Great, I’m officially allergic to cats. Well, I’ve been allergic for some time, I guess, but I finally had a doctor test me. In doctor speak, my allergy is “off the charts.” That sounds pretty technical to me. Apparently, I’m also slightly allergic to dogs, but I refuse to believe that. I grew up with a dog and was always fine.
The odd thing is, I don’t think I was always allergic to cats. They never seemed to bother me before. My aunt always had cats and a ton of my friends have cats. Never had a problem. But two years ago, I got a kitten and my allergies started going nuts. It wasn’t really at first–from what I’ve read, it takes a cat until about their first birthday before they start to produce dander–but it happened. I don’t even think I can pinpoint when it started. I have bad seasonal allergies that I’ve had all my life; I’ve learned to live with them and take over-the-counter medication to help with the symptoms, but at the end of last allergy season, nothing stopped. It stuck around and actually got worse. The symptoms were similar, but slightly different too, so I knew something was up. And unfortunately for me, the over-the-counter stuff hasn’t been able to cut it.
I suspected it was either the cat (Leela, the same one you’ve seen too many pictures of) or my fiancée who moved in right around Leela’s first birthday. Though, both of those events happened at the beginning of the allergy season last year so was hard to separate what the cause was. Since I can’t just get rid of one of them for a couple months at a time, I had to get tested.
Anyway, the test came back and I’m super allergic to cats. Whether this is a newer allergy I developed or it was something I always had that was mostly masked by my seasonal allergies, I’ll never know, but this sucks. I’ve already decided that there is no way I could get rid of Leela (dammit), I’m way too attached to her (dammit, again). And my attachment to her is kind of ridiculous too, she’s a brutal human-hating bitch, but I love her. I’m like the abused woman that says she still loves the man who beats her daily.
I’m not sure how I’m going to really work all this out though. Trying to be militant about cleaning, vacuuming, sweeping, and such to try to pick up the dander isn’t really going to work too well. It’s just too hard to keep up with, I’ll do what I can, but she is everywhere, all the time. What’s worse is she has to sleep in our bedroom with us. Sometimes on the bed. Sometimes even cuddled up under my arm. This is a habit that I didn’t start with her, but after months of trying, couldn’t break either. She cries and scratches constantly at the bedroom door keeping me up all night. And nothing can get her to stop. Even going so far as to grab her, throw her in the kitchen sink, and spray her in the face with the hose from the sink does nothing to deter her. She knows it’s coming, she knows what the consequences are, but she perseveres through it because she wants in the bedroom no matter what it takes. When we finally gave in a few months ago and started leaving the bedroom door open at night, she became an entirely different cat. She was much more loving and well-behaved. However, this only my made my allergies even worse. I’ve always let her hang out in the bedroom when I’m home and awake, she likes sitting in the closet window and sleeping at the foot of the bed, but this is just too much for my body to handle.
I’ve decided that I’m going to go to an allergist and try to get the shots and see what happens. I’ll ask about my pollen allergies as well and see if those shots can be done at the same time. If they can, I’ll probably try to kill two birds, but we’ll see. Either way, it sucks because it’ll be months and months of getting shots that may not even help anything in the long run.
Oh yeah, and I don’t even like cats. Like at all. I think they’re cute, but that’s about where it ends. How did I let this happen?
