I know, I know, enough with the “Zsofia’s stray cat” threads! But I’d really like to see what people think (although of course it won’t affect the situation in any way.)
I have two cats. I have always said “no more than two.” In fact, until a couple years ago I said “no cats at all, I don’t like cats” but whatcha gonna do? So this week I went and rescued (expensively) the sweetest little not-very-feral cat. I’ve of course gotten all attached to him, but Himself doesn’t want three cats. (He essentially lives with me and he does get a say.) He says three is unhygenic, a pain in the ass, and just too many. He thinks three cats is weird and bordering on cat-lady-ish, and points out correctly that I used to say “no more than two” and now I’m all “no more than three” and that I have a well-documented soft heart and cannot be trusted with poor widdle sad animals who want me to take them home.
His points are, accurately, the house is a shithole now and cats don’t help. Three cats are more of a pain because, hell, two get in the way sometimes and are hard to herd around and knock crap off shelves and scratch you and stuff, and three is worse. More litterbox and food (well, it’s not like he has anything to do with that) so more poop smells in the dining room. And three paves the way for four. And don’t ask the damned SDMB because it’s full of crazy cat ladies. (See? Accurate.)
He doesn’t have anything against Stokie, he really likes Stokie as a cat but is adamant that he does not want to live with three cats. (Actually, we have two cats, a dog, and a bunch of fish, but the fish are tank animals and the dog is outside most of the day and isn’t allowed around Himself anyway.)
(My coworker points out, accurately, that if he’d just up and marry me there would be no further crazy cat lady danger.)
So I said, is two cats and a dog weird? He says, depends on the dog. How about two cats and an iguana? Weird if the iguana is free-roaming but you can have as many tank animals as you want without being weird (until you get to the point where that in itself is weird.) Two cats and a bird? Weird if it’s a parrot or something that needs constant work, otherwise tempting fate.
So, what do you guys think? Is three cats weird and bordering on cat lady? If not weird, is it at least significantly more cat-lady-ish than two? Significantly more work? What about other pet combinations? If you have, like, twenty animals total, but ten of them are fish and the other ten are spread out among the kingdoms and families, is that a lot worse than ten of similar things? Is ten mammals different from a mix of mammals and reptiles?
Does the number of people in the house make a difference? Is there an equation, like where n = number of residents and n+1 is the maximum number of non-tanked mammals?
Also, does anybody live peacefully with a person who wishes they had one less cat?