Cats Were a Prominent Reason for Divorces in America

The internet adores cats, but no one is married to it and has to live with those cats all the time. It seems that some folks are purely dog people in real life and have little interest in our feline buddies. They detest them so intensely that divorce has followed, and it's been going on longer than you may believe.

In 1903, a man requested a divorce from his wife due to the constant cat chaos in his home, which included constant hissing, clawing, and sharing of his bed with the cats. Back in 1912, a guy attributed his divorce to his wife's 35 cats.

The divorces appear to be more complicated than the cats, who might have been a nuisance. Before the late 1800s, cats were not frequently recognized as domestic pets. Many of these folks had probably never lived with cats growing up and thought of them as street or barn animals. The cat boom was only getting started. The fact that there was no option for no-fault divorce at the time was more significant. People wanted a justification for their divorce, something outrageous and destructive they could point to. The cats may have filled the hole by inventing an explanation for why relationships end in divorce.