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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/RossSGR on 2023-08-25 06:41:35.

TLDR at the bottom.

Background: I moved in with my wife back in May. Prior to that, we were long distance for years. When we combined households, I brought my two cats.

There was some friction at first, because she’s very much unfamiliar with animals - in her entire childhood she never had so much as a gerbil. But she did warm up to them over time. She still isn’t entirely comfortable though, so as a compromise the house is divided into “cat” and “no cat” areas - they’re allowed free reign of the basement, they aren’t allowed into the bedroom, kitchen or bathroom, and they’re allowed out in the main floor, but only when I’m home to supervise them. So far, this compromise has worked well for us.

The incident occurred on my day off. I was still in bed when my wife, who was getting ready for work (she leaves very early), woke me up. One of the cats had escaped into the main room, and she needed me to come get him to put him back downstairs.

I’ve tried to show her how to wrangle cats before. How to pick them up so she’s supporting their weight, how to shoo them out of a room, how to use a spray bottle as a deterrent to keep them off furniture, etc. However, she’s been reluctant to use any of what I’ve taught her.

So, she did none of those things, and asked me to help instead. When I asked her why she didn’t simply pick him up and put him in the other room, she said she literally couldn’t do it. That the cat is too heavy.

Reddit, this is a 12.8 pound neutered indoor house-cat who has the sunny disposition of a brainless orange tabby. This is NOT a Maine Coon, a hefty boi or a feral tom cat. He will happily let people pick him up and move him; he likes the attention.

I expressed disbelief at this. A child or a little old lady can pick up and move a friendly house-cat. It’s not difficult, and it is something she needs to be able to do in case this kind of thing happens when I’m away at work.

And here is where I may have erred: I used the words “weaponized incompetence”. I love my wife dearly, but this isn’t an isolated incident with her, and I am NOT the only person in her life she’s done this with. Having seen a bit of the family dynamic in action, I think she learned from a young age that she can get out of certain tasks by pleading helplessness.

Now she’s furious with me, less so for the cat thing and more so for the use of the words “weaponized incompetence”. She’s also mad at the implication that I don’t actually believe her when she says she physically cannot lift a cat. (She has no disability or inability that would preclude her from lifting that amount of weight).

TL;DR version: wife said she couldn’t pick up a small cat after being shown how to repeatedly, I said this was an example of weaponized incompetence, and now she’s pissed off.

AITA?