Well a huge ongoing fight with your spouse is never going to help and you're a guy, so you will lose LOL. Sorry, couldn't resist!

Please tell your wife we have a rescue here with healed cat scratches. She will carry the scars for her lifetime. In that particular case the cat jumped up and went down through a screened lid of a glass tank this snake was in prior to us owning it. Cats are natural predator, are very playful, inquisitive and reactive to movement so it's not the cat's fault or the snake's fault. It's up to us humans to be the ones that think and plan ahead so our pets don't come into conflict with each other.

Since ball pythons don't need or even like a lot of extended handling perhaps you can set up a household schedule for certain evenings when the snake is out for 30 minutes and the cat is put away in a bedroom. It's not like the snake should be out for hours anyways so a short time put away in the bedroom shouldn't be a problem for the kitty and will prevent a very foreseeable problem.