Two broke roommates, two cats, and one shared problem: responsibility.

One morning, a woman woke up to a text from her roommate explaining that she had fed her own cat using the woman’s cat food because she’d run out and “didn’t realize it.”

The issue? The food was used without permission, the roommate lives steps away from a store that sells cheap cat food, and this isn’t the first time poor planning has become someone else’s problem.

AITA for telling my roommate she can’t feed her cat, my cat’s food?

So, there’s going to have to be some back ground given to the current situation as well, but this morning I woke up to a text from my roomate saying she had to give my cat food to her cat bc she didn’t realize she was out.

I told her that she couldn’t use my cat’s food (even though it was too late she already had without waiting for permission.)

And that she simply needed to go buy her cat, even just a single can, even if she’s broke, (we’re both broke, waiting to get paid later today).

Sorry, your cat’s gotta starve.

For more context, we’re both employees at a retail store that we live literally right next to, she works overnight shifts though, and I work days/evenings/closing whenever.

I know that she can scrape together the 72¢ or a less than a dollar it takes to feed her cat the food she chooses (Friskies pate), and walk up to the store and buy even just one or two cans to tide her cat over, until she can buy a larger amount.

Beyond that, I think she should’ve been planning for her cat to run out of food, it shouldnt be a surprise, thats your responsibility to keep your cat fed.

Of course.

And in the past, I had opted to feed and purchase both our cats food, but realizing it was unfair and it was putting more stress on me, I originally asked that she pay for her cats food, and feed the cats in the mornings (like when she would come home from work), and I would feed them in the evenings.

I understand her frustration for the deal then, because I had devised, a more elaborate than necessary way to feed both the cats then, where I would warm my kittens food in warm water in the microwave, so that I would soak up and be soft, and then I would pour the excess water into her cats food, to soften it up

We know the cat has a hard eating food in most circumstances because she (my roomate’s 5yo cat) has a gum disease and eating seems to be painful for her so she bypass chewing at times and goes straight to swallowing food. I also had wanted the cats to be fed together because I wanted my kitten and her cat to bond a bit through that.

Makes sense.

So, because the arrangement seemed not to be working well, and because my roommate never would know when her cat was going to run out of food, because she couldn’t check and pay attention I guess…(that’s just my own view of why, maybe it’s something else.)

I suggested we just feed our own cats, and that be that. There are still past instances that bother me, where her cat had ran out of food, and she even had the option of somebody driving her up the our store (that takes less then 4 minutes to walk to, we are literally right next to it, thankfully, because neither of us have CARS), and she turned them down, because she forgot her cat didn’t have food.

Things like this from the past, continue to make me annoyed on the subject now. AITA?

Given the roommate’s history of not planning ahead, refusing easy solutions, and relying on others to pick up the slack, she believes drawing a firm boundary is reasonable. Still, she’s questioning whether saying “don’t use my cat’s food again” makes her the villain.

Reddit is torn.

This person says obviously she’s NTA.

Like, the regularity of it makes it a huge issue.

Setting boundaries around responsibility isn’t cruelty, it’s refusing to keep rescuing someone from a problem they keep creating.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.