1. Introduction:
Why
Do We Need Humans?
So
you've decided to get yourself a human being.
In
doing so, you've
joined
the millions of other cats who have
acquired
these strange and
often
frustrating creatures.
There
will be any number of times, during
the
course of your association with humans,
when
you will wonder why
you
have bothered to grace them with your presence.
What's
so great about humans, anyway?
Why
not just hang around
with
other cats?
Our
greatest philosophers have struggled with this
question
for centuries,
but
the answer is actually rather simple:
THEY
HAVE OPPOSABLE THUMBS.
Which
makes them the perfect tools for
such
tasks as opening doors,
getting
the lids off of cat food cans,
changing
television stations and other
activities
that we, despite our
other
obvious advantages, find difficult to
do
ourselves.
True,
chimps, orangutans and lemurs also have opposable
thumbs,
but they are nowhere as easy to train.
2. How
And When to
Get
Your Human's Attention
Humans
often erroneously assume that there are other,
more
important
activities
than taking care of your immediate needs,
such
as conducting
business,
spending time with their families
or
even sleeping.
Though
this is dreadfully inconvenient,
you
can make this work to your
advantage
by pestering your human at
the
moment it is the busiest. It is
usually
so flustered that it will do whatever you want it to do,
just
to get
you
out of its hair.
Not
coincidentally, human teenagers
follow
this same
practice.
Here
are some tried and true methods
of
getting your human to do what
you
want:
Sitting
on paper: An oldie but a goodie.
If
a human has paper in front of
it,
chances are good it's something they
assume
is more important than
you.
They will often offer you a snack to lure you away.
Establish
your
supremacy
over this wood pulp product at every opportunity.
This
practice
also
works well with computer keyboards,
remote
controls, car keys and
small
children.
Waking
your human at odd hours:
A
cat's "golden time" is between 3:30
and
4:30 in the morning.
If
you paw at your human's sleeping face during
this
time,
you
have a better than even chance that it will get up and, in an
incoherent
haze,
do
exactly what you want.
You
may actually have to
scratch
deep sleepers to get their attention;
remember
to vary the scratch
site
to keep the human from getting suspicious.
3. Punishing
Your
Human
Being
Sometimes,
despite your best training efforts,
your
human will stubbornly
resist
bending to your whim.
In
these extreme circumstances, you may
have
to punish your human.
Obvious
punishments, such as scratching
furniture
or eating household plants,
are
likely to backfire; the
unsophisticated
humans
are likely to misinterpret t
he
activities and then try to discipline
YOU.
Instead,
we offer these subtle but
nonetheless
effective alternatives:
* Use
the cat box during an important formal dinner.
* Stare
impassively at your human while it is attempting a romantic
interlude.
* Stand
over an important piece of electronic equipment and feign a hairball
attack.
* After
your human has watched a particularly disturbing horror film, stand
by
the hall closet and then slowly back away, hissing and yowling.
* While
your human is sleeping, lie on its face.
4.
Rewarding Your Human:
Should
Your Gift Still Be Alive?
The
cat world is divided over the etiquette
of
presenting humans with the
thoughtful
gift of a recently disembowelled animal.
Some
believe that
humans
prefer these gifts already dead,
while
others maintain that humans
enjoy
a slowly expiring cricket or rodent
just
as much as we do, given their
jumpy
and playful movements in picking
the
creatures up after
they've
been
presented.
After
much consideration of the human psyche,
we
recommend the following:
cold
blooded animals (large insects, frogs,
lizards,
garden snakes and the
occasional
earthworm) should be presented dead,
while
warm blooded animals
(birds,
rodents, your neighbour's Pomeranian)
are
better still living.
When
you
see the expression on your human's face,
you'll
know it's worth it.
5.
How Long Should You Keep Your Human?
You
are only obligated to your human for one of your lives.
The
other eight
are
up to you.
We
recommend mixing and matching,
though
in the end, most
humans
(at least the ones that are worth living with)
are
pretty much the
same.
But
what do you expect?
They're
humans, after all.
Opposable
thumbs
will
only take you so far.