(fwd)

>From pvgnqry@jjj6.pyrire.arg Fri Sep 19 13:18:21 1997
>Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 12:49:52 -0400 (EDT)
>From: "Kitte Ka'at" <xvggrxnng@qvtvsberfg.pbz>
>Organization: Kallisticat Bengals
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>To: Bengal List <Oratnyf-Y@Pvgnqry.Arg>
>Subject: BG: Fluff A Cat's Guide to Human Beings <Humor>
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>A Cat's Guide to Human Beings
>
>(Note: The following material is taken from a small gray book that I
>found underneath my couch, a favorite hiding spot of my cat Rex. I can't
>vouch for the veracity of what is written below, other than to say when
>Rex found me reading it, he looked mighty annoyed.)
>
>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 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.
>
>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.
>-----
>-- 
>Kitte & Jonathan
>Kallisticat Bengals
>Eugene, OR, USA
>http://www.digiforest.com/~kittekaat/kallisti.htm
>
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