I’m being stalked by a cat. A big gray cat who is most definitely owned by someone in my neighborhood, as it has a collar, but I don’t know who the owner might be. Now, I’m not a cat person — I don’t hate them, but I tend to avoid cats who don’t have proven human-friendly track records. (The reason is long and psychological, involving childhood trauma, a bipolar cat, and still-visible scarring, but I won’t go into it.)

I live on the ground floor, with lovely big windows. In the past month, Cat has been leaving dead rodents on the garden wall outside my bedroom window. It’s happened maybe four times — each time, I toss said gift into the ivy and make “eugh” noises. In the past two weeks, I’ve noticed that Cat’s taken to hissing and spitting at any other cat that tries to walk past my window, eventually chasing them off.

It’s the past week that’s been flipping me out, though — it’s pretty warm here, and I haven’t got air conditioning, so I’ve left a window open when I’m in the flat. And I nearly jumped out of my SKIN when Cat suddenly shot through my window like some furry missile. It just started wandering around, checking stuff out, approving or disapproving of various objects. And Cat wouldn’t leave — I’m not in the habit of touching strange cats for aforementioned reasons (especially ones the size of cougars), and when it started making this “rowwwwaaawwwwr” noise, I began to get a little worried. So eventually I climbed out the window myself and coaxed Cat back outside that way, figuring it might just be lost. That was day one.

I can’t keep my windows closed, I’ll roast alive, but every time I open one, Cat leaps on in within an hour or so. The way my apartment block’s configured, I also can’t see Cat coming — it’s a near-vertical leap into the window, and I’d have to spend the entire time hanging my head outside to get any sort of warning. It’s stealth cat. It’s driving me insane. Me crawling out the window doesn’t always do it immediately, and Cat’s managing to overcome barricades of books that I set up. I’ve tried playing obnoxious music, I’ve tried burning incense, I’ve tried reading A Brief History of Time aloud in monotone. No luck.

I don’t know if Cat is male or female — I don’t think we know each other well enough to broach the subject. My friends think that being stalked by a cat is great, and suggest that next time it appears I should try to scare it off by giving it a soulful look and initiating a conversation about “where our relationship is going,” perhaps asking for a commitment. They’re hilarious. They also don’t have a persistant feline stalker.

Sars, help. I don’t want to suffocate in my flat, but I also don’t want Cat to move in permantently. What the hell is going on here, anyway?

Thanks,
Cat’s Woman

I’m 22, and so is my boyfriend. We’ve been together long enough to know we’re probably going to be in this for the long haul
(we’ve moved in together and picked out rings, sort of), and I’m extremely, blissfully happy.

Except.

When we first moved in together and he started getting his Playboy subscriptions, I shrugged it off. Heck, I read it sometimes,
because every so often they get an interesting interview or a good sci-fi short. Besides, he’s always professed to “get it for
the articles, not the pictures.” Skeptical, I believed him.

So I get home from work one evening last week, and sit down at the computer to check my email. I open Windows Media so I can be
happily listening to my tunes, and the first thing up is this horribly disgusting li’l chick practicing fellatio thing. I’m a
little disturbed, so I turn it off, turn on my music, and go about my merry way. Make mention to him the next day, and it’s “oh,
my friend sent me this link. I didn’t know what it was.” Okay, believable enough.

I get home from work last night, and notice that KaZaa is still running. “Ooh,” I think. “I could be downloading some more random
tunes.” I misclick, and the little dropdown list of previous searches comes up. With things like “Teen Sex” and “Underage Porn”
and whatnot.

I’ve told him in the distant past, the middle past, and the not-so-distant past that I’m really turned off by such things. Now, I
just don’t know what to do about it. It makes me start questioning every time we kiss, what he’s really thinking about. I’m not a
prude, and I understand a gazillion guys tune into that type of thing every night…gah! Why does my man have to be one of them?

So I guess my question to you is, what steps should I now take, because if I come home and find another download on our computer
and $35 tacked on to the phone bill that Mr. Man can’t seem to explain, I’m going to scream!

Sincerely,
Not a Voyeur

After three weeks, he was still acting funny, so I got out of the house a little bit and went to my uncle’s retirement party. I asked if he wanted to come; he said no. I went there a little bit and came home. Lo and behold, that bitch was in my driveway picking him up. It went on for a while, but it finally died after I confronted him and her.

I am still with him, but I do not know how to get this affair out of my mind. I try to forget but it keeps popping up. What can I do to stop all this fear?

Sincerely,
Confused in Ohio

I’m a freshman at college, and I kind of hate it. I have no real friends there, and I just feel like an outsider all the time. I don’t drink and I have no real desire to, the clubs and stuff on campus are deader than dead, and apparently fellow geeks are harder to find than I thought.

I was pretty miserable for a while, so I decided to bite the bullet and transfer to a school back in Jersey where I know some people. I’m really worried, though, that I won’t be able to make friends at my new school either now. I don’t want to be that weird girl down the hall who never talks to anybody and is holed up in her room 24/7. And it doesn’t help that all of my friends seem to be ecstatic and having a great time at college. I don’t want to fail in front of them, or fall back on old friendships as my only friendships (which is why I went away to school in the first place).

How can I get my self-confidence back and make some new friends without compromising my morals and changing who I am?

Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Alone and in need of a change

Here’s my little problem. I have been dating my
boyfriend for over three years, living together for
over two years. Our relationship is heading towards
marriage, but there’s a couple bumps on my end that I
need to smooth over before we can really go to the
next step; the bumps have to do with his family.

When
“M” and I first started dating, I spent some time with
his family — dinner once a month with his extended
family, dinner once a week with his parents. From the
beginning, I wasn’t too fond of the family; I found
them to be very cold and judgmental. For example, on
one of my first visits, M’s grandmother asked about my
religion; I told her that I don’t really practice, to which she responded that I wasn’t brought
up right. I could go on, but the gist of it is that
I’m a second-class citizen to some of his fam because
a) the religion thing, b) M and I are “living in sin,”
and c) we do not, and probably will not (which they
don’t know), have any kids. Things aren’t hostile,
they’re just uncomfortable.

M has the same issues with
his family that I do, but he kinda just turns into a
rock when he’s around his relatives. He’s said that
his grandmother and aunt did the same thing to his
cousins’ girlfriends when the cousins would bring them
around to meet the family; once the cousins married
their girlfriends and popped out some grandkids
everything would be lovely.

The other problem is with
M’s father, who is in short, an asshole. After M
introduced me to his father, his father said loudly
within my earshot that I could stand to lose 25
pounds. He’s a really unpleasant man who treats M
badly and expects M to be at his beck and call even
though M is an adult with his own responsibilites.
When M isn’t immediately available to his father, he
usually says one of two things: he threatens to cut M
out of the will (M’s father is fairly wealthy), or he
blames me. Unfortunately, M totally caters to his
father since the death of M’s mother some years back.
M knows what he’s doing and he doesn’t like it, but
since his mother’s death, his father is all he has and
he just tolerates it.

M turns into a different person
around his father, very angry and argumentative. When
I spent time with them in the past, it was almost
guaranteed that M and his father would get into some
sort of argument, which was very uncomfortable for me
to witness. At first, I would talk to M and suggest
some ways to deal with his father, but he wasn’t
having it. Eventually, I stopped spending time with
all of M’s family because I just felt really
uncomfortable and M just wasn’t helping.

At first M
didn’t have a problem with my doing this, but now that
we’re talking about marriage he thinks that it might
be a good idea if I start going with him to family
dinners, et cetera. I do agree with him, but if things were
uncomfortable for me then, I can just imagine how they
are now. It’s not too taxing for me to do this, but I
find his family to be really rude.

I think I know what
the answers are to my questions, but I’ll ask them
anyway. Should I start going with M to family events
again? Should I just suck it up and keep my mouth shut
when M’s grandmother asks us when are we going to stop
living in sin and have some kids? Should I cram it
when M’s father is loudly berating him in the middle
of a restaurant? Do I just deal with this?

Thanks,
“Antisocial Girlfriend” (the father’s name for me —
cute, isn’t it?)