Breaking cats and breaking women is the same thing.  I will start out with two stories of breaking cats.

When I lived in Arizona, I introduced my room mate to my work supervisor, Holly.  After about six months of dating, Holly and my room mate became engaged, and Holly moved in with us.  Holly brought her two cats with her, one of them was named “Lucy”.

Holly had complained to me in the past, before she moved in with us, that her cat Lucy, would hide, and never come out.  She had never seen a cat stay hidden so much, and it was starting to piss her off, because she had to feed it.  She had had Lucy for about three or four years, but Lucy never came out.

The male cat that Holly owned and brought to the house, he was very social and affectionate.  The female cat Lucy, was no where to be found.  After about one week, I went looking for the female cat Lucy.  I found her hiding under a bed in the spare bedroom, and she did not appear to like that I found her.  She did not like that I was talking to her and not going away.

I said, “Meow.  Kitty, kittty, kitty.  Come here kitty, kitty, kitty.  Meow?”  Lucy the cat did not like this, this made her uncomfortable.  “Would you like to come out kitty, kitty, kitty?  Meow, meow, meow.”  Lucy glared at me, then she tried to ignore me.  I couldn’t reach her, so I went and I got a broom.

I slid the broom under the bed, I put it behind Lucy, and I tried to push her out from under the bed.  She would not move.  So I slid the broom back, and swung the broom so that the broom end whacked her in the ass.  Lucy was outraged, and she couldn’t believe that this was happening.  She hissed and spit and glared at me.  Eventually she ran out from under the bed, and she went and hid behind the sofa.

If Lucy the cat would have learned to speak English, and use the telephone, I am sure she would have been on the telephone with the 911 dispatcher.  She would have had assault charges against me and a restraining order too.

The next day, I went looking for Lucy the cat, and I found her hiding under the bed in the spare bedroom again.  Lucy had the look on her face, “Oh no, not again, this can’t be happening again.”  Since Lucy the cat was black, I began to address her, “Black pussy, you come out of there.”  My room mate who was watching TV, said, you better quit bothering Holly’s cat, she would kill you if she found out.  After talking to the cat for a while, trying to persuade her to come out, I had to go and get the broom again.  “Come here black pussy.”  Lucy ran out from under the bed and went and hid behind the sofa in the living room again.

The third day, it was pretty much the same thing, only this time, Lucy the cat could believe that this was all happening again.  When she ran out from under the bed, she didn’t run fast enough, and I caught her.  She hissed and spit at me.  I took her out to the sofa and I put her in my lap and I petted her.  She was not happy and she didn’t like it.  Lucy was a small cat, she only weighed about five pounds.  She didn’t know to bite and scratch.

Not having all my time available to chase cats, on the fourth day I went and did other things that day.  That night, as I was laying on my back in bed with my head propped up by pillows, I was awoken by Lucy the black cat walking up onto my stomach.  I was disturbed and freaked out by this.  Since Lucy was small, with black hair, and her name was “Lucy”, she had reminded me of a Hispanic girl.  This was something that some crazy Hispanic girl would do, planning revenge, and it freaked me out.

Lucy just stood there on my stomach looking at me, as if to say, you wanted me, so here I am.

When Holly, Lucy’s owner, came home from work the following day, Lucy the black cat was sitting on the sofa watching TV with her boyfriend.  Holly said, “Oh my God!  What the fuck!”  You have to remember, Holly’s cat Lucy had hid from her for three years.  Holly couldn’t understand why the cat was sitting out with people now.  My room mate told Holly that I had been chasing her cat around the house every day.  Holly said to me, “I don’t know what you did to my cat, but thank you.”

I will try to abbreviate my next cat story, about Millie the cat.  Millie the cat was about eight years old, and she had spent her whole life hiding in the apartment where she lived with an old husband and wife.  She would hide, and not come out.  When the husband and wife had to leave their apartment to go live in a nursing home, my room mate brought Millie the cat to our house.

It was a couple of weeks before Millie the cat would come out from inside the box spring of my room mates’ bed, and sit on top of the bed.  If you would come closer than ten feet from her, she would jump down from the bed, and go back under the bed into the box spring.

For Millie’s third and fourth week at our house, she would go under the bed before I could get to her.  On about the fifth week, Millie didn’t get up quick enough and I caught her.  She hissed, scratched, spit at me, and bit me as I took her out to the living room sofa to pet her.  After a few minutes I let her go, and she ran back to my room mates’ bedroom to go under the bed.

For about the next six months, the only time I could catch Millie the cat was when she was out from under the bed, and she didn’t get back under the bed quick enough.  I would have to run, slide, and reach my hand under the bed and grab a foot or a tail, and pull her out.  Millie the cat did not like this, or so it seemed, but she became easier and easier to catch.

After about one year living at our house, Millie the cat would come out to the living room on her own, and sit about ten feet away from us.  After about two years of living at our house, she would come and roll around on the floor on her back in the living room, kicking her feet in the air, squirming around, trying to get me to pick her up.  Now she comes out to see me, says meow, stretches, and then comes and sits beside me, trying to get me to pet her.

If Lucy the cat, and Millie the cat, had been women working at Fox News, I would have been criminally charged and prosecuted for whacking Lucy in the ass with a broom, and for pulling Millie out from under the bed by her feet or tail.  There would have been civil lawsuits against me seeking damages for emotional distress and trauma for calling Lucy “black pussy” and petting both her and Millie, when they didn’t want to be petted.

I brought women into this, because they are the same as cats.  They don’t like you, they don’t want you looking at them, they don’t want you talking to them, they don’t want you trying to touch them or catch them.  They do everything they can to get away from you.

Sometimes you find them when they can’t get away, and they have to deal with you.  The next time, they are less frightened, and the time after that they are less frightened, until eventually, they aren’t frightened.  They get used to you coming up and talking to them.

If you ever read the newspaper advice columns written by Abigail Van Buren, “Dear Abby”, from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, there were women that would write in to “Dear Abby” and complain about a male neighbor, male customer, or male co-worker who kept bothering them, and they wanted to know what to do.  (This was before sexual harassment lawsuits.)  Always, always, there would be hundreds of letters to “Dear Abby” in response.

The hundreds of letters to “Dear Abby” would all start out the same…, “I was working at a bank and this man came in every week and tried to talk to me and ask me out on a date.  I had no interest in him whatsoever, he was not my type.  I turned him down many times and I honestly did not want to deal with him any more.  Finally, he had some pathetic story that he had to go to his best friend’s wedding and he didn’t have a date, and I felt sorry for him, and I agreed to go.  We have now been married for thirty years and we have four children together, and I could not be happier.  I am so grateful that he did not give up on asking me out.”

Just like cats go and hide under the bed and won’t come out, women do the same thing.  You have to go and get a broom to push them out, or try to pull them out by their tail.  It’s the same thing.