Hiiiii r/polyamory ! I’m more on the garden-variety nonmon side of stuff but S/O and I have definitely blurred those lines a bit, lmao. Plus I feel like this sub has better guidance when it comes to the non-sexual side of stuff, including logistics and hosting.

So, my S/O of 5 years and I live together. 2 bedroom place, half of a duplex. It’s nice. We have separate bedrooms, though we usually sleep in mine. We’ve been nonmonogamous from the start, and though there have been bumps, it’s been great overall.

Enter our cat. Let’s call her Stinky, to protect her identity. Stinky is a 5 year old DSH, and was a former “difficult case” at animal control. We adopted her last summer. Most of the time she’s a pretty great cat. She likes to sit in the same room you’re in, but not too close. She asserts her boundaries (something I think some people in this sub could learn from her :P), but she’s never attacked me or S/O when we haven’t totally deserved it. She can be very affectionate when she wants to be, and even plays fetch.

But also… Stinky’s a hell of a roommate. If she’s fed too early or late, she’s prone to the ol’ scarf-n-barf. If someone is in a room without her, she will DEMAND to be let in and start scratching walls or doorframes to be let in (and, naturally, if you let her in and close the door behind her, she will FREAK and fight to be let out again). She has completely claimed S/O’s room as her own. And she takes great pleasure in laying directly on top of my head when I am trying to sleep. She has wicked bad allergies to most soft foods and will break out in awful rashes if fed a trigger food, but often refuses to eat the sensitive food she can eat. Mostly typical cat stuff.

And Stinky’s worse when people visit. Sometimes (especially if I have many people over), she hides. Other times, she’ll come out for a bit of petting. But much of the time, she stands about 20 feet away from the new person, staring at them and hissing periodically. Not ideal! Plus people (particularly non-cat-people) don’t usually take well to the whole “getting lunged at— but not bitten— when she doesn’t want to be pet anymore” stuff.

So yeah! I’ve lived with cats my whole life, but trying to host partners while living with one indoor-only cat in a small-ish space is a whole different animal (hah). Hosting when we live in a small space is tricky enough (like lordy, the walls are thin!), but she’s not making it any easier. Worst part is that some of my partners have SUPER bad cat allergies, and if they ever crash I’d want a cat-free guest room (not plausible now, but perhaps when we buy a house…) so they can sleep without needing to take a comedic amount of antihistamines.

Obviously I would never rehome her, since she’s our baby. But damn it, I wish this was easier to solve. I can’t even imagine what people with kids do.