That Bad Advice: I Lost My Friend's Cat

[minoanmiss]

Help! Is my friend going to be all pissy that I lost his cat?

Miss Manners, Washington Post, 28 November 2022::

Dear Miss Manners: A friend of mine is staying with me, and he went home for Thanksgiving, leaving his cat here. Well, I woke up the first morning after he left, and the cat is gone.
It is common for us to leave the doors open during the day, but the cat has never run off until now. So what do I do? Do I call my friend and tell him over the phone? Or do I wait till he gets back, hoping the cat will return in the meantime? But if the cat doesn’t return, will he be hurt that I didn’t inform him right away?

What a shock it must have been to discover that leaving the doors of your house wide open resulted in a cat vacating the premises! Such a bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime occurrence could never have been predicted! Consider reaching out to Ripley’s to see if they are interested in this surreal and freakish incident.
But to the heart of your question: it’s difficult to say whether any given person would give a single solitary fuck if their pet fell off the face of the earth. Everyone is so different! Sure, a few folks might want to know that their beloved companion has been lost, but the vast majority are probably just going to be like, meh, win some, literally lose some – hence your harrowing conundrum about whether this man deserves to know whether his cat is safe in the care of the person entrusted with such! A handful of people would want to know about and participate in the search for a lost pet, but a lot of people probably forget they even have a cat once it leaves their direct line of sight! It’s entirely possible, even more likely, that your friend is just this kind of person!
And yet, what if there is the tiny, minuscule, almost unfathomable chance that your friend cares whether his cat lives or dies? It’s already truly bizarre that this feline hit the bricks after finding every available escape route labeled with a neon sign saying “take me,” so it’s hard to imagine the universe handing you something as doubly strange as your friend giving the barest shit about his errant pet.
The best course of action is to keep everything to yourself, forever, to avoid having one awkward conversation. On the off chance your friend expresses concern about his cat’s whereabouts, simply place his belongings on the curb. Act as if you have never met him and never heard of his cat. Problem solved.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

But that's good advice. :)

[julian]

I know. *hangs head in mock shame*