Ain’t the opposite problem, far as I’m concerned. This isn’t a man/woman thing so much as it’s a “my-pets-are-the-centre-of-the-universe” thing.
This is pretty much exactly what I hear when I hear non-pet owners complain about their dates’ pets. “NOOO!!! She’s not paying attention to MEEEEEEE!!! Look at MEEEE. Think about MEEEE. Only talk to MEEEE.” Ick.
I’m a dog person. I wouldn’t even bother trying to get lucky with someone who didn’t self-identify as a pet lover. I wouldn’t feel at all deprived about it either.
I’m not seeing the obsession in this example. Having so many cats that your home is disgusting or literally treating pets like they are children (dressing them up in clothing, carrying them in strollers & purses) is one thing. Simply showing love and affection for a pet is completely different and is normal. I’d much rather know a person who nuzzles their pet than someone who treats it like some inanimate object.
So if said Girl doesn’t have pets, but instead picks up her phone to text/read/talk, would it spark the same annoyance in you?
Everyone needs affection to thrive, and any guy who can’t wait a minute while I greet my cats is a little too needy for my taste.
I have three cats (none of which were MY idea) and I love them dearly. Why wouldn’t I? They’re endlessly entertaining, unreservedly affectionate, and make my home a more enjoyable place. They don’t ‘run my life’ (I have cats, as opposed to dogs, specifically because they’re low maintenance), but I would absolutely skip a weekend trip if one of them was seriously ill. I took in these animals, and they’re my responsibility.
Not liking (or at least cheerfully tolerating) my cats would be a dealbreaker for me in a potential partner. They were here first, and I already know I love them. You? You’re just a guy, I’m not invested yet, and I’m not inclined to disrupt my happy household for you.
Note to self: get more pets
Wow, that is ridiculous. It’s so obsessive that it’s scary when someone greets their pet in your presence? Nuzzling a pet in your presence is a sign that someone ‘needs’ the affection of a pet to survive?
Are you really that jealous and needy? I am going to make sure to show affection to my cat in front of every guy I bring to my house just to weed out people who might be you.
Falling to the floor to nuzzle a cat does strike me as a bit odd. Picking the cat up to nuzzle it doesn’t.
What the heck? You actually think it’s normal to get down on the floor and nuzzle your cats? Seriously? I mean, people don’t even greet their children that way.
I mean, that is the sort of behavior I would expect out of a child. Adults don’t just spontaneously drop down to the floor. Especially not in front of someone they are trying to impress. (I could see doing it as a way of pretending to be a little kid for a little bit.)
And adult would, if affection is necessary, pick up the pet off the ground, not make themselves look like an idiot.
I seriously can’t get past the fact that you think such behavior is normal.
This post from you is the funniest thing I’ve read in a week. Absolute and total gold.
Thank you
Jesus, people, calm down. The “falling to the floor” story and the “it’s when it gets obsessive that it gets scary for us” aren’t related sentences. It wasn’t meant to be a description of what I found to be obsessive; they were two separate thoughts, and honestly not even thoughts I put that much effort into.
The falling to the floor really did happen. I had just started dating her about two weeks prior, and we went to her house to pick up her coat or something, and her cat came running toward her. She (the girl) jumped in the air, tucked her feet underneath herself, landed hard, and started to rub noses with her cat, all the while making baby noises at it. I don’t really give a shit what that makes you think of me; it was weird. But I’m not sitting here saying she’ll never find someone and her life is worthless, like you’re making it out to be. All I’m saying is that I knew right then that she wasn’t for me, and it was quite a buzzkill.
Now, I’ll admit that my comment “Maybe it’s because guys want to know they’re dating someone who doesn’t need the affection of a pet to survive” could easily be misconstrued, so allow me to clarify. What I meant by that is that men, generally speaking, are cowards. And if one of our first impressions of a girl is that she is seeking affection in such an extreme way as the girl in the story above was, then we will assume she will be looking for that in us as well. Whether or not she really would be is irrelevant to us, because at that point it’s fight or flight. It’s the whole thing about, “When you’re trying to get a squirrel to come to you, you don’t want to make any sudden movements” kind of thing. And that would be enough to scare us off (or, to avoid speaking for all men, it was enough to scare off me and everyone else I’ve asked about it).
Honestly, the whole thing seems like a Seinfeld episode to me… Jerry dates someone who’s overly affectionate with their cat, and he breaks up with her because of it. But it’s not even like I broke up with her; we had just recently met. And it’s not like I judged her entire persona based on that one little thing. She’s a lovely girl and I have no doubt she’ll meet someone who either tolerates the situation or genuinely wanted it in the first place. So calm the hell down.
That cat should learn to take care of itself and that the world is big and cruel and has no room for softies!
You should see how some people act around babies and toddlers. Scoop 'em up in their arms and everything! (And yes, I know the point is that people treat animals like children, which comes up on the SDMB every so often and really seems to make some people incredibly angry. I think someone else said it best last time – Do you really think people have a finite amount of love to give? If anything, having pets has increased by compassion and ability to show affection. Hoarders are one thing, but I don’t understand why you’d even have a pet if you treated it like an annoying roommate.
Jesus, people, are you going out of your way to mis-understand the OP? I’m understanding him to be saying that he thinks the single ladies need to not go nuts for pets (to the exclusion of their human dates), not that he hates every living animal and won’t date someone who has A pet that they treat as a pet.
[snide response]
I guess my professional, edumacated self, with my own home and own car one son (he’s seven, needs babysitters and so forth) and four pet rats are out then.
[/snide response]
Plus I am not single. But anyhow…
But I know how you feel. I had a dog a few years ago and although I loved him and was crushed when we had to put him down at 8 months of age, I realized that having a dog plus a 4 year old really changed my patterns of mobility and readiness to go on vacations on a whim. We have talked about getting another dog, but first we had travel plans this summer, then I was starting a new job. Now we are thinking about maybe in spring. Not sure, because we want to go to Quebec city this summer, and I am starting my next degree and (so forth).
The four rats just kind of happened. We had two little female fancy rats (ostensibly my son’s pets but since he’s still young I do a fair bit of cage cleaning, care etc) One died and since they are social little critters we thought we would adopt/rescue another girl. Answered an add, I said I will buy the cage and get them (because ad said two) from you Friday. They called back half an hour later said if you can’t take them today I will set them loose.
Ugh. And two girl rats turned out to be 3 boy rats. Poorly socialized rats who aren’t litter trained, or like to sit on a shoulder. So now I have four rats, which is way too many and makes me sound like a rat lady. Plus males stink and require a lot more cage maintenance than the girls did. I don’t like to go out Thursdays because that is cage night, since garbage day is Friday. (Bonus, crows and gulls do not mess with your garbage if it smells like rats!)So I own too many pets, I guess. But they are mostly my son’s.
I dated a guy who had a stinky neglected ferret. I couldn’t stand it. Eventually I couldn’t stand him because his whole house reeked of ferret musk and pee. He didn’t notice.
I have some cat lady friends. I saw the signs starting in our twenties; now in our forties, one friend has two cats, lives with her parents and eats vegan wheat free dairy free organic dinners, which she cooks and eats in the living room she has made from her sister’s old bedroom while she sleeps in her childhood single bed. Her parents hate her cats but accepting them mean she lives with them, so they tolerate it. She doesn’t go anywhere though, because she needs to be home for her cats, so they don’t pester her parents.
She doesn’t understand why she isn’t married and doesn’t have a boyfriend. In the last few years I have refused to allow this topic to dominate our conversations. My boyfriend didn’t realize until after he’d known her over a year that she was either straight or interested in men.
I like pets, but they aren’t my life nor are they my substitute for having a life. In essence, I agree with the OP, despite the fact I might be the rat lady.
I have a dog, two rabbits, and a fish. I chose not to get cats because my boyfriend is allergic to them. Actually, he’s allergic to the dog, too… So the dog is NEVER allowed in my bed, I use a dog hair remover on the couch, and I vacuum regularly. I’ve also trained my former rabbit to like being vacuumed during shedding season, and am doing the same with these, for my man. I love my pets, but my man comes first.
Pet hair in the kitchen? I’d get rid of my dog before I’d live like that. No question.
You never ended the parenthese!
yes, I’m a nitpicker..
About the equivalent of <insert name of whatever sport a man is obsessed with>! “Sorry I can’t catch up on that night because the game is on” … different priorities?! who ever thought people could want different things in life!!!
I’d love to find a man who would cancel plans because of a sick animal … such compassion and awareness of another being and their responsibility for its wellbeing is a man I’d like to get to know!
I too use “does not have/like pets” as an indicator of date-ability … they are obviously not for me and I don’t even have any pets that sleep on the bed!
I get that a lot. 
This is a surprisingly controversial subject, that brings out an awful lot of hostility for some reason. Even if I put it in MPSIMS (rather than the Pit) , and even f I merely request that , because an excessive need for intimacy wtih all sorts of animals has sadly been an issue recently, I wish some of these lovely women would consider whether they need a cat to chare their bed more than they need a man to share their bed, and to think abot those priorities, all sorts of pet-ladies decided to inform me that they won’t be sharing a bed with a pet-hater like me anytime soon. I agree, but no need to get nasty or personal about it–we wouldn’t be doing that in any event, and certainly not after I discovered your emotional needs for intimacy with your pets, so that would be welcome information for us both. Why all the nastiness? I’ve plainly stirred up some shit here.
I mean, let me get this straight, Miss Gnomer: it would be a positive thing for you if we had scheduled a date, and I called you up a half-hour before I was supposed to pick you up, and cancelled because my pet hog suddenly got diarrhea? You would hang up the phone, and say to yourself, “I wasn’t sure I liked him up til now, but now that I know how he loves that pig, he’s the guy for me”?
Wow. My husband is a saint. We’ve had dozens of dogs (I bred pugs for a while). At least a dozen cats. Guinea pigs. Rabbits. Hedgehogs. Two dozen birds. Four or five dozen rats. And probably a hundred chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys.
And I do rein in my pit when I walk on the bicycle path, but I’m afraid she does give the squinty eye to any strange male walking by.
I totally agree with you. I am not a pet person either.