Dear Sarah,

Last Friday, my fiancé and I broke up. It was a mutual decision, as both of us admitted that we weren’t making each other happy, and hadn’t been for months. Although I think we made the right decision, I am still brokenhearted, because he is a wonderful man.

My question is this: How can I keep from calling him and pushing for our giving it another shot? On the one hand, I deep down do believe that we are just very different people, with different goals right now, and I do think that we did the right thing. On the other hand, he’s been such a huge part of my life for so long. So has his family, and I love them all. Also, our reasons for breaking up, while real, were intangible enough to lose sight of during the sadder and lonelier moments. No one cheated. No one was mean. It just stopped working.

You’ve said before that it’s important to make the distinction between loving a person and loving the habit of a person, and I completely agree. It’s a big reason why we broke up. I just was wondering if there is anything I could read, or something I can do, when all I can feel is how much I miss him, and remember all of the wonderful things about him. I really want to be strong and get through this.

Thank you so much for your help.
Resisting the phone

Dear Resisting,

It’s going to get easier.The trick is to get through the time when it’s really hard, and to keep reminding yourself that it’s for the best, and to try not to think about it as For. Ev. Er.

You need time without him to think things through and figure out what your life is without him.Seeing him or talking to him works against that; as I’ve said before, it prevents the break-up from “taking.”It’s fine to miss him, of course, and to feel like crap and to lie in bed and moan and wail.Just don’t do anything about it.Put a Post-It on the phone that says “DON’T.”Ask your friends if, when you’ve got the urge to call him up, you can call them up instead and have them talk you out of it — no matter what the hour.Buy a hardbound notebook and write it all down instead of talking to him.And take it in small chunks, a day or a week at a time.

The worst thing about a break-up, I find, is that the very person you’d counted on for so long is the one person you can’t turn to anymore — that the world took your training wheels off before you felt ready.All you can do now is pedal furiously and put your faith in the physics.

Go to Amazon.Buy a little book called Don’t Call That Man.Read it.Put the Sundays on the stereo and lie on your back and sulk and cry and feel sorry for yourself.Hang on to the handlebars as tight as you can.You’ll stay up.Just keep pedaling.

Dear Sarah —

But onto my question — my roommate’s cat has this vile habit of peeing on our bathroom rug on a semi-regular basis.The rug is situated vaguely near his litter box, which he uses without problem most of the time.He does, however, occasionally opt to pee on the rug instead of in his litter box, typically immediately after our washing it from his last attack.

My question is WHY?Why does he do this — there is no consistent pattern, and when we lived in our old apartment when he was a kitten two years ago, he NEVER peed anywhere but in his litter box.My second question is, is there a way to prevent this?

Thanks,
Oh my god I stepped in pee…

Dear Stepped,

As I’ve said a dozen times in this space, a cat messes outside the box for one of three reasons: 1) he’s angry, 2) he’s ill, or 3) he’s evil.

Leaving aside #3 entirely because I don’t know the cat, let’s look at #1 first.Have you changed his food lately?Any significant alterations to the schedule in the house?New boyfriend or girlfriend?Houseguests?Cats get pissy sometimes (no pun intended) when their routines are fucked with.

And how often do you attend to his box — how often do you scoop?How often do you clean it thoroughly (and I mean “thoroughly” — with soap and fresh litter)?My cats aren’t terribly fastidious, but some cats like a pristine box; it’s possible that you don’t keep it to his liking.Try stepping up the schedule of when you scoop and scrub the box.And throw out that rug already.He keeps peeing on it because you haven’t gotten the pee smell out of it.It’s a very hard smell to get rid of.Admit defeat.

If that doesn’t take care of it — if he’s not doing it because he smells old pee or because he’s annoyed by some other element of the household — it’s time to take him to the vet and get him checked out.The only time either of my cats has ever whizzed outside the litter, one of them had a urinary tract infection.Bring him in for a check-up.Even if he’s fine, the vet can suggest strategies for breaking him of the behavior.

But first and foremost, ditch the rug.Seriously.I think that’s half the battle in this case.

[11/30/01]

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