▸ Column · Modern-day United States
WOLVERINE replies.
Replied to by Wolverine, with a rebuttal from Sabretooth.
The letter
My boyfriend Liam moved in about three weeks ago, and my cat Biscuit has apparently decided this is a hostile occupation. Every single morning, the second Liam lays out a fresh white dress shirt for work, Biscuit shows up out of nowhere and parks himself dead center on it — kneading, shedding orange fur like he's getting paid by the strand. He has never done this to my clothes. Not once. He has an actual cat bed I bought specifically for him, but it goes completely ignored. Liam's client meeting shirts, though? Sacred territory. Yesterday Liam left for work with a paw-print smudge on his shoulder and just sort of... pretended it wasn't there. (I think not acknowledging it only made Biscuit more confident, honestly.) Is there any way to broker a peace here, or do I just accept that I'm in a three-way living situation where one party has claws and the other has a dry-cleaning bill?
— Outnumbered in Portland
Wolverine replies
I ain't a cat person. Don't have much use for anything that runs a test on you while pretendin' it doesn't care about the outcome. Though I suppose I know the type.
Biscuit's not declaring war. He's checking whether Liam holds still or bails. The shirts aren't the point — the man is. Every morning's the same question: does this new presence flinch? Wary things figure you out on their own schedule. You can't push it. You show up. Same patience. Same time. Until the wary thing decides you're not a threat.
Here's the part you're not actually askin' about, which is the only part worth anything. Liam walked out with orange fur on his shoulder and didn't make it a scene. Didn't blame the cat, didn't make it your burden, just absorbed it and went to work.
I judge people by what they do when it costs 'em somethin'. I've met enough who fold the second anythin' pushes back — a hundred years makes it pretty easy to spot. That quiet ain't weakness. That's a man with enough patience to let a suspicious creature arrive at its own conclusions on its own schedule.
The cat'll figure it out. You already figured out what you needed to about Liam. Don't go to war over either one.
— Wolverine
Sabretooth weighs in
The runt just handed you a love letter for a man who got marked by a twelve-pound housecat and pretended it didn't happen. That ain't patience, darlin' — that's surrender. Biscuit ran the test, Liam failed it, and now the cat knows exactly who the prey is in this house. I don't see an enemy combatant. I see the only honest animal in the room doing what animals do. Logan spent a hundred years preachin' about keepin' the beast chained. At least Biscuit knows what he wants and takes it. Stop calling it a problem. The cat already won. That's just Tuesday.
— Sabretooth
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