For anyone allergic to cats.

I do it every day.
but I seem to only react to them while I'm petting them.

I have cats where I live and I’m allergic. Yes. You can live around them just can’t kiss on them so much and have to wash bedding a lot.

I can take a massive dose of Claritin, or just take Benadryl to knock myself out. Sometimes, I can just handle the reaction for a few hours and it goes away.

I have when I was married at the in-law's house, they had a couple of cats. I took my allergy medicine and such, but I was not able to sleep well at all. I did it once and said hell no never again to them and my wife at the time.

Yes. It’d be miserable, and my eyes would puff up, but I wouldn’t die from it.