"Excerpts
From 'A Cat's Guide To Human
Beings'"
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 the
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.
by
annonomys
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