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:
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| 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. |
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| 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 disemboweled 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 neighbor's Pomeranian) are better still living. When you see the expression on your human's face, you'll know it's worth it.
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| 5. How Long Should You Keep Your Hum an? 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.
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