Happily Married, yet Still my Husband’s “Sidepiece.”

Sidelined by a Feline

Yep, that’s how the saucy thing looks at my man.

My husband, “Steadfast Mister,” and I love each other. We are devoted to one another. We honor, cherish, and, on rare occasions, obey each other. For the most part, our neuroses successfully mesh, which, let me tell you, is an underrated asset in a relationship. Sadly, someone has come between us, and our happy marriage of nearly four decades is being challenged. I have been relegated from primary partner to secondary sidepiece, and I’m not liking it.

Of course she’s younger. Oh, she’s younger, smaller, walks around the house unclothed, and has four legs. Her name is Sasha. Sasha. With a name like that you can tell she’s a feline femme fatale. Can’t you just see her little backside swaying as she sashays by me to claim her man? Yes, ours is yet another mature marriage cleft by cat.

Sasha was a shy, depressed, trembling creature when she and her sister became our children. They were joined later by an older cat who terrified them. She was the image of the most puffed-out, blackest, and yowlingest example of a Halloween cat ever, so little scared Sasha became even more withdrawn. An intervention was in order. After a session with the costly and highly-credentialed animal behaviorist, she came into the full flower of her personality.

(Yes, you guessed it. We are Northeastern liberals with no offspring, too much discretionary income, and too little common sense.) If you need a more complete picture, then we also recycle.

The full flower of Sasha’s personality soon began to show itself as a “kitch.” You know the two words I’m combining. She began speaking to us disrespectfully, and she took to pursuing my husband in rooms with the doors narrowly ajar, which she then, ingeniously closed with a flick of her tail. She showed her teeth and yowled when I came to bed and hindered my cuddling with Steadfast Mister by claiming his stomach.

At first it was just little gifts; a mouse machine here, a feathered trinket there; special-order organic catnip buds. Then, I noticed a preponderance of pink stuff around our house, and pink is not one of my favored hues. A pink, fringed…