aibu about my husbands obsession with the cats?

[minidisco]

Brief back story: we have two male cats, 6 years old, neutered. We also have ds 11 (dh is step father), and dd 7months.

Dh is very attatched to the cats, and worries when they don't come back after a few hours. He won't go to bed until they are both in, sometimess not going to bed until 1am and later. We live backing onto a large meadow with stables etc, and obviously in the summer this is great for the cats.

Over the last few weeks due to the hot weather one of the cats has been staying out later and later, which my husband is getting more and more worked up about. He has a very senior position in finance, and works long hours to the detriment of family time. I completely understand this, but recently he has been having days off to search for the cat, spending all of his time worrying that the cat doesn't want to live with us anymore and getting really anxious and stressed out! Yesterday the cat stayed out all night, so dh didn't go in work and went searching for it. He found him in a neighbours garden, and tried to carry him home, but cat got spooked and ended up scratching him to pieces, resulting in him needing a tetanus Injection and anti biotics as its infected! !

That day he kept the cat inside, and as such we weren't allowed to have the doors open in case he got out. The following day cat was desperate to go out so I let him, but he again didn't come back that night. We knew he was ok though as various neighbours saw him snoozing in the shade throughout the day. Dh was absolutely out of his mind again with worry, and had me out searching in the heat with dd in her trolley. He got back from work, went out searching with the cat basket, and brought him back! So now we can't open any doors to let air in as he doesn't want cat to go out!!

This evening he has completely been vile towards me, and basically ignored dd. I can't believe how he cares so much about the cats, and is so irrationally obsessed with where they are all of the time, and whether they want to live with us, yet hasn't even shown any particular interest in dd or his ss or myself. This has been building up for months, and his behaviour is getting harder to put up with now that we have dd.

Aibu in thinking his children and myself should have priority, and that his behaviour is irrational, or am I being unreasonable?

Don't get me wrong, I have spent over £200 so far this month on my elderly furry baby(my 16 year old cat.) Me and DH are eating vegetarian so we can afford his medicine.

By arrogant- do you mean he thinks he's better than 'that'? Or simply in denial? I refused to think I had an anxiety issue. I did. Unfortunately, DD also has an anxiety disorder so I've been looking stuff up all over the web. It's very hard to admit something is wrong, especially when there's a stigma surrounding it already. It sounds like the cats are an 'easy' thing to worry about, not the source of the problem. I would talk to him and suggest going to the GP- sell it, if it needs to be sold, that if he's completely fine, then it won't make any difference. Although if he knows he has a problem and he's worried it will 'come out' at the GP it might be hard to convince him.

I agree vampiresqid, I do that too and have anxiety.

Also agreed this is likely to be mental health issues and really not about a cat. It is not usual to take time off work, be so anxious, be very uncaring to your loved ones and generally completely irrational about a cat, especially as it is one used to roaming outside and that stays up late and is not that interested in coming home!

I agree with everyone, he's trying to control the cat as a way of controlling his world and his anxiety- if the cat comes back, his life is ok, if it does not, it goes in a catastrophic spiral in which he also tries to suck you in to look for the cat/dragging child out in heat to look for cat. This is a sign of depressive catastrophic thinking, and his inability to discuss it with you points towards anxiety/stress from some source in his life.

This doesn't answer what you do with it- what would you suggest to a client who called you with this problem? I would probably personally be looking to stay elsewhere for a couple of days, at the moment he is swinging between anxiety and anger and I wouldn't want to be around that- perhaps that would allow you all to regroup and for him to see the level of your concern. Obviously encourage him to visit the drs, and perhaps you need to let him know that his behaviour has crossed what you find tolerable (irrelevant that he considers it normal, you don't and you don't want to live with it).

I agree with others here, this sounds like a mental health issue; severe anxiety and maybe some kind of OCD. Being awake till the small hours and taking days off work to search for a cat is completely disproportionate as roaming/disappearing for days on end is normal cat behavior.

Does he worry excessively about other things ?

Ironically the more you keep the cat shut in the more likely it is to bugger off when it does eventually get out.

I disagree with moving out as that's one sure step to him completely losing control and ultimately that will be harder to come back from, meaning your dd and you will probably suffer even more. I would tell him that I expect him to go to a doctor as you believe he is ill- phrase this nicely and then more forcefully if he refused- and if he refuses to seek any help, THEN I would consider the moving out for a few days. Give him a chance to get help, but for DH and me, it was always key for me that once I realised I needed help, I should minimise the impact on others, as much as I possibly could.

How would be react if you reposted this on "The Litter Tray " section as just a simple "do I need to worry about my cats staying out a lot? "

You could show him the replies to the cat related question and perhaps lead on from that to what are you really worried about?

Is there a rational angle to the anxiety? For e.g. traffic, pet theft, going on? I'd be inclined to suggest he cat proofs the garden.

Why not put loc8tor tags on the cats? It won't address the underlying issues but may alleviate one of his concerns.

It does sound a tad obsessive not sure how you go about dealing with the underlying issue though whatever it is.

I am fairly sure you can get gps tracking collars though which might help deal with his anxiety in the short term? I've seen a few websites through a quick google, just an idea but it might help him feel more in control of the cats roaming?

You can cat proof a garden btw. I did it in our last house.

I know this is not the major issue here, and it wouldn't really solve anything - his anxiety would find another latch.

Anyway - IF you have a good fence or wall all the way around, apx 5ft min, you can fix a taught ledge of about 2 foot of mesh sticking out from the fence/wall and the cat cant jump out over it.

Yes, you can cat proof a garden.

Protectapuss cat fencing. Google it. We're going to have this installed because my youngest cat has started getting over our fence and I've already lost three cats so need to keep mine in the garden now.

Thank you everyone for your advice, I am going to have to speak with him about it, but I am nervous to do this as he is completely incapable of looking at this rationaly!

OP could you suggest leaving the cats to be cats if they don't want to come in at night, with the compromise being - an open window somewhere downstairs where the cat can jump inside if it needed to.

We do this as my dh doesn't like our cat staying out overnight but I don't mind and will often let him escape if his sad eyed begging gets too much :)

He won't let us do this, he also won't consider a cat flap either! God knows why!

Just attempted to speak to him as he was about to go out looking for cat again, and he got really angry at me, said that I am being unreasonable and that our views in the important things are too different and I.piss him off. Really don't know what to do now

OP - I kind of understand where your DH is coming from.

I have cats and I am neurotic over anxious about them coming in at night. I drive my DH nuts sometimes, as if one of the cats doesn't appear at supper time, I have been known to work myself into a complete frenzy and have a panic attack with all sorts of images in my head of what has happened to them.

It can be tricky at times, as we have 9 cats and we live on a farm, so there is lots of hunting and catty things for them to do outside. I'm not rational about it and my DH has learned to humour me and give helpful suggestions like "wait 20 minutes to give them a chance to come in and if he/she doesn't appear, we'll go and look" to deflect me from thinking about it, rather than getting frustrated with me. The fact he acknowledges my "panic" and doesn't ridicule me for it, usually means I start to be more rational about things.

What I will say, is this;

I get most anxious about the cats when I am not feeling in control of other parts of my life, or I am under extreme stress, either work wise or personal wise (It was at it's absolute worst after we lost our DD1). It's about being in control. If I know where the cats are (in and safe at night), I don't have to worry about that one thing, I can know they are safe and I can try and concentrate on other things. Stress is a massive, massive trigger for me and if your DH has a stressful job and he's suffering stress or MH issues, it may well be manifesting itself as worrying about the cats.

Here's some suggestions (which work) to try and get the cats in on time at night.

1. Feed them really nice wet food once a day in the evening so that they have a good incentive to come in. Feed dried food in the morning and take it up, so that they don't free feed in the day. Teach them a "supper" call, which gets them running as they know they'll get fed.

2. Get a 4 way locking cat flap, so you can lock it on "In only" when you get home from work in the early evening. That will keep them in, once they come in, IYSWIM.

3. Cat proof the garden (easier said than done, but it can be done) so that they can't go off anywhere.

So tell him HE is being unreasonable and unnecessarily cruel with forcing outdoor cats to be shut indoors when they clearly don't want to be.

Sorry, not much more to offer, I have no words of wisdom.
Good luck.

Blimey, if you are going to manifest an anxiety disorder, focusing on cats being out is really going to feed it. That's what cats do - they roam!

Minidisco, as a MH social worker, what would you advise someone in your shoes - the partner of someone with a query anxiety disorder - to do?

It can be harder to be someone with professional skills in X when a situation arises amongst friends and family, so perhaps better to ask advice elsewhere. Can you try to persuade him to talk to your vet about the cats, and if the vet tells him, no, that's really not rational, would that help your case in getting him to the GP?

It's really not you.

We have a sure flap cat flap which reads our cats microchips and only lets our two in, if he is worried about all local cats coming in. You can also set it to in only so when they come in for dinner it won't let them out again.

Ours love to roam and with the hot weather they are sleeping all day and out most of the night coming and going. We don't lock our cat flap at all as quiet area and for me their freedom to come and go is worth the slightly increased risk at night.

But this is not about keeping the cats safe, it sounds like a control issue the way someone with OCD has a need to order things to prevent something terrible happening and to keep anxiety from overwhelming them.

It is taking a huge amount of energy to panic this much over the cats, what emotional issue is he avoiding to find this much energy to put into obsession over cat safety.

He, from my own personal experience, most likely recognises it is irrational. When the cat comes in, close the door, so he has no excuse about going off somewhere, and then talk. If he's looking for the cat when you talk, he'd been in a heightened state of anxiety and won't be thinking clearly or calmly. When you're stressed and anxious, you tend to react badly and impulsively. That doesn't make it right, of course.

Yeah, anxiety latches onto weird things that you think you can control when you're stressed out to give you a sense of stability. totally bullshitting I'm not a MH expert

When MIL was dying I was hyper stressed and got anxious about her hospital gifts getting lost. The staff lost her stuffed animals we got her (while she was strapped to the bed with a tracheotomy), and when I complained they said it was the patients responsibility to keep track of their things. I just about had a melt down on the owner of the hospital over it, who I think just gave her new stuffed animals to shut me up.

The point is, anxiety isn't rational, and when it manifests over something trivial like the cats getting out, there's something bigger going on.

Get him help.

Keep the cats inside for now.

The last thing you want is for one of them to get hurt and have that be the straw that triggers a break down.