About 45 minutes ago…damn, it was the funniest
thing. Bob (youngest cat) was sniffin’ around in a
plastic bag, and I leaned over to swat at him/the bag
to get him out…well, he took off like a bat out of
hell…with a handle of the bag around his neck.
Essentially, he thought the bag was chasing him and
damn if it wasn’t the funniest thing ever. For
serious, all I could do was watch as he ran into the
kitchen, physically ran into a wall, ran back into the
living room, ran back into the kitchen, and then was
just gone. My mom laughed so hard she wasn’t making
any noise, and I laughed so hard I think a little bit
of pee came out.

Anyway, in the melee, Bob ended up
“chasing” Zipper (middle cat) into, out of, and back
into the kitchen again. He was actually just trying
to escape the evil Hilander bag, but all Zipper knew
was that Bob, who usually chases her anyway, was
chasing her…with an evil Hilander bag wrapped around
him. At one point, it also seemed as if he were
chasing Velcro (oldest cat), but…evil Hilander bag.

I’m sorry, I have to take this moment to laugh,
because Goddamn it was funny.

Okay, I’m good. Anyway, once my mother and I finished
laughing a good five minutes later, I found Bob. He had
literally pissed himself in fear. I picked him up and
was calming him down, and he was, like, strapped to my
shirt. He wouldn’t let go. I put him down, realized
that I now smelled like cat pee, got a towel, and
wrapped him in it. We were sitting on the recliner,
me petting him, trying to calm him down, and he’s
looking all over the place for Velcro and Zipper.
Long, fucking hilarious story short, he is utterly and
totally scared of Velcro and Zipper, and they did
nothing to him. As I type this, almost an hour after
it happened, he’s hunkered down in the recliner,
(which will probably smell like cat pee…the joy of
urine) and he’s on a lookout for Velcro and Zipper.

Jesus, my mother still hasn’t stopped laughing.

Is it normal for him to still be acting like this? He
hasn’t relaxed since it happened and whenever I try to
pick him up, he attacks my hand. Granted, I was the
one that caused everything, but I also spent a good
half hour trying to calm him down. Whenever I go to
touch his stomach, he attacks my hand, biting it,
clawing at it, hissing…I’ve got a couple of decent
welts that look like I contracted leprosy. So…yeah,
is this normal? And are my mother and I going to hell
for laughing because, for serious…funniest thing
ever.

Oh, less funny. He just attacked my mother’s face.
She was holding him, he wasn’t even facing her,
and…yeah. Attacking the face. She’s fine,
but…yeah. Normal?

Crazy Cat Man

Why, S, oh why are you having these issues? You’re not interested in this guy.

Are you?

So, time passes. I make really good friends with J. We hang out a lot and
talk and laugh and watch movies and go shopping and have a really splendid
time. I start realizing that, of all the people I’ve ever met, he is the
only person I know who I’ve always been happy to see. He always brightens
my day, and even when he’s sad I’m glad to be around him. We communicate
better than I’ve communicated with anyone.

Time passes. We keep being good friends. I fall for a complete idiot, M —
angsty, depressive, obsessed with his ex-girlfriend. We’re never much more
than friends…I’ve never slept with anyone, and while I care about M a
lot, and maybe even love him, I don’t trust him with something so special
to me. So he starts dating a lunatic called A and more or less falls out
of the picture.

Talking to one of my dear, dear friends, T (sadly in love with A, who has
broken up rather messily with M by this point), I agonize (without
mentioning names) about being unable to decide whether I should chase the
person I’m passionate about. T reminds me of the person I’ve been slowly
falling in love with over three years — the stable, intelligent, funny
J. I realize I have been blind for three years. J is about as shy as I am
when it comes to, say, asking someone out, so things progress pretty
slowly. He buys me a tiara for my birthday and takes me out to watch
strange movies. We date. We kiss. We shop and laugh and go everywhere
together.

Then we do the most foolish thing we could have done, in retrospect — we
decide to move in.

We had been dating a little over a year when we got the offer from a few
friends of ours — they wanted to get a big house and have a bunch of folks
share it. As I was in a similar situation to that already, I was pretty
amenable…but I was rather hesitant about moving in with J. It
seemed…quick to me. Especially because, due to vagaries of life (and a
sense of obligation to his mother), J had not yet lived anywhere apart from
home. Especially also because we were moving in with a couple who was
engaged and already had a little girl who’d just turned two.

This looked like a bad idea to me, but I liked the idea of having a place
to live when I graduated college, and J seemed up for it, so I decided to
go for it.

Things went…reasonably well for a little while. Not many of us were able
to keep stable jobs, but we were managing to get the rent paid every
month. We had some personality conflicts with the engaged couple, and
living with a two-year-old is stressful enough for its parents, let alone the
other folks in the house. We got two more roommates — both fine,
upstanding guys who are still with us, but it rather seemed like the four
of us against the two-and-a-half of them. J was paying the lion’s share of
the bills and was, well, the sane one in the house — the one who was
always on speaking terms with everyone and didn’t lose his temper. He just
agonized over everything…but he wouldn’t talk about it unless he had to.

And I started melting down. I got snappish, I withdrew socially, my temper
got bad. I spent more and more time in front of the computer. I became less
fun to be around, basically, as a general rule.

In November, J told me that he wanted to get his head straight. He thought
moving his sleeping arrangements to a room downstairs would help. I was
confused and hurt and angry, but I told him that if it would help him, that
I wanted him to be happy. All true, though I wasn’t particularly pleased
about this business. I knew it had at least something to do with my
temper, so I worked really hard on being social and friendly and keeping my
sharp little tongue in check (it’s hardly my best feature).

Three days before Christmas, J told me that he didn’t want to date any
longer. He said he’d been mulling this over for six months, and he’d been
getting more tense — true enough, I’d noticed he was getting distant, but
he kept telling me nothing was wrong. He said he still loved me, he said
he still cared about me and wanted to be friends for as long as we were
near each other. But the pain I’d been going through…he felt it too,
when we were together, because we were that close…and he didn’t want to
be close like that. I asked about the past month; he said it had been
lovely, really, but he still felt he had to do this. I asked him what I
could do to keep this from having to happen, but naturally there really
wasn’t anything anymore. Maybe in some time, he said. Maybe we should
give it some time.

Well, he’s my first serious boyfriend ever. He took my virginity —
finally, I found someone I knew wouldn’t betray me…and not a year later,
he hands me one of the biggest betrayals he can. I’ve loved him for a long
time, and I’ve invested a lot of my being in him. I can’t imagine myself
with anyone else, and I’m having a lot of trouble even sleeping — I’m so
used to having someone next to me, being able to kiss him. We can’t even
hug anymore without feeling awkward…we talked after the one-month mark
and he gave himself a month from then, at least, to get his brain in
order. It’s a lot like just before we started dating…neither of us knows
where we stand.

I’m absolutely in love with him. I’m always going to love him. I’m not
going to say I can’t live without him, but I’m seriously pining one day in
three.

Dad says I should forget him; he doesn’t want to see me hurting so
much. Mom says I ought to wait and see and play it by ear. I haven’t
talked to T lately; I haven’t really told anyone outside my family and my
roommates, because I can’t stand people looking at me and saying, “How are
you doing?” in that a-brick-fell-on-your-mom’s-head voice, and I really
don’t want to hash it out with them in any case.

So what do you think I should do? Should I just forget J? Should I just
wait and keep working on my personal problems? Should I just not worry
about it?

Thanks much,
S

Spin went to visit Mom for the holidays. Mom lives several thousand miles
away. Mom introduced her to a co-worker, a divorced man with children,
seemingly a wonderful person — nice-looking, steady job, pre-stamped with
Mom’s approval. They hit it off — no dates, just evenings with her family.
Phone calls and emails follow when she returns home, and she visits again
last week.

Two days prior to returning home, she called me and said that they were
considering getting married before she came back. She has a good job and
owns a home. I am a believer in the “when you know, you know” theory — my
husband and I were married six months after we met. But we lived a half mile
from each other, so that helps. I understand the desire to move there and
see what develops — Spin’s thought about moving closer to her mom over the
years, and she’s not thrilled in her job right now. But I was hard-pressed
to be supportive of the “let’s just get married right now” move; I told her
I was happy that she felt so strongly for him, but would be sad if those of
us who love her were not allowed to be a part of the courtship and
celebration. When she phoned, she was mad at her mom because she told her
they were thinking of getting married and not telling anyone. Her mom got
upset, I think understandably, and said, “Please don’t do that.” Spin
tells me that Prince C/Harming wants her to marry him before she leaves so
that she “has to come back.” (Insert mild alarm bell here.) He tearily tells
her that he is in love with her and wants her to be his wife as soon as
possible, and that her return home will be akin to losing a limb. I was
admittedly stupefied, and didn’t say anything other than the always
appropriate “huh.”

Cut to friend’s return to our shared city. I share with her that I’m afraid
to give her this feedback, knowing that she may already be married, but that
I would be remiss in our friendship if I didn’t express concern about
marrying someone so quickly who lives far away and who has two children and a
fairly hostile ex-wife. I said again that I understood her desire to begin
looking into moving closer to him, but that I felt she was doing herself a
disservice by not allowing herself time to really know what life would be like in
that town, in that part of the country, with his children, et cetera. She said
they did not get married, but that she wishes they had and that she wants to
just move as soon as possible. He may come for a visit in March, and if he
does, she thinks they’ll get married then. She’s not worried about his
kids, because they liked her and she liked them for the two hours they spent
together. (Cue chorus of stepmothers everywhere cackling wildly. Ah, “but
they like me”…the siren song. Catchy beat. How I miss it.)

So. Mom has some concerns. She tells Spin that she is afraid Prince
C/Harming is too possessive, and that Spin should wait before making such
drastic changes to her life. Has no specifics on why she thinks that; it’s
an intuition. P C/H tells Spin that Mom is spreading gossip around the
office about him, telling people they’re moving too fast, et cetera. Suddenly,
Spin wants nothing to do with Mom and is so angry with her that she won’t
talk to her about it. Mom has until now always been a positive part of her
life and a really level-headed advisor…suddenly, C/H is telling Spin
that Mom must be jealous, is making his work life difficult, et cetera, and
friend is swallowing it without hesitation.

Friend calls me expecting a sympathetic “aren’t mothers freaking insane”
reaction, but I can’t give it. I usually get maddest at my
own mom when I’m afraid she’s right, and damned if they don’t have good
points sometimes, annoying as that is. As neutrally as I can, I say, “I am
only advocating for you to give yourself some time with him before you get
married. If your mom has some concerns, I think based on her history, she
deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

Friend is mad as a hornet at both of us now — rants about being a grown
woman who can do what she wants, her mom can’t tell her what to do, et cetera.
Then says, “People seem to think I’m just going to move down there and get
married immediately. But I’m moving down there to get to know him and his
kids. We’re both intelligent people and aren’t going to do anything rash.”
I said, great, but you’re the one telling us you’re going to get married
right away, so we think that because you keep saying that.

So, is there a question in here? I think so. I am concerned because, as
strange as it sounds, I have that same niggling doubt that her mom has. I
don’t trust how in such a short period of time, he’s driven a wedge between
her and her mom and seems to be fomenting the conflict instead of working to
ease it. I want nothing more than to see her happily coupled; I don’t want
to alienate her if I can avoid it, but I also don’t want to lie or turn a
deaf ear to some unsettling statements. Thoughts? Ideas? Names of private
investigators? I want to keep lines of communication open, because right
now I’m the only one she’s talking to about him, and that’s pretty tenuous
at the moment, as C/H and Spin are lumping me with the “doesn’t understand
true love/is jealous/won’t admit that two people are meant to be together”
crowd. Right now, frankly, it’s not bad company.

Thoughts, oh wise one?

Evil Stepmother

I moved to a new city earlier this year, and plan to drive across three
states to visit family and friends next month. I adopted a kitten from the
local humane society after I moved here — since I do not know anyone who
could care for her in my home while I am away, and I can’t really afford to
board her for ten days in this expensive city (not to mention the trauma
that would bring to my cat), she will be coming with me. I know you have
written about your experience traveling with your cats, and I was hoping
that you might have some advice on how to best handle long car trips with
felines. I think it will be a nine-hour drive each way. I would really
appreciate any suggestions you have for making the trip as easy as
possible. Thank you for your help!

Cat Traveler

My problem may sound ridiculous at first, but it has affected me to a degree such that I can no longer ignore it. I must do something about it, because I’m afraid of what might happen if I don’t.

The thing is this: I’m really lazy. Not your average sleeping late on weekends, putting off chores lazy — I think it goes much deeper than that. I can’t concentrate on anything for long periods of time, even with effort. I can force myself to study for a class, only to find ten minutes later that I’ve been staring at the book without seeing the text. The same goes for sitting in lectures; I daydream sometimes without even realizing it and despite my best efforts to concentrate. No matter what I’m doing, I shortly feel compelled to drop it and do something else. I’ve stopped studying and doing assignments because they held no interest for me, and I just couldn’t do them; it was almost as if something was physically stopping me from even making an attempt. For a while, I thought distractions like TV and computer were the problem, but lately I have even lost interest in these things, and can’t pay attention to a TV show or a game any more than I could to schoolwork. I have no patience for people, and get easily frustrated. My last year’s GPA was so low I am now on academic probation, and I feel tired and unmotivated nearly all the time.

As far as I can remember, this has always been a part of me, but through elementary school and beyond I was always able to handle it and get through somehow. Now that I’m in university, and will eventually have to find a career, I’m getting scared that my life is not going in a good direction. Other students have jobs, relationships, prospects for the future. I have nothing, and I don’t even know what to do.

Sorry to be so long-winded…if you’ve encountered similar cases in the past, or have any ideas as to what I could do (where I could start), any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Lazy Bum