Dear Sedaratives,

After a lifetime of hating everything about cats, I need to learn to love cats fast. Please help!

Name Withheld
Hartford, Conn.

Dear Name Withheld,

Look, I’m no expert. I’m just going by what I’ve seen on TV, but it seems that the first step toward loving cats is keeping stacks of old newspapers around your house. Stop throwing out the garbage, especially those Styrofoam meat trays. When food in the fridge goes bad, let it. Open the fridge door to hasten rot. Pretty soon, as far as I can tell from programs on TV, your house will be magically overrun with cats. You’ll start to speak a private language that only you and the cats can understand. You’ll adore them all and won’t be able to part with a single one, even when they die.

Sarah

Dear Sedaratives,

Whenever somebody asks my roommate about his political or religious affiliation, he calls himself a humanist. That sounds like a cop-out to me. What do you think?

Thomas A. Levey
Bismarck, N.Dak.

Dear Thomas,

Actually, I think your friend’s on the right track. When someone calls himself a “humanist,” it is a convenient way to let the rest of us know he is to be avoided like the plague. “Humanists” tend to wax prolific on snoozy topics like drum circles, cruelty-free mousetraps, Khalil Gibran, naked spelunking, lomi-lomi massage, kale, and who taught them how to build a fire. Conversely, by calling himself a humanist, your friend is sending a much-needed signal to insomniacs that he is available for boring them back to sleep. He sounds like a true humanist, indeed. I will pray for him.

Sarah

Dear Sedaratives,

I’ve heard that women always look at a guy’s shoes first. Is that true? And if it is, what kind of shoes do chicks prefer?

Allen Whiting
Louisville, Ky.

Dear Allen,

Actually, chicks look at a man’s earlobes first, to see how big they already are, and mentally calculate how much larger they will get with age. Have you ever looked at an old man’s earlobes? You’d be hard-pressed to find a more horrifying presage of your own imminent decline and death. Chicks don’t like to be reminded of such things. Chicks’re funny like that. Remember: you can’t spell chick without ick.

Back to your big, doughy earlobes. On first dates, tape them up a bit. Then, as your chick falls more deeply in love with you, gradually let them down. Funnily enough, this is what chicks do with the hems of their skirts to catch a man. They start off in miniskirts and by the time you’re walking down the aisle—bang...