Back in June of last year my boyfriend (40m) his mom (66f) and I (38f) moved into a rental house in an effort to cut the cost of living down for all three of us. We’d been living in a rundown poorly managed apartment complex that we hated and his mom was paying way too much for a one bedroom as a single woman nearing her retirement. So we moved into together hoping to help each other out. My boyfriend convinced us to sign a two year lease. I was adamantly against it. I had a feeling this was going to be a nightmare, but he insisted that prices likely weren’t going to improve and would probably cost even more. So we locked in our price for two years.

We have two cats. A boy and girl that we adopted from the shelter seven years ago. They are very sweet and loving, but are anxious around strangers and loud alarming noises. I can only assume that as shelter kitties they probably had a bit of a traumatic life before they were rescued. They are now very attached to me and they always want to be wherever I am.

My boyfriend’s mom, we’ll call her Sharon. She has a two year old corgi Australian shepherd mix. She is very high energy and sadly terribly under exercised. She is locked up in her side of the house while Sharon is at work at day.

When we first moved in I was very nervous about how the animals were going to be around each other. Her dog wants to chase everything and my cats are scared of most things. From the get go I was researching the best ways to introduce cats and dogs. I found a lot of different articles that I sent her and it seems like the general consensus is that the dog is the bigger X factor that needs to be trained to make this work. Because the dog is so interested in the cats, not vice versa, her attention being redirected from them is the best place to start. I would casually bring the articles up at the start to see if we could try to work on getting them used to each other. She has never made any effort to try any of the methods in any of the articles I’ve sent her. We both have gates set up to keep them separated, but she will let the dog run up to the gate off to growl and bark at them. A lot of the time she will walk up with her (while my partner and I are sitting by in the living room watching something,) and as soon as she stops barking and growling Sharon will praise her. In my opinion this is reinforcing the bad behavior and teaching her that her aggressive behavior is good. It makes me really mad when she does this because it is the exact opposite of what the research I’ve done suggests to do and I also think it’s shitty that she thinks it’s okay for her dog to terrorize my cats.

We’ve had a few disputes over this but every instance has been her instigating an argument. Usually the arguing is between her and my boyfriend. I try to stay out of it because she’s not my mom and I don’t want to overstep, but she is so passive aggressive that on a few occasions I’ve snapped at her while the two of them are having it out.

The big blowout we just had has been a long time coming. She pretty quickly upon moving in began to isolate herself to the side of the house where her bedroom is. We took the master bedroom because we have a king size bed and more furniture than her. Spatially it just made sense. She took both of the additional bedrooms and turned one essentially into her den. She’s expressed frustration at feeling sequestered away back there, but we have repeatedly told her that it’s her house too and her furniture too. If she wants to hang out in the living room with her dog that’s totally cool. I can keep the cats in our bedroom with me. In fact it got to the point that I told her a couple of months ago that I would keep them in the room from basically 5pm when she gets home from work until she goes to bed around 10. As an added detail I typically work 5am-1pm so because of how early I have to wake up I have to go to bed at the same time as her. Which means from the time I’m home to the time she gets home my cats get to run around the house. I always put them in the bedroom before she gets home. So she doesn’t even see them. If I work the next day the cats stay in the room with me for the rest of the night and if I’m off the next day I will let them out after she goes to sleep. I have kept up this routine because I am tired of the lack of follow through on her end to try to get them to get along.

Despite the fact that we have repeatedly told her to do what she wants if the cats are put up she just won’t do it. All she has to do is check that our bedroom door is closed which it usually is or yell down the hall asking if they are out, or hell, she could even text us to ask if they are out. She won’t do it. She just always assumes they are out and she has to take the dog through the house on a leash to go outside. She doesn’t have to do that. It’s to the point that it genuinely feels like she is victimizing herself and blaming us for it. She never lets her dog out when I’m in my room all evening/night.

My boyfriend is a department manager at his job and he tends to close. He typically doesn’t get home until after midnight sometimes it’s closer to 2:30am. We maybe get two or three nights a week that we actually get to hang out because of our opposing schedules, and sometimes the cats are out with us, but lately I keep them locked up until Sharon goes to bed to avoid any animal interactions. About a week ago my boyfriend and I were in the living room hanging out watching tv and the cats were loose but our bedroom door was open with the gate closed so they could run in there if Sharon and the dog came through. Well, she did and as soon as she let the dog out she sarcastically and very aggressively asked us if her dog was ever going to be allowed to be loose in the house like my cats are. I lost my fucking mind. I completely laid into her. It is not my fucking fault that she doesn’t let her dog out when I’m locked away in my bedroom all night long. I told her that I’ve tried to talk to her about to to approach it and that I’ve made many suggestions to try and make it work and that it’s never been done the way it should and I’m not going to put my cats through that stress. She said some thing to the effect of “that’s the way YOU think it should be done.” I told her I’m done trying and that I’ve been done and that’s why I’ve been locking us away before she gets home for the last several months and that I already told her that’s what my solution was the last time she threw a fit. Even since the fight she still hasn’t let the dog loose in the house. And the dumbest thing about it is that her dog doesn’t fucking care. Because just like my cats, her dog just wants to be wherever she is, so if she’s not in the living room neither is the dog. She’s just going to stay in the room with Sharon because she wants to be with her human.

I’ve already resigned myself to apologizing to her for my part in the argument even though I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. I definitely threw some fuck-words at her, but I absolutely never called her any names and I didn’t say anything I can’t take back. And when I say fuck-words I don’t mean that I ever said “fuck you” or anything like that but I said fuck a lot. So am I the asshole here, or do I just have a nightmare of a future mother in law?