A Cat's Guide To Training Humans

Doors:

Do not allow closed doors in any room. To get a door opened, stand on your hind legs and hammer with

your forepaws. Once a door is opened, it is not necessary to use it. After you have ordered an

"outside" door opened, stand halfway in and out and think about several things. This is particularly

important during very cold weather, rain, snow, or mosquito season, to be avoided at all costs.

Hairballs:

If you have to throw up, get to a chair quickly. If you cannot manage in time, get to an Oriental rug.

If there is no Oriental rug, shag is good. When throwing up on the carpet, make sure you back up so

that the hairball is as long as the human's bare foot.

Hampering:

If one of your humans is engaged in some close activity and the other is idle, stay with the busy one.

This is called helping, otherwise known as hampering.  Following are the rules for hampering:

A) When supervising cooking, sit just behind the left heel of the cook. You cannot be seen and

    thereby stand a better chance of being stepped on and then picked up and comforted.

B) For book readers, get in close under the chin, between eyes and book, unless you can lie across

    the book itself.

C) For knitting projects or paperwork, lie on the work in the most appropriate manner so as to

    obscure as much of the work or at least the most important part.  Pretend to doze, but every so

    often reach out and slap the pencil or knitting needles.  Worker may try to distract you; ignore it.

D) For people paying bills (monthly activity) or working on income taxes or Christmas cards (annual

    activity), keep in mind the aim -- to hamper! First, sit on the paper being worked on. When

    dislodged, watch sadly from the side of the table. When activity proceeds nicely, roll around on

    the papers, scattering them to the best of your ability. After being removed for the second time,

    push pens, pencils, and erasers off the table, one at a time.

E) When a human is holding the newspaper in front of him/her, be sure to jump on the back of the

    paper.  Humans love to jump.

Walking:

As often as possible, dart quickly and as close as possible in front of the human, especially on stairs,

when they have something in their arms, in the dark, and when they first get up in the morning.

This will help their coordination skills.

Food:

In order to get the energy to sleep, play, and hamper, a cat must eat. Eating, however, is only half

the fun. The other half is getting the food.  Cats have two ways to obtain food: convincing a human

you are starving to death and must be fed *NOW*; and hunting for it oneself. The following are

guidelines for getting fed.

A) When the humans are eating, make sure you leave the tip of your tail in their dishes when they

     are not looking.

B) Never eat food from your own bowl if you can steal some from the table.

C) Never drink from your own water bowl if a human's glass is full enough to drink from.

D) Should you catch something of your own outside, it is only polite to attempt to get to know it.

     Be insistent -- your food will usually not be so polite and try to leave.

E) Table scraps are delicacies with which the humans are unfortunately unwilling to readily part

     with. It is beneath the dignity of a cat to beg outright for food as lower forms of life such as

     dogs will, but several techniques exist for ensuring that the humans don't forget you exist.   

     These include, but are not limited to:  1.jumping onto the lap of the "softest" human and purring

     loudly 2.lying down in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, 3.the Direct Stare,

     and 4.twining around people's legs as they sit and eat while meowing plaintively.

F) At night time, wake up your human (by meowing insistently) and have him or her accompany you to

your food dish to watch you eat.  Humans love this activity as they sleep better knowing that you are

well fed.

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