▸ Column · Modern Marvel universe — the letter addressed to Logan at a roadside diner in upstate New York, within driving distance of the Xavier Institute
WOLVERINE replies.
The letter
My cat Gerald has been the undisputed authority of my apartment for six years. Every time a relationship ended, he seemed almost smug about it — like he'd predicted it from the beginning. Then Marco started sleeping over, and Gerald launched what I can only call a deliberate psychological operation. He stole one of Marco's socks, carried it directly to his litter box, and left it there. He's taken to sitting on Marco's chest and fixing him with a slow-blink that reads nothing like affectionate — it reads like a threat assessment. Two nights ago he shoved a glass of red wine off the counter, held direct eye contact with Marco through the entire thing, then walked away without changing pace. Marco's being a good sport about all of it, but I found him up at 2am last week Googling whether cats hold permanent grudges. I don't have a reassuring answer. Is Gerald just running out the clock on Marco the way he seems to have run it out on everyone else, or is there a way through this?
Wolverine replies
Gerald's running the same test I run. You want to know if someone's worth keeping around, you don't listen to what they say about themselves — you watch what they do when something's working against them. Marco's being worked pretty methodically right now and he's still there. Still up at 2am trying to figure it out instead of deciding the cat's a dealbreaker and walking. That's information. That's the only kind that counts.
Six years Gerald's been the one constant in that place. Every guy before Marco came and went, and the cat watched all of it. He knows the pattern. So now there's a new one, and Gerald's not impressed by good intentions or a nice smile — he's checking whether Marco does anything different when it actually costs him something. Whether he stays when staying's inconvenient.
That ain't a veto. That's a door still standing open.
I've known a hundred people who said the right things and disappeared the first time anything pushed back. I've known maybe a handful who stayed when it was hard and I'd take one of them over a crowd of the other kind any day of my life.
Marco's still showing up, darlin'. That's your answer.
— Wolverine
Loki weighs in
How charming that you've given Gerald the veto. Six years of breakups, and now there's one that might actually stick, so you've handed your anxiety a set of whiskers and declared it his problem. Gerald isn't running a campaign against Marco, darling — you are. I recognize this game; I played it for centuries and called it discernment. It wasn't. The question was never whether the cat accepts Marco. It's whether you do. He's up at two in the morning still trying to understand your household. Which means the interesting problem is sitting on your doorstep, not his.
— Loki