Dear Evelyn, I feel a little silly writing this because I know there’s probably a reasonable explanation, but here goes. For the past three weeks I’ve been hearing breathing underneath my house. Not scurrying, not scratching — breathing. Slow and very large-sounding, like something with a significant chest capacity. I called animal control and they sent someone who poked around the crawlspace for about ten minutes and left a pamphlet about javelinas. It is not a javelina. There are marks in the dirt under there — not footprints exactly, more like something shifted its weight, repeatedly, in the same spot. My two cats, Persimmon and Duke, are completely normal everywhere in the house except the kitchen after about 9pm, at which point they plant themselves in the hallway and simply will not go in. They’re not hissing or distressed. They just won’t go. I’ve started eating cereal in the living room. I don’t know what I’m asking exactly. — Marguerite T., Tucson

Marguerite, the javelina pamphlet is doing a lot of work it was never designed to do, and I think you already knew that when you wrote to me. You are not silly. You are observant, which is considerably more useful.

The distinction you’ve drawn — breathing rather than movement — is the important one, and I want you to hold onto it. Something that is simply passing through does not breathe in the same spot for three weeks. Whatever is beneath your house has chosen to be beneath your house. That is a different situation than an intrusion, and it calls for a different response.

My first piece of advice is practical: look at what changed in that crawlspace approximately a month ago, or just before. Not inside — outside. A construction project on a neighbouring property, a change to drainage, unusual heat driving things deeper into the soil. In my experience with subsurface presences in arid climates, they do not typically select a location arbitrarily; something made your crawlspace the most suitable option available, and understanding what that was will tell you whether this is temporary or whether you are, for lack of a gentler word, its new arrangement. If the external conditions resolve, the situation often resolves with them. If they don’t, you are negotiating cohabitation, not eviction.

My second piece of advice will sound odd, but I give it with complete confidence: leave the kitchen light on from 9pm until you go to bed, and place something with a strong mineral smell — a bowl of dry soil works, a handful of pebbles from outside is better — near the baseboard closest to where the breathing is loudest. Do not leave food. Do not leave water. Minerals only. This establishes that you are aware of it without making any claim about the terms. Things beneath foundations respond poorly to being ignored and worse to being confronted. Acknowledgement, offered neutrally, tends to stabilise the situation while you work out what you’re dealing with.

I should mention — briefly, because the casserole on Greg’s desk has now been there for thirteen days and I’m finding it harder to concentrate than I’d like to admit — that a reader in Yuma wrote to me about something quite similar two years ago. Hers turned out to be temporary. She did have to replace a section of kitchen linoleum, but she described the overall experience as, quote, "less bad than the time with the well." I found that reassuring. I hope you will too.

Persimmon and Duke are not frightened. They are observing a boundary, which is a very different thing. Cats understand jurisdiction instinctively. They have decided the kitchen after dark belongs to something else, and they are being courteous about it. Follow their lead for now. The cereal in the living room is not a defeat — it is, temporarily, the sensible choice.