My Husband and I have been together for 5 years, married for about 3.5 of those. When we started having the marriage talks one of the points of concern was his, at the time, single cat. A cat that he's had since he was quite young, that he is very attached to. A cat he really wanted to bring with him to both our relationship and to our first place together.
At the time I was extremely reluctant to saying yes. I had learned from growing up with a family dog (a Bichon), that I was not a good pet owner. As well as I had negative desire when it comes to taking care of pets. The other prominent reason is I'm allergic to most animals, especially cats.
After discussion we decided to give it a trial run to see how my allergies faired. If they were okay or at the very least manageable, the cat could stay. Otherwise the cat had to stay where he was at the time. We agreed that he'd be the primary care taker, and I'd help with the basics, like food and water. Finally, the cats were never allowed in the bedroom. Since if I sleep where cats and cat hair is present, my asthma gets really bad, watery itchy eyes, itchy throat, etc.
Time passes, as we suspected I acclimated to the cat and my allergies did calm down quite a bit. Nowadays it very mildly triggers my asthma at worst. About 2 years ago we adopted a kitten. Mostly to keep our other cat company. Since he was left outside of the bedroom he'd sit at our door and yell all night. Loudly.
2 new problems have reared their head though. With the passage of time they only grow in their annoyance and prevalence.
Firstly, I have come to realize that I absolutely hate the insane of amount of cat hair literally everywhere. I try and stay on top of the cleaning of the hair, emphasis on "try". But its a losing battle. When we do laundry, clothes are still covered in cat hair. I rarely can cook a meal without finding at least a couple cat hairs in it. I sit at my desk or on the couch for just a moment and the whole back side of me is covered in hair. It's everywhere and I cannot express how much I'm growing to utterly despise it.
The second problem is that they are conniving *insert your choice of profanity here*'s. No matter how much we try to keep them from doing some things, it seems they make it their life's mission to do those specific things. This instance is the only time in my life where I've ever experienced, for a lack of better terms, flash anger. As an example, we have to keep basically every door locked in our apartment since they've learned how to open the doors. I think its so stupid that I have to keep the doors locked regardless of if I'm in the room or not. Despite that they still try to get in on the daily. (For context, we live in a small apartment where all the rooms loop together. In order to keep them out of the bedroom, we have to lock a most of the lockable doors)
These cats have always been very special to my husband. They are basically his emotional support animals. When he's having a tough day he's usual go-to is to hug one of his cats for a while. He's purchased the older one himself when he was a kid, and raised him. Truthfully, I don't think I could adequately describe how special these cats are to him.
My Husband and I have talked about this a few times. He is aware that I ultimately hate living with them. Understandably so, he's not at all fond of the idea of getting rid of them. He did for a short time ask to see if any of his friends would be willing to take them, with much reluctancy, no one ended up being able to. Last discussion ended with me stated that we would not be getting anymore cats after the 2 we have.
I'm worried that I'm nearing a breaking point, however. I hate that for us and the cats. I know how much he loves these cats. Hell, I love them too. But I don't know how much longer I can stand living with them. As I see it, the only option remaining to us is to get rid of them. WIBTA if I forced my husband to get rid of them?
TLDR: I'm growing to absolutely hate living with my Husbands cats, and I want to get them out of the house. But these cats are very near and dear to my husband, and he doesn't want to get rid of them.