If you’ve ever had a partner who has a pet you don’t get along with, you might have joked about getting rid of or replacing the animal with a better-behaved replica.
And while most people would never dream of actually following through with the empty threat, one man on Reddit has admitted he did exactly that to his wife’s cat six years ago – and she still has no idea.
The man claimed that he and his wife were boyfriend and girlfriend at the time and he was looking after the moggie while his partner spent the week with her family.
He wrote: “Six years ago, I swapped my then-girlfriend now-wife's cat with a more well-behaved lookalike.
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“She had an all-black cat that was extremely aggressive. It scratched everyone, hissed at everyone, and didn't use its litter box half the time.
"My wife insisted she could get it to behave better.
“One week she went out of town to visit her family and I was supposed to go to her apartment and feed it.”
The man had such a bad experience with the cat that he joked he was going to replace it – but then decided that wasn’t such a bad idea.
He added: “The first night I went over, it scratched the s**t out of my arm. I joked to the cat that it's not special and I'll replace it if it scratches again. The joke stuck with me until I had thought about it enough that it wasn't a joke.
“The next morning, I went to the local animal shelter. I found an identical cat who was already litterbox trained and acclimated to people, but was a little skittish. But overall, it was a lot friendlier and better behaved, and the skittishness would help it resemble the original cat.
“So, I adopted it, took it to my wife's apartment, settled it in, then drove her original cat to an animal shelter a town over, because I was paranoid my wife would find out if I took it to a local one.”
And if replacing his wife’s cat wasn’t bad enough, the man still hasn’t told her what he did – and it’s been six years.
He said: “It's been six years since then. We got married four years ago. We still have the swapped cat. It answers to the original cat's name. My wife knows nothing. She loves this cat and brags about how much better behaved it is. Every time I see it, I feel like a total piece of s**t.”
The man’s Reddit post has over 6,000 comments, and many of them couldn’t believe the extent of the man’s lies.
One person said: “How do you all lie to your spouse so easily? I can’t keep anything in for more than a couple minutes without cracking. Feels so fundamentally wrong.”
While another added: “Delete this post. Delete this account. Never tell anyone, ever. I have seen people divorce for less and I wouldn't blame her.”
And someone else wrote: “As someone who’s had a cat taken previously, I would hate you if I were your wife. It’s been 12 years and I still get emotional about it and if I were you, I’d ensure your wife never finds out. Don’t tell friends, nothing.”
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