Our son has become allergic to cat hair. We have had a cat in our house for a long time and we are all very attached to him and consider him a member of the family. The only way out of this situation is to remove the animal from our home. However, my spouse is against this, as he says that it is a betrayal. However, there is no other way out.
My spouse picked up the cat on the street when he was a baby, long before we met. I love animals, but between my son’s health and the cat, I choose the former. My husband’s cat has a complicated personality. When I first moved in with my boyfriend he started shitting all over the apartment, only when he got used to me he stopped behaving badly and started going to the litter box again.
Our parents kept telling us that we need to think about the children, not a cat to babysit. But we were in no hurry to get heirs, since our apartment needed major repairs, for which we were saving up.
– You need to get rid of the cat, because he will instantly ruin your repairs, – said my mother-in-law and my mother fully supported her in this.
However, my husband and I knew that our fluffy friend is not such a prankster, and therefore were confident that the future of the repair is not threatened.
When I got pregnant, my parents started to persuade us again to get rid of the pet, because they argued that the cat and the newborn should not be in the same house. The parents were worried that the cat might scratch the baby, bring an infection from the street or even strangle him.
After their son was born, they all realized that such fears were completely unfounded, as the animal was very supportive of the child. The cat didn’t even come near his son at first, only when the child got older did he start to get acquainted with it. Then my son and the cat quickly got on well and even started playing together. It was very amusing to watch the son crawling after the pet on all fours, trying to catch up with him.
However, when my son was two, he got the first symptoms of allergies, which we first took for a common cold. After a while the baby got contact dermatitis. After a long check-up the doctor told us that the cause of our baby’s health problems were allergies.
At first we did not even suspect that pet’s fur was the cause, since we had had a cat long before the birth of the child, and when the baby was born, he did not have any reaction to the pet. Only after allergy testing we were able to discover that the hair of our pet was the cause of our son’s illness. The doctor said that the allergy may not develop immediately, but gradually, and only after the allergen accumulates in the body do its symptoms appear. The specialist said that we must remove the cause of the allergy and the symptoms of the disease can be eliminated by medication.
We decided that we would just keep the animal away from my son, but it turned out to be useless. I do wet cleaning in the house every day, but it has not improved the condition of the baby. There are only two ways out of this situation – either give my son anti-allergy medications all the time, or take the pet out of the house.
The doctor said that there is a special treatment scheme, which helps to decrease the manifestations of the disease, but it is a very long treatment, and the fact that we do not get hundred-percent results, and the son is a baby, so it is better not to hurry with the use of this therapeutic scheme. The only effective treatment is to remove the animal from the house.
Our daddy refuses to part with his cat. I get the impression that the animal is dearer to him than his own son. Even my husband’s mother is willing to take our pet in, but my husband is adamantly against it and says that fluffy is part of our family.
My husband is sure that when my son grows up, his allergies will go away, but for now he says that my son should just be given allergy medications, and he doesn’t care that all of the medications have a negative effect on his liver and other organs.
I also love our pet, but my son is still more important to me. I don’t know what the right thing to do in this situation is, because I don’t want my son’s condition to worsen?
