Sars,

I am a 21-year-old male college junior, on the ugly side of average, and generally pretty nondescript.Two years ago, I was diagnosed with social phobia.I’ve taken three medicines for this and gone to both individual and group therapy, but none of that had any effect, so I’ve accepted that this is the way I am and there’s not much I can do about it.

I’m fine with people once I get to know them, and I’m even fine with strangers in a performance setting, but I’m very bad with approaching anyone; I never know what’s socially appropriate, and I always feel like I’m making the people uncomfortable and that they just want me to go away.

My question is, as someone who knows a lot more about social behavior than I do, can you tell me if there’s any way to meet people that doesn’t involve…actually going out and meeting them?

I hope I don’t sound like I’m being flip.It’s just, there’s certainly no one ever approaching me, and the way things are, I’m very lonely.Is approaching people seriously the only way to form both platonic and romantic relationships?The same problem manifests itself on-line (except when I’m totally anonymous, like this), so that’s not the answer.

Thanks for any advice you can give,
Wallflower

Dear Wallflower,

No, there isn’t.The only way to become friends with other people is to meet them, hang out with them, and get to know them.It’s not instant.It takes time.

The way you use the word “approaching” leads me to believe that, because of your phobia, you don’t have a true understanding of the rhythms of interacting with people — your concept of how these things work is skewed.Approaching people isn’t necessarily like a sales call or handing out leaflets on a street corner; it’s not automatically unwelcome, as you seem to assume.

And why do you assume that, anyway?What precipitated the social phobia?Where did your self-esteem go?How did you get here?You need to answer these questions, and you need help to do it, because from where I sit, your “acceptance” of the situation isn’t really acceptance so much as it is depression.

Go back to therapy.Try other medications until you find one that works.There’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you feel, but it’s going to make your life a lonely and incomplete one, and you deserve better than that.

Hey Sars,

I also have a problem for the Vine concerning a cat with litterbox issues, but the advice I’m looking for is how to get my boyfriend, J, to agree to have the cat put to sleep.

Bijou is about four years old. We believe he has leukemia of the bone marrow, but we can’t confirm it, because his red blood cell count is so low that putting him under anesthesia to test it could kill him. The vet told us this six months ago and basically predicted that Bijou was going to die soon. We have been giving him a steroid every other day and a vitamin supplement daily. The cat is clearly sick, but he is maintaining his weight. Subsequent opinions for the vet have more or less been limited to, “Damn, I can’t believe he’s not dead yet.”

The problem is that Bijou pees everywhere. We used to keep litterboxes in our basement and, assuming that perhaps he’s too weak to make it downstairs, we moved a litterbox onto the second floor for him. Bijou will use it, but only when it is perfectly clean, something we can’t guarantee because the other cats use it too. Instead, he pees pretty much anywhere and everywhere. On a built-in set of wall cabinets. On (and around, including on our wood floors) a house plant. On a baseball cap left on our dining room table. He especially likes cloth left on the floor. He will pee on a corner of our quilt that is touching the floor, in a basket full of laundry that’s low enough for him to jump into, on the bathroom rugs…last night, I went downstairs to collect the laundry I’d just finished, anticipating a pleasant half hour of sorting and putting away clean towels and sheets while I watched the news. Instead, I had to do another three loads of laundry because he managed to spray the entire basket.

One of our other cats hadlitterbox problems as well (she peed on rugs) and after ripping out every rug in the house except for the rug on the stairs, and giving her her own litterbox which is scooped daily, we managed to cure it. Now that Bijou has peed on the rug at the top of the stairs, she has started peeing there as well. Our other two cats are also terrorizing Bijou, chasing him and jumping on him. He’s too weak to fight back.

Between the peeing problem and the other cats bullying him, we’ve started keeping Bijou in the basement. This is just not acceptable. When we first moved into our house, we had another cat of J’s, Ruby, that was in his late teens and had advanced colitis. We kept him in the basement ninety percent of the time until he died, a year and a half later. It was a terrible thing to do, but J refused to have him put to sleep because he’d had him since junior high. The basement is nice — half of it has been refinished as a family room, and it’s heated and has a love seat and armchair covered with warm blankets and a cat bed down there, but still…it’s a basement. It’s dark. And clearly, Bijou doesn’t like being down there. He lies at the top of the stairs, and every time I open the door, he gives me this haunted look like, “Are you going to let me out now?” Despite the illness, Bijou is a young cat. I can’t keep him in a basement until he dies, but I can’t let him pee over every surface in our house, either.

Our vet’s feedback on the problem was that maybe it was related to the steroids, so we cut back on how frequently we give it to him. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing keeping him alive. We tried antidepressants, which didn’t work. The vet suggested some behavioral treatment, but it’s not like our other cat. She was peeing on the rugs because she could smell where the previous owners’ cats peed. It was a clear-cut problem with an obvious solution — rip out the rugs and experiment to find the perfect box, litter, and location.Bijou pees…wherever he is when he feels the urge. Thank God it hasn’t been on our couch or bed yet. He may well be afraid to use the litterbox at times because one of the other cats is bullying him, but then what do I do? Lock up the other two cats?

I think the kindest thing we can do is put him to sleep. J refuses to discuss it whenever I bring it up, or to agree to a time to discuss it. I’m finding the situation to be unbearable because I’m tired of coming home and spending my first half hour in the house on a mission to sniff out and clean up wherever he’s peed that day, but I can’t leave him in the basement and wait for him to die, either. Any ideas?

Frustrated Kitty Mom

Dear Frustrated,

“The kindest thing” for the cat?Yeah, right.

I can sympathize with your frustration, but you don’t put cats down because they become inconvenient.You put cats down when their quality of life has decreased to the point where it’s the best thing for them — their quality of life, not yours.The best thing for them, not you.I mean, I hear you on the peeing, but I hardly think you’ve met your burden of exploring every single solution to the problem.

First of all, it’s not your cat.It’s J’s cat.Yes, you live there too, and you get a vote, but I think you might feel differently about the situation if J shouldered most of the responsibility for Bijou from now on.Sit J down and explain that you feel for the cat, and for him, but you didn’t sign on for douching the house with vinegar on a daily basis, so J needs to step up.His cat, his cat’s pee, his problem.Tell him to prevent the cat from spraying as best he can, and to clean up himself when the cat does pee, because you’ve had it.

I would also suggest that J get a second opinion about Bijou’s illness, because the current vet sounds kind of clueless.The cat is too fragile to undergo testing, but he’s not dead yet?The steroids didn’t cause the spraying, but the vet doesn’t have any other thoughts on stopping it?Not good enough.Get another vet on the case.Nail down the cat’s health status one way or the other, take steps to protect the other cats if it’s feline leukemia, and find behavioral or medicinal strategies to deal with the peeing.

But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.You do not have pets put to sleep because they have become a pain in your ass.When you take an animal in, you do it for better or for worse and you find a way to cope with their problems — and putting the animal down is not “coping.”It’s selfish.It sucks that Bijou’s wrecking your stuff and reeking up the house, and again, it’s not that I don’t sympathize, but if keeping the cat in the basement is the only way around it, well, you keep the cat in the basement.Make it nice and homey down there for him.Visit him frequently; go down there with a book and spend some time with him so he doesn’t feel isolated.Find a vet who can give you and J answers about Bijou’s illness and how long he’s expected to live.Do what needs to be done for the cat, because he can’t do for himself, and because that’s what we agree to when we have pets, messy or not, sick or not, like it or not.

Bijou is a member of the family.Suck it up.

Share!