Hey Sars —

Dear Bare,

Thanks for the tip. Other readers also mentioned hang-drying instead of going the dryer route. Other long-/tall-tee suggestions appear below; if I got it more than once, of course, it’s asterisked.

Aeropostale
American Apparel Baby Thermal
Eddie Bauer *
Hollister
J. Crew featherweight tees
L.L. Bean Carefree Unshrinkable
Lucky Jeans long-sleeved shirts
Merona (Target)
Mossimo (Target) *
Old Navy tiny fit *
St. John’s Bay (JC Penney)

pre-shrunk shirts
dry shirts on low or no heat
men’s tees
three-quarter-sleeve shirts

Sars,

Dear Trash,

I don’t think this is something you move past, honestly. Especially if your parents wind up assuming custody of your nieces, this is a situation the family will be dealing with going forward for years to come — the fact that your brother is married to a woman who I suspect is mentally ill, that the two of them permitted their four children to live in literal filth, that nobody else in the family noticed or knew until the state stepped in. (Which gives me some pause, to tell you the truth. I have to assume that they live thousands of miles away.)

But you don’t move past it; you deal with what’s in front of you. You focus on the girls, on their physical and emotional welfare. You avoid your brother and SIL if you don’t think you can be in the same room without physically harming them, because like I said, she’s probably unwell, but children should not be shitting in yards or falling through floors, they just shouldn’t. And I wouldn’t be so quick to let your brother off the hook, either; 16-hour days or not, you notice when the goddamn water isn’t on, and you fix it so that your daughters don’t turn into feral cats. This isn’t an advanced concept.

But at the end of the day, this isn’t about whose fault it is. This is about four little girls whose “parents” are both out to lunch in a dangerous way, and for now, I would think about what you can do for them, how you can put together a family for them that works somehow, however that’s going to get done. The ability to make nice with their so-called mother and father…that’s a courtesy they earn by providing their offspring with a flushing goddamn toilet. I would strongly suggest therapy for everyone involved in this insanity, to help everyone figure out how they’re going to talk to each other and about each other, but for right now, if spending time with SIL is going to aggravate matters, just don’t do it.

Fed a dog antifreeze. Fucking people.

Hi Sars,

Dear Curious,

I’ll take these in order, I think.

The kind of cat doesn’t really matter. Everyone’s going to tell you something different, but I would not get a single kitten if you and your husband aren’t around much; they do need training and attention, and pets aren’t accessories. Also, kittens are super-cute and you won’t want to leave your house (heh). If you get kittens, get two littermates, I’d say; otherwise, get an adult, or two adults who have already lived together. Do not try to pair two adult cats who are strangers to one another; this is possible to do but not recommended for rookies. I would not get a long-haired cat, frankly. The maintenance is not really worth the trouble. Not that I don’t know long-haired cats who I like very much, but de-dreading a cat is not a good time, so if you don’t have a preference, get a short-hair.

Adult cats sleep most of the day. My cats do not know that I or anything else exists as long as there is direct sunlight in the bedroom, beckoning them with its beams. Working 12-hour days is not contraindicated, but it also depends on the cat’s personality. Hobey, as a single cat, could get a little needy if I was working long hours or staying over at my boyfriend’s house a lot. Other cats don’t give a shit.

Single cats, same principle. I got Hobey a friend because he was getting steadily more neurotic, and while Little Joe himself is not Hobey’s favorite member of the household, he’s a happier, mellower cat with Joe around. Other cats are fine on their own. If you’re going to get two, it works better to get littermates, as I said; integrating two adults who don’t know each other is a crapshoot (literally, in some cases…sigh). A cat who is accustomed to chilling on his own from a young age is usually fine on his own.

Cat-sitting is up to you. If I’m only leaving for 48 hours, I just fill up a huge bowl of kibble, change the litter, and leave them to it. But as with so many of these questions, the answer is really dependent on your cat or cats. Some cats will freak shit if they’re left alone. Others don’t even notice. Longer than 48 hours, yes, you’ll need a sitter, but you can just get a friend or neighbor to do it; it’s not that complicated. Fill bowl, scoop poops, lock door.

Some cats claw; some don’t. You can train kittens out of doing it, or provide a scratching post for them, but some cats ignore those and some don’t. You will have to accept a certain amount of devaluation in your furnishings as part of the price of enjoying a pet; furniture may get clawed and shedded on. Rugs may get hurled on. If a pristine apartment is that important to you, and you won’t be home to mind any accidents, a pet is perhaps not for you, because animals do make messes. You will have to invest in more Swiffer cloths, more lint-rollers, more Febreze. You will have some hairs clinging to you at work. You will not, if you are, say, me, and don’t believe in declawing, be inclined to spend five grand on a couch that, after ten minutes in the house, will be worth a buck seventy-five.

You can put the litterbox wherever; just remove the effluvia once a day to keep it from getting rank, change it every few days, and put it wherever the cat seems comfortable with it. The previous tenants in my place kept the litter in a hutch in the kitchen. It’s a New York apartment. Other people have pets, they get it.

Some cats will just get, or be, a wiggins and pee any old where, or bite, or claw the shit out of everything; there are steps you can take to prevent/correct this behavior, but nobody writes in for advice about a good, sleepy cat. I’m just saying.

Adopt your cat/s from a no-kill shelter like Bide-A-Wee, or from the Humane Society. Get a nice mutt, or a couple of mutts. Ask lots of questions of the shelter staff; they’ll know where to send you for a good vet and/or cheap pet food. Go into the cat clinic on 5th Ave. in the Slope and chat with someone there for a little while.

But don’t overthink it too much, really. My cats drive me bazoo on a daily basis. Hobey, fresh off a vet visit that 1) cost me $400 dollars, 2) will necessitate pilling him twice a day for the next week, and 3) required three trains to bring him home from, is sitting on my foot right now and wailing like he hasn’t eaten since the Carter administration. But at the same time, he’s awesome. When you get a cat, you’re adding to your family, and as pesty and dumb as some of your family members can sometimes be, you don’t think of them in terms of the potential for destruction of property or what happens if you have to get another flea dip or how many times you can expect them to upchuck on stuff you paid a lot of money for. They’re…family. I mean, don’t get a cat because you think It’s High Time You Got A Pet. Get a cat because you see a pile of black-and-whites asleep at the shelter and you think you might get a cavity, it’s so cute. The rest of it tends to sort itself out.

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