Person's parents put down their cat and then lied about it for a week

If you're an animal lover, this post from Reddit's "Am I the A-hole?" is sure to make your blood boil. OP explains that they are a sophomore in college. They just finished their finals and were about head home for winter break.

They write, "I was very excited to see my cat again whom I had had for 19 years and I repeatedly told my mom how excited I was. My mom said he was excited to see me too and she sent me pictures of him the entire week leading up to going home." You might be able to glean where this is going.

OP writes that at one point their dad mentioned that their cat wasn't feeling well, but every time they asked for an update on the situation, he would avoid the topic. They write, "So the day I'm flying home comes, my flight is in two hours, and I'm literally walking out of my dorm when I get a call from a number I don't recognize.

"I decline it and the caller leaves a voicemail which I listen to while I'm in the car with my roommate to go to the airport. The voicemail is from a crematorium letting me know that they have taken care of my cat's remains."

Imagine that being the way your found out your cat of 19 years had died. Obviously, OP was extremely upset, beside themselves crying and screaming. They didn't understand because their mom had sent a picture of the cat that very morning saying that he was excited to see them.

OP called their parents immediately and demanded to know what was going on. And that's when they came clean. "Apparently my cat had gotten sick out of the blue to the point where they had to put him down and he had actually been dead for over a week."

OP's parents had taken their name off the vet file in an effort to keep it a secret, and sent old pictures until they could tell them in person, but evidently, the crematorium got ahold of their number somehow.

"They even contacted friends and family to play along if I brought him up so they could 'break the news when I was home surrounded by their love,'" they wrote. OP was understandably furious about this. Their parents had lied for an entire week about their cat being dead, even sending old pictures and pretending he was alive and missed OP.

Instead of understanding why OP was upset, their parents were furious that they were upset "because I didn't appreciate all they did for me to spare my feelings." But...they didn't spare their kid's feelings, did they?

Although it's been some time since this occurred, OP still doesn't feel like they can trust their parents or any of their other family members who participated in perpetuating this lie. Obviously, OP's parents made a terrible mistake.

But to me, the worst part of this whole thing was their reaction. If they admitted they made a mistake and apologized, this wouldn't have lingered in OP's mind for so long. But even after OP explicitly told them that lying about the cat's death and (weirdly) sending old photos to pretend that he was still alive was the wrong move, they ignored what their kid was feeling and instead got mad.

Commenters agreed. "Even if they did have good intentions, they should have listened and apologized when you told them they had upset you. They clearly do not actually care about your feelings, just doing what they think is what you want, with no regard for what you actually want, which is never helpful," one person writes. "They did a s----y thing, and they should have apologized."