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When I was married, for the first and only time, in 2000, I had three cats in the house and a feral cat that I had raised and was feeding outdoors. I won't say that my wife hated cats but she hadn't had one and hadn't come to realize how much a part of the family they can be. My kitty, Lydia (who, approaching 25, is quite feeble these days), didn't make things any better. She hated my wife and, in the first year that we were married, she crapped in her shoes a couple of times, in her purse once, and another time on the couch where she had been sitting. She was already ten years old, and had been with me since birth (my other two cats were her mother and twin sister), so I don't know what I would have done if I had to make a choice. Eventually, and only after a great deal of relearning how to deal with a troubled cat, we were able to bring things around to something that was more livable. Although we've been married for nearly fifteen years now, Lydia still hisses at my wife if she walks into a room too abruptly, although she no longer craps in her stuff, and has even chosen a cat bed near my wife's desk from time to time.
Her sister, Cutie, wasn't too crazy about the changes in her life either, but she would never dream of doing anything as gross as crapping anywhere outside of the litter box. In fact, she was once accidentally locked into a walk-in closet while we were away for a day and a half; when we returned, she was yelling to be let out, and made a dash to the litter box. She had left no messes in the closet. She wasn't overly fond of my new wife either, but she took a passive-aggressive approach. She would get between us if we were sitting on the couch, or lying in bed, and then push on my wife, trying to get her to move further away. Baby Girl, their mom (who died of cancer at 23 years of age), welcomed my wife without reservation. Of course, she also tried to carry her ten-year-old kittens around the house, so her faculties were, I suppose, suspect.
Eventually, Lydia began to realize that she wasn't going to be able to get rid of my wife, and Cutie decided she could live with the situation if she had to, but neither of them ever really warmed up to her. We took the formerly feral cat (Bird) in to the house, and she liked my wife well enough, but she was never an overly affectionate cat since she never completely lost all of her feral attributes.
When we decided to take Bird in, we didn't know that she was pregnant. She had four beautiful kittens, one of which we kept. Actually, we had adopted her (Obadiah) out, but she was returned when the family we adopted her to moved to a place that didn't accept cats. Obadiah had a big thing about being fair. She would literally spend a certain amount of time on my lap, then move over to my wife to give her allotted time. Obadiah was the first cat that my wife ever had that would allow her to experience what having a cat is all about. Unfortunately, we lost her to (probably) a fox a couple of summers ago, when she was twelve.
With their mom, Bird, and Obadiah gone, Cutie and Lydia were just lying around in their beds all day as if there was nothing to get up for. We decided to adopt a kitten, who is now almost a year old. When Ella came to live with us, both Cutie and Lydia hated her. True to her personality, Lydia still hates her, except that I have caught them cleaning one another a couple of times. Cutie and Ella have become fast friends and playmates.
To the topic though, Ella became my wife's cat. Although she likes me well enough, and turns to me when she want to play, she spends most of her time in my wife's office, near her desk, and my wife has, through Obadiah and Ella, come to love cats. But not Lydia; but that's okay - the feeling's mutual.
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