm until 9am, and that morning she claimed she had woken up 'at least 7 times' to open doors and from cat noises and cats jumping on her. At this point I was pissed because she was clearly lying to me. I was exhausted and fed up with the lies, so I just bluntly called her out on it."
So he confronted her.
"I told her, 'That's funny. I stayed up all night to monitor the cats, and they weren't even in the room at all last night. I have timestamps and everything. So you've been lying to me and trying to convince me to get rid of my cats? Why?'"
She told him he was the problem.
Finally, his wife came up with a defense: Her husband was in the wrong for staying up to see if she was lying.
"She just sat there quitly shaking and looking pissed, then got up and left without answering. She came back hours later and ignored me whenever I talked, and when I asked her how I'm the bad-guy in this situation, she finally said that I was treating her like a child by lying about sleeping and staying up all night just to see if she was lying or not and that making timestamps and everything as if I was an investigator was 'going too far' and makes me obsessive."
People are surprised by her behavior.
One commenter said:
"That was gaslighting and manipulative, and if she had issues with your cats she should have said so directly."
Some people think something else is going on.
But others think it's odd that she's raising such an issue over cats that have been around throughout the entire relationship. A commenter noted:
"If my married partner told me they were ready to leave me over cats though, I'd think there was a bigger issue."
The man even sounds like he's not committed to working it out.
The man who posted the original story came back to explain that if he has to choose between his cats and his wife, he's not sure who he'll choose:
"We've been essentially perfect together for years, and she’s NEVER done anything like this before. I didn't even realize she was capable of such immature actions.
"I mean I'd hate to have to go through a messy divorce and potentially lose a bunch of my own money/items over one lie I've ever caught her in. It might be easier/cheaper to just deal with the situation through couple's therapy and give it one more chance, honestly.
"Though, the prenup we signed would make a potential divorce a lot cleaner."
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