Too friendly a stranger

I have a cat.

I did not used to have a cat. What I had was some black and white, panicked feral whom my wife fed on our porch, who would hiss and growl when I had the audacity to get near my front door. His title was a simple description: Porch Cat. Then it evolved to Cat, because surely he must be more (and less) than where he slept. Then Kitty Cat, because "Cat" seemed inadequate for the task.

There I imagined it would stop.

One of our neighbors called him Oreo, but everyone else in the vicinity knew this name was sheer madness.

The cat was a self-governing being existing on the periphery of my awareness. Our development has a few, animals who do not properly belong to anyone, but whom we mutually foster out of a sense of social obligation. It wouldn't do to let them starve and we don't necessarily want them to go away. They were not pests, exactly, though the one on my porch persisted in hating Amber and me even though we were the kindest to it.

I expected the cat would one day wander off, either to another sanctuary or to die in the woods. I wouldn't know either way, though I would hope for the best for him simply because we had spent enough hours in the other's proximity. His abject hatred for me didn't make him a bad cat, just intuitive and private. He wasn't our cat. If we moved, he would not move with us because he belonged only to himself. When winter rolled around that first year, I expected he would leave for cozier shelter, but he stubbornly stuck in his corner, loathing us.

In time, Amber got him a heat mat that he might not freeze and stepped up the quality of kibble. She spent the fall trying to pet him, a concept he did not enjoy or allow, because then she could capture him to alleviate the ailments from which she was certain he suffered.

One day, miraculously, she did pet him, and he thereafter started to forget how much he hated and feared the people who fed him daily. The first time he came up to me as I sat on the threshold, tentatively reaching out my hand, and he let me pet his head, full of nits, I cried. His life had been so hard before he accepted a portion of our affection. I wanted so badly for him to have the opportunity for a life more comfortable than he had before let himself have.

"You stupid thing," I chided him, wiping my eyes with my shirtsleeve. "We could have loved you this whole time, but you had to hiss at us."

He pushed his head further into my hand, then bit into the sleeve so I could not easily remove it.

When winter again arrived, Amber let him in when it was especially cold. He initially neither liked nor trusted the idea of the indoors, but he came to understand that it was warmer and drier than the porch, and that we likely wouldn't harm him.

Then, Amber would just let him in because we were awake and he had been clicking and growling at the door, because "in" could mean wet food. He was nervous about every step of this process and we let him be. We didn't demand his immediate trust, understanding that this was an exacting and patient process.

He was matted, covered in fleas and ticks that Amber slowly combed or picked out. He had ear mites that tormented him but had been there so long that I wasn't sure he remembered a time without them. He was a mess, but he mostly understood that she wasn't out to hurt him, so he usually let her manipulate him long enough to fix one thing or other.

He was still not our cat. I still insisted we only had a visitor to whom we were kind, not a pet.

One morning, early in her internship at a vet's office, Amber asked my help to stuff the cat into a carrier and bring him to be checked out. $269 later, he was relieved of several aggravating conditions. I granted, for that investment, we had a cat, even though I am allergic to his species.

It was a testament to how we had earned the other's trust that, upon returning to our apartment and being released, he did not run into a forest, never to be seen again. Instead, he sulked around, favoring me over Amber as though I had nothing to do with shoving him into the cat carrier for this medical adventure. Then he settled on the carpet and forgot we had run him through this gauntlet because it was warm and dry and, maybe if he were in the mood, he might deign to let us pet him just so between the eyes.

Now he has a collar reading "Kit-Kat" with Amber's number, so he cannot con anyone else into believing he is a stray in need of a meal.

When he was sprayed in the face by the skunk eating his food (he only decided to attack when he saw Amber at the door, we think because he meant to protect her), Amber held him as I washed out his eyes with saline, a process he detested but which he accepted enough was for his benefit that he didn't gouge Amber's arms too badly.

He is fluffy and affectionate now, possibly for the first time in his life. Whenever we return home, he runs to meet us with clicks and purrs, knowing that we will probably let him in for a little while, so he can hump the soft blanket to which he is attached.

I look to Kit-Kat when four strangers try to contact me online in the same week. My instinct is not toward warmth that some algorithm and curious people deem me worthy of a "Yo, what's up?" but apprehension. Maybe this torrent is a coincidence. No stranger has bothered initiating a conversation since Susan.

More importantly, since Susan, no one has cared to prolong contact in the proper fashion. Before we met, I was excited, even moony, when I saw a message from her. Before I laid eyes on her for the first time, I felt she had the potential be one of my better friends, a notion that proved accurate. Even though I haven't seen her in months owning to the necessities of her adjunct position, I think of her well and often, and I send her short communications to this effect.

I need to be gradually tamed before a meeting should be suggested. I need to feel it is safe because it hasn't been always. I have met people through the internet whose presence within ten feet raised my hackles, people whom my hindbrain understood as threats to my continued health and safety. I work with felonious youth and have honed my intuition of those who will be trouble if they are allowed unwise purchase.

It isn't that I don't trust people (though, as I warn in my profile, I either like the potential of someone instantly or I don't as all and there is little that can be done to change that) as much as I need their writing in an innocuous venue to get a feel for them. If someone messages and immediately wants to meet, eschewing exchanging another word prior, they are unlikely to be my sort of person. Maybe they are the sort of person for other people. I wouldn't know, as I am not other people.

Their messages spike my cortisol, my urge is not to further explain myself. It is to cut off all contact to keep them from having any in-roads into my life. They do not belong there. My impulse it is to hiss and yowl, spitting venom from the edge of the woods to warn them away.

Despite how some behave, they are not owed my friendship or attention. Conducting themselves otherwise, acting with entitlement toward a stranger, is a sure red flag. Something is fundamentally incompatible. It is not for me to say what, because it is not for me to say another word once they make me uncomfortable. It is a warning sign when people demand that strangers meet them without suitable attempts to make these people not strangers. Who would rubberstamp a guy who insisted a woman he hasn't met go on a date with him, who feels he has a right to it? Why would it be different with supposed attempts at friendship?

What is the danger in meeting in person, in a public place? It gives the person access. It pushes a boundary. I have met people I wish I hadn't. I have been at parties with people who made me recoil, those I would have not have let near me if I could have filtered them out through letters in advance. Writing is my obvious lens. I can figure people out better through what they write (and do not write) than through what they say in person, better than by their body language. (I am not insensate to physical communication. However, a few good letters will put into context initial awkwardness).

When "I am not comfortable, slow down" is disregarded by someone who feel they merit my presence by dint of... also being on a website, I suppose, that is reason enough to ease off the interaction. If they can't respect something small, they will not restrain themselves when they want something more, and they will want something more.

Given how verbal I am, I want to explain myself to these people, so they understand why I'm turning ghost on them, but they do understand that. They simply don't care about my limits, so why would I want to let them an inch closer? One small trespass becomes another and another, a game of chicken which the aggrieved party is supposed to be too politely conditioned by societal mores to call them on. They have done this before and it got them what they wanted, but I don't abide this.

There was a woman last year who I thought might have been a friend, though how we connected involved her broaching professional propriety - which I foolishly chose to find flattering. When we did meet, I was instantly nervous, but I tried to disregard that sensation as frivolous. I was then hungry for friends and she had potential initially, even if her energy was too intense for me in person. This meeting blossomed into her blowing up my phone with texts, increasingly frantic, demanding a response I could not give. She once texted that she had seen me running and didn't stop, the implication I took that she might stop next time, causing me to feel unsafe in town for weeks. When I got her spate of messages, my immediate urge was to detail why she had to leave me alone, but I did not do this. If I replied, it would start anew. Eventually, she texted to apologize and said she was trying to get better, that she wouldn't contact me again, but I didn't reply to this either, even though I wanted to wish her well in her healing. She wasn't evil or cruel - she wasn't ever anything but friendly, interested, and unbalanced - but I couldn't have her in my life.

Years before, a supposed 99% match started messaging me. I was single at the time and I wasn't attracted to her, a fact I put to her civilly the first time we spoke because I didn't want to waste her time. She said she only wanted friendship and I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she meant it. Then her messages became more unhinged and she referenced things she had found out about me that I had not told her. She spun extravagant lies to try to explain why she lived with her parents, why she was unemployed even though she was incredible at so many things, why everyone violently attacked her, to try to get my pity so I would relent to meeting her. I blocked her. She made a new account to demand to know why I wasn't speaking to her. I blocked her again. She emailed me, even though I had not given her my address. I blocked her there too. Even telling her to stop would have encouraged her, so I said nothing and hoped that she wouldn't find my physical address next. She did not seem to go as far as this, or I did not find out. I felt depressed that some algorithm would think I was well matched with this disjointed personality. I realized after that she had systematically changed all her answers in advance of sending me the first message, so I would think we were soulmates, revolting me utterly in the lengths she would go because I couldn't forecast how far she would go if given the opportunity.

You can't - or absolutely shouldn't - try to argue your way into someone's life. If they don't want you there, you leave them alone. They don't owe you a reason. They don't even owe you a goodbye if this came about because you were intrusive and presumptuous, since that permits that the conversation is still open to appeals and debates. "No" is a pro-sentence. If it comes to that, so is silence.

Maybe it is defensive, but defenses are learned combatting offenses. If the way you behave leads people to hesitate in opening the door a crack, trying to force yourself through only justifies the reluctance.

I understand some irony of this, that people I will never meet are reading this. I have made myself a semi-public figure over the course of a decade. My name is so easily searched that Google helpfully pops up a box informing the searcher that I am a novelist and lists my books. It does come with the territory of being a published author who uses his life as fertile compost for stories. However, I draw my lines thickly, construct moats and ramparts from which I may be seen at my discretion but on which I do not wish to invite tourists.

When someone is right, when someone is respectful and clever, I am a ball of fuzz and adoration. When they are not, I am claws and teeth, hair bristled.

If, the first time we saw him, Amber had tried to drag Kit-Kat into the apartment, he would have bolted, and we would never have seen him again, an action I would not think unwarranted. We had to prove that we could be trusted. Anyone who would try to kidnap cats into their homes has no good intentions.

Set out a little kibble and see what happens, but don't pretend insult that a cat is wary.

Soon in Xenology: Murder.

last watched: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
reading: Abduction by John E. Mack
listening: David Bowie