Slate's Dear Prudence Plus: Dear Prudence: The "Schrödinger's Stolen Cat" Edition

January 11, 2018 12:50 PM

First up: An enthusiastic endorsement from Prudence for walking out of movies you don't like! Then, academic and pop culture writer Anthony Oliveira joins to tackle your letters: How do I get my husband to stop using a body spray that makes me ill? I told my "social justice warrior" kids I'm questioning my gender and they're threatening to skip the holidays. Help! My husband and I married young – should we open up our marriage to try new things? I adopted a lost cat as my own, but now I think I might've stolen it. I had a fling with someone that I later realized was in a long-term committed relationship – should I tell the other woman? And finally: My friends created a dumb nickname for my boyfriend and it stuck – how do I let it go so I don't accidentally call him by it?
posted by chesty_a_arthur (4 comments total)

OK, I have to say that I think "did I steal the cat" is not the question Prudence and Guest need to be answering here, although for the record, finding a cat and making many but not every single possible effort to find its owner doesn't really seem like stealing a cat. There's very little they could have done differently that would have led them to find the owner of this un-chipped cat from all the way across town (I mean, I recently learned that there are some lost cat websites but only after ... having cats since before the Web itself existed.) Anyway, the LW should probably return the cat to its owners, which is sad for the LW. But I do not understand the attitude that "sorry, you were a bad cat-stealer" displayed by Mallory and Anthony.

Also that person's kids are dumb-asses, with their "gender neutrality is for the young!" bullshit, to the point where I wonder whether that's literally what's going on.

Fight me!
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:56 PM on January 11, 2018

This was the wrongest Mallory has been since she said Match Day was where you find out where you're going to med school. I am an obsessive listener, but am also frequently frustrated by the factual wrong-ness, and in this case the incorrect assignment of culpability!
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:57 PM on January 11, 2018

Having spent the holiday season listening to literally every single Dear Prudence (I think - my god is Slate's archive navigation terrible) I think the ferocity about cat-stealing is partly in response to earlier, less-gray "should I steal this cat? It likes me better" sorts of questions.

(And thank you for posting this! I am now thoroughly hooked.)
posted by restless_nomad at 2:38 PM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also that person's kids are dumb-asses, with their "gender neutrality is for the young!" bullshit, to the point where I wonder whether that's literally what's going on.

Finally, someone who also listened to this episode! I strongly feel something else is going on—there is no way that situation is going down as the letter-writer explains it.
posted by purpleclover at 9:56 AM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]