Foxy Cat Lady

Sounds to me like there is something going on here that we don't understand. Information is missing. You can try to gently get your partner to open up about cats and why he has such a strong response to them hanging around during sex. But he may have suffered some childhood trauma that he doesn't remember, or he may be reluctant to talk about it for fear of seeming less than masculine. One of the best things you can do if you are suffering from unfinished business in the past is to open up with a person you can trust and vent some of your feelings. A secret often makes us feel worse when we try to repress it or hide it. So I hope he will be more candid with you.

Unfortunately, some of us have been through negative events that we just don't remember. Maybe he was scratched by a cat or frightened by an angry cat when he was a child. Perhaps someone harmed a cat, and this was painful for him to witness. It is really difficult to access memories that contain extreme sadness, fear, anger, pain, etc. Hypnosis can sometimes help recover a stressful event from the past. Hypnosis can also be used to teach someone how to relax in the presence of a phobia. Is he willing to get some help of that nature?

I have noticed that many straight men are unable to function sexually if there is a witness to their intimate activities. This can be really disconcerting during a long-fantasized-about threeway, for example. A man may have dreamed about bedding two women for years, but if he gets the chance to have the experience, the equipment may fail to function. Getting an erection and penetrating one's partner are supposed to make men feel potent and invulnerable. But the fact is that the process of getting an erection is rather easily interrupted, and the pressure to perform well is so great that being seen during sex is potentially more of a threat than a turn-on. Your boyfriend's objection may not have to do with your pets being cats, per se. It could just come up because they are living, breathing organisms and he can't cope with having an audience.

As long as he is kind to your pets the rest of the time, you have to treat this like an individual quirk that is beyond his control. Cats can be utterly determined little critters who persist in trying to get what they want until any human being is exhausted and gives in. The sound of a cat scratching the door would bother me far more than knowing I might get my ass flayed if I accidentally kneeled on somebody's fuzzy tail and interrupted a cat nap. But I honestly have little hope that you will be able to make them stop scratching the door to be let back into the bedroom.

Is there any way to put an additional door between yourselves and the cats, so the scratching is not so loud? Or can you pad the door so that their claws are landing in fabric and foam rubber instead of wood? You might be able to use a squirt bottle full of water to train them to walk away from a closed door. (Or they might decide you are playing and deliberately try to get you to squirt them so they can play tag with you.) If you need to be alone for a while, putting out food, toys, or catnip for them could be a brief distraction. But I kinda hope making love with him lasts a lot longer than it takes a cat to bolt down a plate full of food.

Explain to your boyfriend that cats are not like dogs. You can use every training method in the book without changing a cat's behavior. They want what they want. The only thing that persuaded them to become somewhat domesticated was the opportunity to be worshipped as gods in ancient Egypt. And that's kinda where they expect to remain in our world.

I hope over time your boyfriend will get used to the cats and stop freaking out about them. There are men who believe that being masculine and heterosexual means hating cats. I don't know exactly how or why the poor fuzzy faces got zoned off limits like this, but I suspect it may be because they are no one's tool or accessory. A dog is happy to please and can be trained to do all kinds of weird shit that people find useful. Most cats think this is ridiculous, and have no interest in learning “tricks.” But on the plus side of the ledger, cats are sex-positive to the max. Unlike a dog, a cat will rarely have a protective response to a human being sexually active. They tend to appreciate erotic energy and purr and make biscuits, especially if things get a little wild. Their own sexuality is borderline violent. Dogs freak out about BDSM; cats just think, “Ah, at last! You're really having fun now.”

Of course, it can be distracting to have a little fuzzy head bump into your ribs, demanding caresses, when you would rather focus on how you are being caressed yourself. Sigh. Think of it as practice for multi-tasking. If he could learn to have more of a sense of humor about himself and lovemaking, it could go a long way to solving the problem.

One final (if not happy) possibility occurs to me. I don't know how long the two of you have been living together. If you've been housemates for a while, and the cats just recently became a problem, that's a bit odd. I wonder if he is displacing his anger. Could it be that he is expressing frustration that he can't attribute more directly to you? Maybe the being he wishes to remove from the bed is not a cat at all, but rather a human male who can't find the stones to break up with you.

I've been known to remind misbehaving lovers that the cats were here before they arrived, and will no doubt continue to entertain me long after they (the human) has departed. I like to point out that there is a direct correlation between being kind to the cats and receiving benevolent treatment from yours truly. Once he understands that he is not the deity in this social system, maybe he can simmer down and count his blessings instead of acting out.