This is my first time posting on this board in a while.

The last time I was here, I was recently engaged and very happy with it, but my fiancee had a cat and I was pretty severely allergic. We'd made the decision to rehome the cat and I was asking for a good way to go about it. The answers mostly ranged from dumb to outright offensive, but thankfully there was one key piece of advice that helped.

We recently celebrated our first anniversary, and the cat is still here. We didn't have a new home for the cat when my wife moved in, and we had to keep him out on the porch while we kept looking for a good home. Then he got outside, and got lost for 4 days. Fortunately we got him back by hanging some of her dirty laundry outside and he came back. She was so upset over the whole thing that she couldn't bear the thought of rehoming him, and I agreed to do everything we could to keep him.

When I tell you I was allergic, I'm talking close to anaphylactic. Eyes swollen shut, trouble breathing. Here's what we did.

1. Thankfully, someone here pointed out that there are cat foods that stop or really slow down a cat's production of the allergen. Fortunately, he liked the food. It works, too. Here's a link to the food, but I'm sure you can find it in a lot of places:

https://www.chewy.com/f/dander-reducing-cat-food_c387_f50v349213?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=187982379&utm_content=10442378979&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw74e1BhBnEiwAbqOAjCNLfH8bl1F-pkx1hRWhle7pbTFAsAROMPEg10ViH9ATpHSMSjZrHRoCbysQAvD_BwE

2. There's a spray that you can put on a cat that will eliminate the allergen from his fur. My wife did this every morning. We had good results with this, too.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GL335GN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

3. I took as much Allegra as I could stand. This was pretty miserable, but I was willing to do it for my wife.

We gave it about a week for the food to kick in and then let him be his normal indoor/outdoor cat self. After about 3 months, I was able to stop taking Allegra. About 3 months later, we found that I didn't react to him if he didn't have a rubdown every day, so we tapered off of that. About 3 months after that, we decided to try his favorite cat food again. I get itchy eyes sometimes but they don't swell. I probably produce more eye gunk than normal, but I can live with that. I can have him in my lap with no immediate problems. Allergy shots introduce the allergen in small amounts, so we did essentially the same thing with this. So the cat's here, and besides the fact that he's a noisy bastard, it's all good. He's happy and healthy, except that we have to keep him indoors because there's a pretty substantial population of raccoons around here and we don't want to risk him getting attacked.

I've wanted to get this off my chest for some time. If someone in a similar situation asks you for advice, don't do what quite a few people on this board did to me. That was to tell someone who's engaged that the cat's relationship with his/her fiance is more important than their relationship, and they should break it off for the sake of the cat. That's stupid, it's weird, it doesn't help in the least, and frankly, it makes you sound like an asshole. I've put what we did here so that you might actually be in a position to help instead of be a jerk.

He's on the couch right beside me as I type this, purring loudly. He likes having his head scratched and being told he's a good boy. I'm still a dog person, but I've actually told my stepsons we don't get a dog because as long as the cat's with us, he takes priority over getting a new pet.