When Saying ‘I Do’ Means Their Cats, Too

Kelce’s brother, Jason, and his wife, Kylie, have admitted to butting heads regularly about whether to adopt cats. (She wants one. He’s not so sure.) New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani revealed last year he was undergoing allergy shots so his wife, Rama Duwaji, could one day welcome a cat into Gracie Mansion. While there is no cat in their household, a representative for Mamdani confirmed that the Mayor is still taking allergy shots. Representatives for Kelce and Swift didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Many couples say their marriage hinges on one party coming around to their spouse’s cats. Cat adoptions are climbing: More than 2.2 million cats were adopted from U.S. shelters in 2025, up 16% from a decade ago, according to Shelter Animals Count.

“I didn’t really have a choice, honestly, if I wanted to be with her,” said Erin Waidelich about her wife, Jenny Olson, who had two cats when the couple met in 2015. Now, they live with six rescue cats in Hermosa Beach, Calif., along with three children and a dog.

Eleven years into their relationship, Waidelich has her gripes with the felines: The fur is everywhere, “the litter box is disgusting,” she said. The most annoying, she said, is that Olson, 48, a marketing professional, places glasses of water for the cats on the couple’s nightstands.

“The cats drink water all freaking night, and I can hear it and it drives me absolutely insane,” said Waidelich. Olson maintains, “That’s a deal breaker. The cats have to have their cup of water.”

“They cry at 5 o’clock in the morning to be fed, to go outside—and Jenny is not the one that wakes up, it’s me,” said Waidelich, 44, vice president of operations at FDH Aero, a company that distributes aerospace hardware.

The couple has compromised elsewhere. They installed a “catio” enclosure on their deck with a cat tree, giving the cats outdoor space and creating more peace in their 1,100-square-foot home.

Waidelich admits she has come around. On a business trip to Texas last year, her colleagues found a crying kitten in a warehouse after a storm. Waidelich knew she couldn’t leave him behind.

“I called Delta and my staff went and got me a carrier, and I brought this kitten home,” she said of the gray tabby the couple named Tex.

When Amanda Ly first started dating her husband, Steven Leventoff, in 2018, she did not want to touch his gray tabby, Jaboo. He made her sneeze and caused watery eyes and severe rashes.

Over time, “he just won me over,” said Ly, 34, a physician in the Bay Area. She receives weekly allergy shots to live with Jaboo, who eats a specialized allergen-reducing diet. She doesn’t love the nuisance of hiring pet sitters when they travel. Welcoming strangers into her home to watch him is “kind of weird,” she said.

Leventoff, 35, a financial analyst at an investment firm, said he was touched that she warmed up to him. She said she’d come full circle: “I’m so proud of Jaboo I created him an Instagram account.”

Christina Wilson, a certified cat-behavior consultant and owner of Catitude Adjustment in New York City, estimates that 20% of her clients are pairs navigating these tensions —whether one partner is afraid of cats, new to pets, allergic or struggling to share space with a cat who terrorizes them.

Wilson recalled a case when a man started dating someone seriously, and his female cat was very upset.

“She started peeing in this girl’s shoes and on her stuff and being really territorial about ‘her person,’” Wilson said.

She advises that couples approach a pet as a shared responsibility. She understands why some people might struggle with cats’ independent nature and the fact that they’re not socialized like dogs.

“You can’t command them,” she said, adding, “You can’t do anything without their consent, [which is] hard for a lot of people.”

Ly shared a piece of marriage advice for Kelce: “You have to accept that you’re going to be the spare human.”