BAD KITTY! [Image] This image is contributed by Laurie Miller, maintainer of The Malcolm Cat Protection Society (in Cyprus) WWW site. She is not the author of the list (some people have been confused...) This is a list of phrases cat owners should get their naughty pets to write on a blackboard a la Bart Simpson. If you could get them to write... Send more suggestions to me, Harold Reynolds. Please make sure that your name is somewhere in your message so that you can be properly credited! If you enjoy this list, please consider spreading the good cheer by doing something nice for someone! Copyright 1997, by Harold Reynolds. Inquiries from publishers are welcome!! First posting: September 20, 1993. Latest update: September 8, 1997. You are visitor number [Image] since May 28, 1996 at 10:05 EDT. Here is a banner you may wish to use if you link to my site: [banner] It was kindly created by Pelz Pet Studios. Many thanks for this! Other Humour Lists Bad Kitty List Bad Dog List Cat Rules List Bad Bunny List Bad Iguana List Dumb Dogs List Bad Ferret List Bad Horse List Assorted Humour --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A. Fill in the blanks a) [xxx] is not a bed: Any book/paper my human is reading; the bathtub; the box full of printer paper (especially when the printer is running!); The cake for the wedding shower. (It was a sheet cake in a box with plastic over the top. Hershey decided it made a wonderful hammock. Thanks to the plastic, no cat hair, but a fair number of smooshed frosting roses!); the car; the computer keyboard; the crystal bowl from the people's wedding; the electric organ; the external disk drive; the inside of the antique radio; Mommy's sock drawer; the mouse pad; my next-door neighbour's Corvette; piano strings; the pot (not hot) on the stove; the printer output tray; the sink; the stove. b) [xxx] is not cat food: Any human food, bananas, Cajun ham, cappucino, cashew nuts, Cheetos (I can hear her at night crunching on the ones she hides under the couch), chocolate, ice cream Jalapeno Kruncher potato chips (Zoe loves chips, but you should've seen the face she made when she tried one of those. She literally ran from the room), my cherry flavored medicine (at first we had to wrap Miss Annie up in a towel to get this medicine down her. Then about 3 days later she decided she actually liked it. She began taking it readily from the eye dropper. We would call Miss Annie and she would come running for her medicine.) oatmeal, pasta sauce, peaches and peach yogurt, pickles, pizza, pudding, Ramen noodles, Szechuan chicken (HOT!), tea, tofu meatballs, V8, vegetarian casserole. c) [xxx] is not food: Barbie hair, dental floss, plants, Kleenex, toilet paper, the human's hair, the human's homework, photographs, shoes, sweaters, socks, the couch, electrical cords/devices, phone cord, vases of flowers, my poop, electric wiring, the rubber fish toy my human drags around for me to play with; rubber bands; Mom's toe; the HUGE fly; used Q-tips; the other cat's vomited food; the Shamrock; carpet; kitchen towel; the other cat; plastic shopping bags; crayons. d) [xxx] is not prey/a toy: Any food, whether wrapped in something or not; Black Widow spiders; Christmas tree ornaments; the computer mouse; Mommy's snow white lace garter from her wedding with the beautiful tasty maribou feathers on it; Mummy; my Dad's penis (see one of Robin Williams' concert tapes); my human's toes; the newspaper; open milk cartons; the pantyhose; paper clips; paper coming from the printer; my poop; pop bottle caps; the produce ripening on the kitchen counter; Q-tips; the sheets; the springy doorstop that goes dooiinnngg, especially at 4 a.m.; toilet paper. e) I recognize that the [xxx] has a right to exist: Belt, fringe on the bathroom rug, fuzzy toilet seat, house plant, human's toes, baby, human, blue jays outside, teddy bear, poodle in the house, the dog, Mommy's shoelaces. f) I will not climb the [xxx]: Screen, bulletin board, speaker, curtains, redwood trees, walls, lampposts, human's leg, toilet. g) I will not dunk [xxx] into my water dish: Tissues, Mom's ironing, Dad's comics, my brother's tail, my toy mouse, the house plants, half-digested food. h) I will not hide [xxx]: Pens, curlers, or house keys under the carpet; Dad's condoms; a dead mouse in, the house without telling the humans; my human's watch. i) I will not jump on the [xxx]: Barbecue, bed at night, bed from the top of the wardrobe at night, computer keyboard, kitchen counter, Mom's pregnant belly, my human's full bladder at 5:30 a.m., my little brother, the rabbit next door, stove, table, TV. j) I will not pee/poop/barf a hairball on the [xxx]: Floor, (new white) carpet, sofa, clean laundry, sleeping human, human's tax return, the tax auditor, TV, baby's mattress, kitchen counter, dining room table, big people's shoes, bathtub, my Dad's collection of (expensive) Nazi daggers, marble floor (acid vomit+marble=etched marble), ANYTHING when my human has guests (mostly barf). k) I will not sharpen my claws on the [xxx]: Sofa, carpet, drapes, my human's leg, my human's boss's leg, the new speakers, wallpaper, window screen, car tires. l) I will not try to climb into the [xxx]: Freezer, dishwasher, dryer, garage, refrigerator, shower while Mommy is bathing, washing machine. B. Others a) ---Annoying/Embarrassing Habits--- 1. A new flea collar is not an excuse for a six-hour sulk. If my Mommy thinks that neon purple is my colour, I should wear it proudly, even though Daddy always gets me electric blue. 2. I can sit still while Mommy tries to takes photographs of me to show off to her friends, instead of running away and becoming merely a blur on the negative. ("He really *is* a cute cat, you know...you just have to get him tohold still...") 3. I am NOT required to shred the newspaper to save Mommy from it. 4. I do not automatically have to be on the other side of a closed door. Particularly if I was just *there.* 5. I do not have to sleep in the middle of the bed. The corners are just as comfy. 6. I realize that the house is not a prison from which to escape at any opportunity. 7. I will not act if I'm being murdered during a flea bath. 8. I will not attempt to crawl into the salad bowl on the kitchen table while Mommy is entertaining dinner guests (especially Mommy's musician friends whom she is desperately trying to impress!). 9. I will not bat loose change, glasses, alarm clocks, etc from on top of the head board onto my human's head to get him to wake up. 10. I will not censor Dad's reading material by batting away the book while he tries to read. 11. I will not crawl into the dishwasher when it is full of clean dishes. 12. I will not drag dirty socks out of the laundry basket and bury them in the litter box. 13. I will not drool happily when I am being petted, then climb into my human's lap and shake my head. 14. I will not drool on Mommy's friends. 15. I will not drop my catnip mouse in Mommy's mouth when she's snoring. 16. I will not expect to be let out on the terrace without wearing my harness, even though I don't like it, since we live on the 7th floor. Besides, Mommy doesn't think it's funny when I sneak under the partition to the terrace next door and ignore her when she calls me to come back. 17. I will not get on the roof, meow frantically, then claw my human as he tries to rescue me with a ladder. 18. I will not groom my private parts in front of company. 19. I will not hide in very dark places when a thunderstorm threatens (Mommy might be upset when she can't find me). 20. I will not hook a claw into Mommy's nostril to wake her up on weekends. 21. I will not howl loudly in the bathroom until someone comes up and flushes the toilet for me to watch, especially when everyone is downstairs. 22. I will not insist on sitting in the lap of and being petted by Mommy's mother-in-law who is allergic to cats. 23. I will not jump into the chair just as the human is sitting down and screech when he sits on me. 24. I will not jump into the lap of Mommy's visitors and then turn my back to them, with tail extended up and waving, in order to give them a good (close) view of my freshly cleaned private parts. 25. I will not jump off the top of the cat tree onto the bed and/or its occupants. 26. I will not jump up on the bed the morning after a hot summer night, and gleefully lick the bedsheets where Dad was sweating all night. 27. I will not lick all the glue off of all of the envelopes I can find. 28. I will not lick my human's armpits while she is sleeping. 29. I will not lick the blinds. see example 30. I will not lick the front of Mommy's top before she leaves for work, no matter how good her perfume smells/tastes. 31. I will not lick the washing machine. 32. I will not lie between Mom's legs with my nose to her crotch when she is on her period and asleep and sniff/lick/bite her. 33. I will not listen for sound of the door opening and, when it does not click completely shut, pry it open with one of my strong claws and run outside, leaving the door wide open. Especially if the humans have just left the house for several hours. 34. I will not lock myself into the bathroom, especially when it is on the second floor and my people have to call the fire department, which arrives with sirens and lights, even though my people have told them that there is no fire, just a cat. 35. I will not make my human chase me bare foot outside when it is dead of winter and she has a cold. Then when she can't catch me and goes inside I will not show up at the kitchen window five minutes later screaming to be let in because MY feet are freezing. 36. I will not open the dresser drawers in order to climb over or into them. 37. I will not push the inside bolt over on my Mom's 2nd storey apartment's only door while she's gone. The neighbours do not like having to climb a ladder into the bedroom window. 38. I will not put muddy paw prints on the sliding glass patio door, especially after it has just been cleaned. 39. I will not race out of the bedroom door at light speed in the morning, causing my human to bump my food dish and her hot tea together (ew!). 40. I will not run for the door when the pizza delivery person arrives -- or when anyone arrives or leaves. The humans do not appreciate having to chase me. 41. I will not run through the house with a condom wrapper in my mouth, especially when Mom's grandmother is over. 42. I will not scream obscenities at Mommy when she tries to bathe me. 43. I will not sit in Mommy's lap and cry relentlessly until she lets me suck on her fingers. (This is a kitten) 44. I will not sit on the end of the bed staring at Daddy while he and Mummy are making whoopee. I will not become upset if Daddy then throws a duvet over me in order to get some privacy. (Mummy shouldn't get the giggles every time, either! Daddy is sensitive.) 45. I will not stand with my tail in the doorway for five minutes while I decide if I REALLY want to go out or in. Once out/in, I will not yowl 90 seconds later to reverse direction. 46. I will not threaten to run out the door into the hall if someone opens the door to the room. (Several of my friends have kept illegal kittens in the dorm, and we've had a few runaway attempts). 47. I will not trip my human at 3:30 in the morning when she gets up to go to the bathroom, follow her back to her room, and 3 minutes after she gets back into bed demand to be let out because I have to go to the bathroom. 48. I will not use the computer keyboard as a launch pad to try to get to the unattainable ceramic wall clock. 49. I will not wait for Daddy at the top of stairs so that together we can descend to his office--off which is my litter box--and so I can leave a smelly one to reek up his work area and make him suffer. 50. I will not walk into the kitchen while my family is eating and commence to poop on the living room carpet. (My friend's cat did this exact thing twice.) 51. I will not "wall surf" if Mommy is not paying enough attention to me (this is when Edison runs across the room like a maniac, then UP onto the wall and back down when he reaches the other side!) 52. I will not yowl for hours on end to be let upstairs, then yowl to be let back down again the minute my human sits down. 53. If my human puts a paper grocery bag on the floor for me to play with, I will NOT pee on it when it gets stomped flat. (Raven had the gall to do this in front of me once) 54. It's not nice to walk on the back of the sofa behind Mommy's friends and lick their hair. They don't need grooming. 55. It is not necessary to have my Mommy experience "dynamic cat flow" when I want out/in and my kittie-roomie wants in/out. 56. It is not necessary to lie on my human's lap and knead his chest, no matter how much bliss it gives me, especially when he rubs my tummy. 57. Mommy does not like to get kitty kisses when she is trying to sleep. (Romeo will literally shove his nose into my mouth and start licking--YECCH!!) 58. Nowhere in the contract does it say it is my cat-given right to have Mommy drop everything and brush me or give me a backrub. I will not be nasty and spray something right in front of her; and/or walk around and tell her off at the top of my lungs until she gives in. (He has been known to keep it up for two hours...) 59. People cannot see me on the floor when they are making the 3 a.m. bathroom run or have an armload of groceries. 60. The pieces of fabric covering the arms of the couch were NOT put there for me to play hide and seek with my Mommy's hands. 61. Trying to kill the crucifix at the end of the rosary is inappropriate and greatly offends some people. 62. When I do escape outside, I will not lead the people on a merry chase throughout the yard and then end up on the doorstep asking to be let in. (All of us but the cat were breathing hard!) 63. When I walk up to my human looking all cute like I want to be petted, I will not suddenly turn into a slinky cat and bow my back under her hand so she can't reach me. 64. When Mommy's having a party I will not burst into the room, dodge all the hands that are trying to pet me, jump into the lap of the one person who either hates me or is allergic to me and rub my cheek all along her face and arms. 65. When Mommy has her leg in a cast, I will not wait until she crawls upstairs, hauling her crutches behind her, and then cry at the front door. It takes her a long time to crawl back down to let me out. After she DOES let me out, it would be a good idea to stay there for at least 5 minutes. (I won't bother you with the details about how they weave in and out between my feet and the crutches when I'm trying to get to the bathroom.) 66. When my young humans are playing with modeling clay, it would be prefered if I did NOT remove solid waste from my litter tray, and roll it onto the kitchen floor. This makes Mummy very worried as she thinks it is clay, which would make me ill. Young humans are not very happy if they are told to pick up modeling clay and find out that it is old poop. This wastes soap. b) ---Bathroom (Mis)Behaviour--- 1. Cats don't commit suicide, so I will stop fooling with Mommy's razor. If I bat it about in the tub, I am likely to cut my paws, and Mommy becomes alarmed when she finds bloody paw prints on the bathtub. 2. I do not need to shove my head between Mommy's legs to inspect every time she tries to use the toilet. 3. I must not ambush my brother when he's sitting on the edge of the full bathtub, causing him to fall into the water and lacerate the human's ribs in his panicked attempts to climb out. 4. I realize that the human is not trying to get away from me when she closes the bathroom door, so I won't open it [especially] when we have guests. 5. I will not "hide" Q-tips or any of the cat-toys in the toilet and try to get them out while it is being used. 6. I will not "sympathetic potty" every time Mommy is on the potty, or if I do, I will limit it to a whiz. 7. I will not attack Mommy while she is shaving. If I must, I will not wait until she gets to an ankle or a knee to swat her hand. This will only result in copious amounts of water being thrown on me and a very mad Mommy. (My cat, Celina, does this almost every time she comes into the bathroom while I'm shaving. I consequently have quite a few scars on my legs.) 8. I will not blame Mommy when I fall in a tub full of water. She warns me and I just don't listen. 9. I will not blame the human if I slip and fall into the toilet while getting a drink. It is well known that 'blue' is my favourite flavor for water. 10. I will not carry a roll of toilet paper onto the living room rug and shred it beyond recognition because my humans went to a movie after work. 11. I will not climb into my Daddy's dropped pants/shorts/briefs while he is sitting on the toilet. 12. I will not commence biting my human's toes when she exits the shower. 13. I will not drink the bathwater while my human is taking a bath. 14. I will not drink the water in the toilet anymore because in my old age, I am becoming rather clumsy and have occasion to fall in! 15. I will not fall in the toilet watching the water swirl. 16. I will not hide behind the commode so that I can pat the human on the backside when he sits down just to make him levitate. 17. I will not hide behind the curtains next to the toilet so that I can leap in the lap of the next person foolish enough to come in the bathroom and sit down on the commode without turning on the lights. 18. I will not hide in the bathtub behind the shower curtain and then slowly reach around and put my paw on my young human's shoulder. 19. I will not jump on Mom's back while she is on the toilet ill with "the big D". 20. I will not invite my friends in to drink out of the toilet. (This is a new trend in my house ... of course my cat is too much the princess to do anything so lowly as drinking out of the toilet. However, all the new cats she invites into our house aren't allowed near HER water, so she shows them the toilet. Nice manners.) 21. I will not jump into the bath tub when daddy is bathing and get a bath myself. (My kitten did this all the time to my husband ... probably why we are divorced now!) 22. I will not jump on the toilet seat just as my human is sitting down. 23. I will not lacerate the child's chest just because she wishes to give me a bath. 24. I will not lean WAY OVER to drink out of the tub, fall in, and then pelt right for the box of clumping cat litter. (It took FOREVER to get the stuff out of her fur.) 25. I will not lick the faucet to encourage my human to turn on the drinking water. 26. I will not lick then bite my Mommy's legs when she comes out of the shower. 27. I will not play "hockey" with a shampoo cap in the bathtub in the wee hours of the morning. 28. I will not play in the litter box, then jump into the guest bathroom sink and make it dirty. 29. I will not play in the toilet and get the seat wet so Mommy will yell at Daddy. 30. I will not rub against Mommy's boyfriend while he is peeing. I may get unpleasantly wet. 31. I will not run into a bathtub full of water (and a human) while doing laps through the house. 32. I will not sit in Mommy's pants/underwear when she is on the throne. 33. I will not sit in the puddles in the shower and lick up all the water after Mummy or Daddy has been in it, and then sit in Mummy's lap and show her how good I am at cleaning my butt. 34. I will not sit on the newspaper while Daddy reads it in the bathroom. 35. I will not spread the kitty litter in an even layer through out the bathroom. This annoys Mommy. 36. I will not stand on the bathroom counter, stare down the hall, and growl at NOTHING after Mom has finished watching The X-Files. 37. I will not stick my paws under the bathroom door when it is closed and snag anything I can reach, including the end of the roll of toilet paper and bare unsuspecting toes. 38. I will not stuff my favourite toy down the toilet and meow at Mommy when she flushes and water runs all over the bathroom. 39. I will not swim in the toilet/bathtub/dirty dish water. 40. I will not tag Mommy's leg as she steps in the shower to warn her that water is dangerous. (My Calico does this EVERY time we get in the shower or the bath.) 41. I will not take a dump in my box solely as an effort to stink my mothers out of the bathroom when they are trying to talk. They don't like that, and it will not get me the attention I am looking for. 42. I will not take the hockey puck (Mommy and Daddy call it the plug) out of the bathroom and hide it in the basement. 43. I will not unroll all the toilet paper off the roll. 44. I will not use Mommy's body as stepping stones when she is in the bathtub. If I do and I fall in, I will not rip her body to shreds in an attempt to escape the evil water. 45. I will not use the bad word list or the no holds barred furious swear list at Mommy; when she decides smelly old me needs a shower and takes me in with her. She is very careful not to get soap in my ears, eyes, or nose, and I will get dried with a nice fluffy towel. (He has kidney problems, and has to be cleaned every few weeks or he reeks really bad). I will then not sit on the toilet lid and give her the drop dead look, the you are a (bleep) serenade, and do my best to escape until I dry off enough not to look like a drowned flushed rat. 46. I will not use the bathtub as my own personal theater of torture where I dismantle palmetto bugs. My Mommy doesn't like it when she takes a shower in the morning to wake her up and realizes that there are roach parts swirling in the water at her feet. 47. I will not use the legs of wet humans, fresh out of the shower, to help me shed excess hair. 48. I will remember that I don't like water. I don't have to jump in the bath *every* time to jog my memory. 49. I won't be grumpy anymore when being moved from the toilet lid ... my favorite place to nap. 50. I won't play with my new rubber ball in the bathtub at 3 a.m. 51. If I don't drink out of the toilet, I will not fall in. 52. If I don't insist on staring down the toilet when Daddy is about to use it, I won't get peed in the neck. ("Removing the cat from the toilet" is now an integrated part of the procedure...) 53. If I get in the shower while it's running, I will get wet. 54. If I look before I leap, I will not fall into the unflushed toilet at 3 a.m., thus forcing my human to hold me under the bathtub faucet to rinse me. (My new kitten, Kal, did this less than 24 hours after his flea bath. Neither of us was impressed!) 55. If I jump on the toilet while Dad is standing in front of it, I will get wet in a most unpleasant manner. 56. It is not "pet me time" when a human is sitting on the throne. 57. It is not necessary to sample the toilet water after each flushing. 58. Mommy doesn't need me to sit/lie on her shoulders while she is on the potty. 59. My human does not need rescuing from the bath. 60. My human *can* go to the bathroom without my moral support. 61. No matter how much I dislike Mommy's new boyfriend, I will not spray him while he is sitting on the toilet. 62. Taking a bath is not dangerous for my human. 63. The toilet is not a good place from which to drink water. 64. The toilet paper does not exist so that I can shred it into little bits. 65. When Mom is taking a bubble bath, the two pinkish-brown things sticking up out of the bubbles in her chest region are NOT to be played with! c) ---Bodily Functions--- 1. Even if I think the litter box is in a less than pristine condition, I will not poop on my human's foot to express my displeasure. 2. I am not a jungle cat. I will not hide in my "den" the closet at 6 a.m., get shut in all day when my humans leave for work, relieve myself (both kinds!) all over daddy's ties that I have clawed down from their hanger, then never say a peep when my humans return from work, even tho' they are frantically running through the house calling my name repeatedly, so that they can open the closet door & step in the mess I made in their stocking feet, when they finally remember that I might be in here after all. 3. I do not need to use ALL the kitty litter to bury my poop. 4. I do not need to exit the bathroom at the speed of light when I have finished using the litter box. 5. I must not creep under the covers at night and do a whoopsie between Mom and Dad and make them think that each other has wet the bed and then sit there and watch the commotion. 6. I must not fart in front of Mummy's friends. Nobody ever believes it is the cat. 7. I will cover my "presents" in the litter-box. 8. I will make an effort to keep at least half of the litter IN the litter box. 9. I will not act all friendly to the visiting guest, snuggle up on her chest and then fart in her face when she is already feeling ill from a long plane journey... (Yes, one of ours did this to my mother.) 10. I will not assault Mommy when she is cleaning up one of my accidents. 11. I will not barf a combination of hair ball and kibble on Mommy's head to wake her up on Sunday morning. 12. I will not barf a hairball on Mommy's forehead while she's sleeping. 13. I will not barf in the boxes that are being packed for moving day. 14. I will not choose my humans' bed as the ideal place to have a litter of kittens--especially if they are in it at the time. (We moved her to a box we had prepared). 15. I will not come in from the outdoors, poop in the litter box, and then ask to go back outside. 16. I will not cuddle Mommy's dress shoes and drool in them. 17. I will not drag my butt on the carpet after exiting the litter box. 18. I will not drool in my sleeping human's [ear|mouth]. Yechhhh. 19. I will not drool on my human while she is petting me to show my thankfulness. 20. I will not drool when I purr. 21. I will not eat large numbers of assorted bugs, then come home and barf them up so the humans can see that I'm getting plenty of roughage. 22. I will not, even if I don't feel well, commence pooping on Dad, run across to Mom's side when they are sleeping, continue across the bedroom, one way, then the other, go down the stairs, and finish 1 foot away from the litter box. (The *poor* baby had intestinal problems, but washing the sheets, the rug, a cat, and myself at 3:00 a.m. was NOT fun. The husband was self-cleaning.) 23. I will not fart in my human's general direction. 24. I will not fart when my human's friend has me in her lap. 25. I will not go to the linen closet to do my washing up when I come muddy and wet from my outing. 26. I will not groom my private parts while my humans are trying to eat. 27. I will not hack up a *huge* hairball on Mommy's brand-new futon. 28. I will not hack up an even *bigger* hairball into Mommy's first cup of coffee in the morning. 29. I will not hang my aristocratic behind over the edge of the litter box to do my business. 30. I will not help my sister "recycle" her barfed-up food. 31. I will not hump: Mommy's clean laundry; Uncle Peter's pillow; the foot of Grandma's bed; on top of the washing machine; on the arm of the sofa; any damned place in the house that's soft enough. (This is NOT a joke--my sister's cat Pesto, aka Gingy, did EXACTLY this sort of thing for several months before, and even after, being neutered.) 32. I will not hump Dad's arm at 3 a.m. He doesn't find it stimulating. (I think the cat was just ticked about someone new sharing the bed. My husband was not as amused as I was...) 33. I will not hump the other cat. We are both boys and we are neutered. This is not a necessary activity. 34. I will not jump into the litter box while Mom is cleaning it and take a big dump right under her nose. 35. I will not jump to the top of the refrigerator and then projectile vomit all over the kitchen. (My former roommate's cat did this on a regular basis.) 36. I will not knead my human's neck with my claws extended. 37. I will not leave the litter box until I am finished. 38. I will not make puddles in the ashtray. 39. I will not pee in the fireplace ashes in front of Mommy's company. 40. I will not pee in the hole in the carpet where the key to the gas fireplace goes. 41. I will not pee on Daddy's book bag when I want to go outside. 42. I will not pee on Mom's pillow when she is sound asleep on it. Mom doesn't like being awakened in such a manner. 43. I will not pee on the back element of the stove, the one that has the vent into the main oven, rendering all cooking in that kitchen for the next xxxx weeks hideously odiferous! 44. I will not pee on the bed just as Mommy and Daddy are going to lie down, and have Daddy find it after he crawls in and keep my humans up until 12:34 a.m. 45. I will not pee on the bed while the humans are sleeping in it. I *will* stick to the litterbox -- it does not kick me in its sleep! 46. I will not pee on the floor in front of the sink just because Mommy can't turn on the faucet for a drink. Especially not two days in a row. 47. I will not pee on the wall no matter how mad I am, because I have altered genitalia and shouldn't do such things. 48. I will not pee two inches from the litter box when Dad is gone to show him how mad I am that I was left alone. 49. I will not poop in Mommy's daughter's bed just because Mommy didn't change my litter box when I thought she should. 50. I will not poop in my litter box just after my Mommy is done cleaning it. 51. I will not poop in the washer, especially when it is full of clothes. 52. I will not puke up hairballs the size of a lemon in front of Mommy's blind date. (We were sure he was dying.) 53. I will not relieve myself on my human's bed repeatedly, especially when she is in it. 54. I will not shake my head when I have a drop of drool hanging from my mouth. 55. I will not sit on the window sill in full view of passers by and barf up my kitty biscuits. 56. I will not smurgle on Mom's $120 Polartec sweatshirt. 57. I will not sneeze into Mommy's mouth. 58. I will not spray Mommy's brand new $400 bread maker. 59. I will not spray my Daddy's new golf slacks when he's wearing them, even if they do have cherry stripes and only cost 50 cents from a garage sale. 60. I will not spray the clean dishes in the dish drainer. Mommy gets very upset when she has to wash them again. 61. I will not spray the computer printers, photocopier, kitchen garbage can, or Christmas presents. 62. I will not spray the kitchen garbage can. 63. I will not take a dump in Mommy's shoes or Auntie Heather's bed, even if I *do* have a touch of diarrhea, as the litter box is no further away than either of these other items. (Cruel, maybe, *but*...) 64. I will not take a large, smelly, offensive poop in the litter box and yowl until someone comes and looks at it. (This is actually true - the more it reeks, the louder he yowls.) 65. I will not throw up on highly absorbing surfaces. 66. I will not try to play the same bedtime games with my sister that the humans play. 67. I will not use Mommy's new leather purse as a litter box. 68. I will not use my litter box in full view of all Mommy's dinner guests *while* they are still eating. (These last 2 happened when I was living in a very tiny apartment, with the litter box in the living room and the kitchen merely an adjacent nook...) 69. I will not use the garage roof as a litter box. 70. I will not wake my Daddy up at 3 a.m. by trying to mate with his knees. I especially will not try to sweet talk his knees during this process. (And he's been neutered for months. Oh well.) 71. I will not wake up Mommy by farting in her face, then try to blame the other cat. 72. I will not walk in on a dinner party and commence licking my butt. 73. I will pee in the litter box, not on the bag with clean litter in it. 74. I will refrain from licking my butt while sitting on anyone's lap. 75. I will stop using the bathmats as a new form of litterbox. 76. I will wait until the last poopie drops before tearing out of the litter box. 77. If I have been outside on the deck nibbling the kitty grass Mama planted for me, I do not need to run back inside to the living room carpet to throw up. 78. If I will not let myself be brushed and my hair gets all matted and I look like a molting buffalo, I will not leave huge, felty hair-things lying around the house when I pull them off by myself. And if I do scratch and nibble myself bald, I will not leap about in panic every time a fly comes to land on my bare, sensitive skin. 79. If Mommy squirts me with a squirt bottle, I will not wait for an opportune moment to squirt Mommy back in my own inimitable style. 80. If someone is nice enough to bring me into their home when I am deathly ill, I should not spray every piece of furniture in sight. 81. Mom's comforter is NOT the ideal place to relieve oneself. Multiple times. In one day. 82. Mommy does not need to sniff my butt to identify me. She knows who I am. 83. Mommy's hand is not a litter tray substitute. 84. My mouth will not freeze open in disgust when I sniff something that is not to my pleasing. 85. Noisily chewing my toenails at 3 a.m. and spitting the pieces out on the bed annoys Mommy. I will restrain myself. 86. The box of aquarium supplies in the basement is not a litter box. 87. The new cat is not an enema. I will control myself and not poop on the spot when he comes near me. 88. There are better ways to "punish" the human than whizzing on something. 89. We will not leave our turds in Mom's shoe when she comes to visit. 90. We will not watch Mommy change the litter box and then deliberately go poop in the corner. d) ---Destroying--- 1. Above all else, I'll *never* poke holes in a waterbed. 2. After my brother has overturned the basket of fake fruit onto the floor, and my Mommy has picked it up, I will wait at least ten minutes before doing the exact same thing myself. 3. Although I find my black and white coat very attractive, I must remember that Mommy and Daddy sometimes like to wear black only and I don't need to add colour to all their clothes. 4. Christmas trees are not for climbing!!! (My cat knocked over my tree and scattered EVERY ornament around the room. I think I'm still missing some!) 5. Dumping an entire pitcher on the human from the top shelf is NOT a good way to get her attention. (One of the cats at a shelter I work at did this; she got my attention all right.) 6. I am not to spray on Mommy's record collection, unless I want to be neutered in a very painful way. 7. I do not need to push dry cat food over into my water dish and then refuse to eat it OR drink the food-laden water. (Our male cat, Tom, does this EVERY SINGLE NIGHT!) 8. I do not need to set a world record for the amount of black fur shed on the white bedspread. 9. I do not need to splash all the water out of my dish so I can lick it up off the floor. 10. I will eat over my dish and not leave bits of food on the placemat and carpet. 11. I will not barf kibble and hairball into the box of silk flower arrangements, bouquets, and corsages Mommy just finished for a friend's wedding, all $1300 of; when she pulled two days up straight to finish two hours before the wedding. (My friend was getting married, her sister paid for the silk flowers, and I made bouquets, hair pieces, flower girl basket, corsages, cake topper, pew decorations, the whole schmeil for five attendants; and the older of my two cats got to the box just before I got the last piece in the transport box. My gift was doing the assembly. He got most of the stuff. I literally sat down in the aisle of the local Hobby Lobby and made the stuff there, took the tags through the checkout; and we made it with five minutes to spare. Needless to say, I had to put about $600 up to pay for what the cat ruined!) 12. I will not barf, pee, and poop on Mother's just-from-the-cleaners white linen jacket. (We had a cat who actually did this--all three functions at the same time, the moment my mother removed the plastic from the jacket and laid it on the bed. She didn't catch the cat because she was in the bathroom during the feline "expulsion.") 13. I will not chase bugs and leap on Mommy's favorite framed artwork causing it to come crashing to the ground. 14. I will not chew on Mommy or Daddy's toothbrush. 15. I will not chew the ends of wooden clothespins down to little half-inch nubs. 16. I will not chew holes in the bags of clean kitty litter and spread it on the floor. 17. I will not chew holes in the plastic garbage bag, even though the humans left perfectly good chicken fat going to waste in there. 18. I will not claw and tear at the cat food and dog food bags so that the food falls all over the place, and then do nothing when the mice eat it. 19. I will not climb on top of the fridge and knock the magnets off the front. 20. I will not create a mess by picking up every toy from my toy crate and then depositing the unwanted toys all over the house until I reach the toy I want. 21. I will not cover the windshield of the clean car with muddy paw marks. 22. I will not dig the bag of pipe cleaners out of my human's craft box and strew them around the house. 23. I will not display my worm collection on the kitchen floor on a rainy night. Mommy does not like finding it at 11 p.m. 24. I will not dive behind the desk, taking 3 pens, 4 bills and a box of computer disks with me. 25. I will not drag Mommy's clothes from the bedroom all over the house, so that it looks as if she did a striptease routine the minute she got home. 26. I will not drag the tin of cocoa out of the cupboard, pry it open, spill the contents all over the kitchen floor and roll around in it, transforming myself from a black-and-white cat to a calico one. 27. I will not dunk my paws into my water bowl, creating a turbulence that creates a small lake in the kitchen. 28. I will not eat, drink lots of water and then throw up on Mommy's clean, white page proofs leaving her to explain the stain to her editor the next day. (Needless to say, I did not let on what the stain really was.) 29. I will not eat things that make it difficult for me to reach the litterbox in time. 30. I will not interfere with the broom when my human is sweeping the floor. 31. I will not jump into the middle of the acrylic painting Mommy is working on and then race around the apartment leaving red footprints on the carpet, the walls and Mommy's roommate's new sofa. (This actually happened to me twice with two different cats.) 32. I will not jump on the furniture refinishing project, leaving white paw prints on dark wood and dark paw prints on light wood. 33. I will not jump up on the table and spill baby's expensive medicine and then try to make it all right by licking it up. 34. I will not knock books off the bookshelves -- there is nothing behind them worth getting. 35. I will not knock over the kitchen garbage can to get at the chicken bones. 36. I will not knock the area rugs all over the hardwood floor. 37. I will not leap onto the dining room table at full speed, sending the tablecloth and everything on the table crashing to the floor. 38. I will not leave hairball hockers outside the bedroom door for early morning discovery. 39. I will not leave paw prints and hair on the toilet seat and lid from my attempts to wash in the Big White Drinking Bowl. I will not try to blame Dad for the mess, either. 40. I will not open all the presents before Christmas. 41. I will not open the pantry door (the night before Mardi Gras) and knock over a full bottle of chocolate syrup and make the humans spend time scrubbing the sticky stuff off of everything. 42. I will not play vacuum and suck up all the empty and not so empty sunflower seed shells that one of the feathered flock has dropped, then puke it all up in the middle of the bed. 43. I will not pry the closet door open and shed all over Mommy's skirts and shoes. (Both the girls do this.) 44. I will not purposely knock all the items off the kitchen counter within a paw's reach so that I can have a nice place to lie down or use that area for a jumping off point. 45. I will not put on my "parking brake" after using the litterbox and leave skidmarks across the kitchen floor. 46. I will not repeatedly tip over the water dish, even if it makes pretty puddles as it spreads across the floor. 47. I will not rummage in the boy human's Crown Prince's closet and try to rearrange his comic book collection. 48. I will not snuggle up to my human when she is wearing clothes that contrast with my fur color. 49. I will not step in Mommy's *open* contact lens case. 50. I will not step in my poop in the litter box and then proceed to parade around the house making beautiful yet smelly kitty toe art all over the hardwood floors. 51. I will not step into the "mess" I have made in the litter box, then run around the apartment ("forgetting" to clean my paws) and leave "trails" of dirty cat litter on the rug. 52. I will not stuff my 20-pound body under the 2-by-4s that cover the unfinished basement ceiling, causing my fur to be covered with black dirt, just because Mom and Dad have decided to move into a new house. I especially won't do this just after the new, cream-colored rug has been delivered. 53. I will not track kitty litter all over the apartment. 54. I will not turn over every glass just to watch the liquid pool. 55. I will not upset the recycling bin all over the kitchen floor. 56. I will not use car windshields as slides when I have muddy feet. 57. I will not walk around the duvet and pillows with poopy feet when Mommy and Daddy are making whoopee. Nor will I look surprised when two non-furred humans jump out of bed with shrieks of disgust, start pulling off the pillowcases and duvet cover, and follow it up by dunking me in a bath, feet first. Finally, I will not act hurt for quarter of an hour as if it has been *my* dignity that has been compromised. 58. I will not write cat graffiti on windows covered with condensation. 59. I will try to restrict my hair deposition to only ONE of the living room chairs. 60. If I forget that rubber bands and ribbon are not food, I will not run all over the house with 3 feet of poopy ribbon hanging from my bottom after barfing up an entire bag of rubber bands behind the toilet. 61. If I gorge myself by going out and eating a mouse, I should not come in and eat until I cause myself to puke on the staircase going downstairs. 62. If I have the bad taste to kill a small animal on the front porch, then I should have the decency to clean it up. Mommy doesn't like stepping out the door onto animal parts. 63. If Mummy picks my toys up for the night and puts them out of my reach on the hall mirror shelf, I will not try to climb up after them. This will only result in an avalanche of bills/keys/bits and pieces on my head. 64. Just because Mom leaves dirty half-full glasses all over the bedroom doesn't mean that I should see how many I can knock over. 65. Mom's dirty undies belong in the laundry pile, not in the middle of the living room floor or next to my food dish. 66. Raspberry yogurt is NOT a means for us to express ourselves creatively by "paw painting" on the kitchen table. 67. Rice noodles belong in the package, not spread all over the kitchen floor. 68. The Christmas tree is NOT a jungle gym. 69. The flour canister is not to be explored. 70. Walking on the adhesive side of shelf paper is not only a bad idea, it gets Mom mad. 71. We are both tricolors and hence our hair shows up on ANYTHING, and we must be extra careful not to spread it ALL OVER THE PLACE. 72. We will try not to use the litter box within seconds after Mom has put the vacuum cleaner away. 73. When I drape myself elegantly across the computer monitor, I will not shed; that way, Mommy will not have to clean my beautiful fur out of the inside of her mouse or use a lint roller on her mousepad every damn day of her life. e) ---Food/Water--- 1. I am not a starving invisible snake. I will not try to flip morsels of food from my humans' plates while making myself as long and flat as possible and hiding behind the salad bowl. 2. Baby Ruths (candy bars) are NOT kitty food, no matter what! 3. Carnivore though I may be, Mommy and Daddy's hands are not food. I will not attempt to draw blood with tooth or claw. 4. Carrot juice is not a feline beverage. 5. Cats do not like beer. Really. 6. Cats should not drink Martinis. 7. Crickets are not toys or snacks. I will not hide crickets (especially when they are still alive) or pieces of crickets under the rug. 8. Diet Coke is a human beverage. 9. I *can* wait until after 6:00 a.m. to be fed on the weekends. 10. I am fed adequate quantities of nutritious food, so I don't need to steal cucumber parings/potato peelings/squash skins out of the compost bucket. 11. I am not a goat. I will snack on only what is in my food dish and leave the plants, paper, plastic, string, etc, alone. 12. I am not big enough to walk off with a 12 lb. turkey. 13. I can eat a variety of different kinds of cat food. 14. I can eat canned cat food in flavors other than tuna. 15. I can eat tuna that has not been mixed with Miracle Whip -- even if the oil in the Miracle Whip does keep my coat nice and shiny. 16. I cannot hide in the pizza box and devour the pizza; my human will see me. (Our blond kitten tries this EVERY TIME we have pizza; if we close the box she just knocks it on the floor.) 17. I diminish my reputation as a cat when I chew through the brand new cardboard and metal can of pet turtle food and eat all but one piece. Better to hide until the humans are gone than to be seen waddling at a fast pace out of the room. 18. I do not belong on the table or counter. If I do get up on the counter, I will not eat the butter, the garbage bag full of bones, and the rest of my catfood and if I do, I will especially not puke in some hidden place. 19. I do not need to be petted *every* time I eat. 20. I do not need to be spoon fed. 21. I do not need to drag the water dish into the middle of the room to drink. 22. I do not need to eat all the fuzzballs off the carpet. Mommy already has a vaccuum cleaner. 23. I do not need to kill the kibble by batting it around the kitchen and pouncing on it a few times before eating. 24. I do not need to lick Mama's lipstick off right after she puts it on, nor do I need to eat it straight out of the tube. 25. I do not need to sample the contents of every pot on the stove. 26. I know I will get some human food if I'm patient and not if I try to take it. 27. I will eat bugs to do my part in saving on extermination costs. However, it is not necessary to clean bug parts off my teeth by chewing on Mom's fingers. 28. I will not act like I'm dying of hunger in front of Daddy when I just inhaled the dinner Mommy gave me twenty minutes ago. 29. I will not activate "the paw" when there is food I like within snagging distance. While doing this I will not pretend "the paw" does not belong to me by looking the other way. 30. I will not beg for food until I have eaten what I already have in my dish. 31. I will not beg for the fish food. 32. I will not bring in my friend to share my food. [Seriously -- our cat -- neutered female -- has a friend -- entire Tom -- who she brings in EVERY DAY to share her meals and the other facilities of our house. He is an outdoor cat who would obviously like promotion.] 33. I will not claim the cream cheese and lox bagel on the kitchen table as my own. 34. I will not claw Mommy's legs for five minutes straight after I've finished eating claiming I'm still hungry. 35. I will not climb my human's leg to get tuna fish or pancakes. 36. I will not climb up on the dishrack when it is full of dishes so that I may get on top of the refridgerator in order to knock down the box of Quaker Harvest Crunch so that I may more easily chew a hole in it. 37. I will not devour my human's turkey sandwich in the family room, thereby strewing the rest of the sandwich all over the oriental rug, when she has to leave the room for two minutes to answer the phone. My human will be very upset if she has to make another sandwich AND clean up the old one. 38. I will not dribble/spew/otherwise expectorate canned cat food all over the kitchen while I eat, thus giving Mommy one more giant mess to clean up. 39. I will not drink out of any container in the house that holds liquid, including Mom and Dad's coffee cups, the toilet, the sink, the shower, and dishes under plants, and ignore my lovely dish of fresh cold water. 40. I will not eat all the baby's breath out of Mommy's birthday bouquet. 41. I will not eat fine Swedish tapers like they're candy canes. 42. I will not eat glass. It is very bad for kitties. (My calico really tried this!) 43. I will not eat Mummy's make up. 44. I will not eat random things I find on the floor (i.e. carpet lint, plant pieces, dust bunnies) just because they are there. 45. I will not eat styrofoam meat trays and then barf up white bingies. 46. I will not eat the children's (or anyone else's) dinner when they leave the kitchen to go to the bathroom. 47. I will not eat the flavour coating off the dry dog food and then spit the rest back into the dog dish. (I had a cat that did this on a regular basis.) 48. I will not eat the *whole* bag of algae wafers that Mom just bought for her pleco. [Plecostomus, sucker-mouthed catfish, an algae-eater--ed.] 49. I will not eat tinsel from the Christmas tree--it will make my poop come out like beads on a string. 50. I will not get trapped in a glass fronted kitchen cupboard after eating a pound of frozen mince that was thawing for my humans' dinners. I will not then gouge a five inch long channel in my human's arm two days later when he attempts to extract from my bottom the plastic bag that held the frozen mince. 51. I will not gulp down my dinner at lightning speed, and then barf it up under the heater or some other hard to reach place. 52. I will not jump into the refrigerator every time Mommy opens it and crawl to the back of the bottom shelf so she has to pull me out. 53. I will not jump on the table to eat cantaloupe if no one gives me a piece of my own. 54. I will not jump out from around the corner and attack Mommy's leg because she won't feed me again. It is not her fault I scarfed down a whole bowl of food in 10 minutes. 55. I will not knock Mom's Cheerios off of her spoon as she brings it to her mouth. (This only happened once. I think she figured out this is not a good thing to do.) 56. I will not knock my brush off the shelf and eat all the hair out of it, thereby producing the hairballs Mommy was trying to prevent by brushing me in the first place. 57. I will let my brother eat without interfering. 58. I will not lick catnip off the carpet. 59. I will not lick condensation off the windows. 60. I will not lick the (Parmesan) cheese from the grater when the human's back is turned for just a *second*. 61. I will not open the breakfast muffins box and only eat one bite out of each before my humans have a chance at them. Especially if I have already had my breakfast. 62. I will not open the kitchen cabinet door, tear a hole in the cat food bag, and eat when I'm supposed to get neutered in the morning. 63. I will not peel and eat the raw potatoes that are in the basement. 64. I will not play attack Daddy's toes when I want to be fed in the morning. 65. I will not put my paw in Mom's mouth to get food out while she's eating it. 66. I will not pull the salami from the humans' sandwiches. 67. I will not put my paw into the boiling water to snag a cooking shrimp. 68. I will not refuse to eat my food until it has been piled into a pyramid shape. 69. I will not scarf down a new variety of cat food as if it's the greatest thing I've ever tasted, and then refuse to eat it once my human has purchased a month's supply. 70. I will not seek sympathy for my ice cream headache after stealing Mommy's fudge bar. 71. I will not shred the packaging on all prepackaged food so that I can do a taste test. 72. I will not sit in Mommy's/Daddy's lap and try to pull food (especially french fries) from their hands while they are eating. Additionally, when my human puts me on the floor after I have tried this, I will not then hop up onto the back of the sofa and play "Death from Above." 73. I will not sit under the table and beg for scraps while clawing at Grandma Ethel's socks, and then poop on her when I don't get any. 74. I will not slurp fish food from the surface of the aquarium. 75. I will not slurp the human's iced tea, whether she's looking or not. 76. I will not stampede to the food bowl with the other cat(s), demanding to be fed, when a human walks in its general direction. 77. I will not stand on Mom's arm and make her lower her glass of milk so I can help myself. 78. I will not start annoying the human to feed me until it's "only" 2 hours until suppertime - and when I am fed, I won't ignore it or try to "cover it up". 79. I will not start eating Mom's sandwich while she is working on the other end. (She thought that I wouldn't notice the little black ears and gold eyes peering at me from the opposite end of my sub sandwich.) 80. I will not steal a chicken breast off the stove, growl fiercely while Mom chases me around the house, and finally make her pry my jaws open with her fingers to take it away. 81. I will not steal the olives/mushrooms/cheese off the human's pizza. If the human picks them off and gives them to me, however, I will eat them. 82. I will not steal the roast pork out of Mommy's fried rice bowl. 83. I will not stick my face in my human's bowl of salsa and help myself. 84. I will not stick my paw in Mommy and Daddy's ice cream just because they have not been quick enough to give me my share. I will not fling the ice cream I get on my paws from doing this across the room. 85. I will not stick my tail in the little human's lollipop, popsicle or anything sticky and drag it off in my fur. 86. I will not stretch my body to the limit to attempt to see if there's food on the kitchen counter. 87. I will not tear into the bag of cat food just to see if it the same as what is in my dish. 88. I will not topple the spice rack going for the catnip. 89. I will not try to bat a sandwich or Fudgesicle out of Mommy's hand. 90. I will not try to rip my human's arm off when she uses the last of the tuna to make a sandwich for herself. 91. I will not try to snag the James Coney Island Chili Cheese Dog with Onions my drunken Mommy and her friend are trying to consume. 92. I will not use the ninja kitty paw strike to snag Mommy's dinner entree for myself when she turns her head. 93. I will not wake my human up at 3 a.m. for breakfast. 94. I will not whine (with my mouth full) if I get dry food instead of canned. 95. I will not wrestle Mommy to the floor for chocolate. 96. I will remember that the food at the bottom of the dish tastes the same as the food at the top. 97. I will remember to chew large crickets when I eat them so they don't screech in pain when I poop one out whole. 98. I will resist the impulse to get too close to the stove when Mommy is cooking, so I don't burn my dainty nose or singe my beautiful fur. 99. I will stop trying to do everything in my power to break into the cupboard under the kitchen sink to get at the grease the humans store there before throwing it out. (There are 2 elastics around the knobs, so we regularly hear bang-bang as the little monster tries to open a door and has it slam shut.) 100. I will try to remember I am a carnivore instead of liking potatoes, tomatoes, peas, corn, carrots, lettuce (green or red leaf ONLY), and cucumbers. 101. I will wait for Mommy to finish eating her Cheerios in the morning before I commence drinking all the milk out of the cereal bowl. 102. I won't jump into the middle of a platter of HOT fettucini, and then go ballistic when Mom and Dad hold me under the faucet to clean me off. (It was a real mess. And, of course, it was the cat who hates baths with a passion). 103. If any food is left out on the counter I will not eat every last morsel of it. 104. If I am caught devouring toilet paper (my favourite snack) I will not tear out of the bathroom with the paper stuck to me which both leaves a mess and makes it easy for Mommy to find where I am hiding. 1. If I beg for food, I will eat it. 2. If I don't eat all the kibbles at once, I won't barf later. 3. If I eat an entire jar of salsa, intestinal problems *will* result. (A friend's kitten did this once, and the litter box reeked even worse than usual. Fortunately she got over it in a few days.) 4. If I must have one of the freshly-baked cookies cooling on the table, I will eat only one entire cookie, and not bite a piece out of each one. 5. Licking or batting the empty food dish around will not make food appear. 6. Licking the sofa does not provide me with nourishment. 7. Macaroni and cheese and chocolate cake are both *people* food. 8. Melons are not kitty popsicles. 9. Mommy and Daddy will not forget to feed me if I don't start howling for food two hours beforehand. 10. Mommy can cook bacon *without* my help. 11. Mummy's earlobes are not treats. 12. Mummy's students' papers are not prey. (Silly students... they want to know why they get teethmarks back with their comments...) 13. One kitty kibble is the same as another. I really don't need to have back the one I knocked under the fridge. 14. Other cats' food belongs to *other* cats. 15. Our food obsession will NOT lead us into the following series of crimes: a) forcing the human to install child-proof locks on the cupboard doors to keep us away from the catfood cannister; b) reaching through the 1 1/2 inch gap and raiding the catfood cannister anyway; c) spreading 40 black garbage bags over the entire apartment after she moves the cat food out of reach; d) raiding the cannister holding the rat's food which the human didn't think she had to hide; e) and we must accept her amusement when the next item we manage to drag out and chew on is a bunch of dried jalapenos... (That week was a battle of wits, which I'm embarrassed to admit I only just *barely* won) 16. Strawberries, canteloupe, tomatoes, and peanut buttered toast are not cat foods. (Squeaky, my 15-pound Maine Coon, will literally push my hands out of the way in an effort to get at these foods, should I attempt to get them out of the fridge and on to the counter!) 17. Szechuan beef tastes nasty. 18. The Thanksgiving turkey, the baloney, and other deli meats belong to the humans. 19. The canned cat food is already dead. I don't need to kill it by swatting bits of it all over the floor. 20. The dog food belongs to the dogs. 21. The human's food is not meant to be shared with me. 22. The other cat's food is not automatically preferable to my own. 23. The toilet is not my personal water dish and I should not get upset when the humans use it for other purposes. 24. The water bowl is the only acceptable drinking place. The only acceptable liquid to consume is what's in the waterbowl. Not the flowers, the fish tanks, the indoor pond, the toilet bowls, Mommy or Daddy's drink, a dish soaking in the sink, what just got spilled on the floor, the pot simmering on the stove, the bucket of scrub water. Licking the condensation off Mommy or Daddy's drink is just as bad. The water bowl is perfectly good water, and changed frequently to boot. I will not act like it will kill me when I am plucked from wherever and deposited in front of the water bowl. 25. The water in my dish is a much healthier drink than the muck in the refridgerator drip pan. 26. Waffle syrup is no fun when it has dried in my fur. 27. We do not kill our prey in the house. 28. We do not leave bits and pieces of our prey on stoves, beds or kitchen counters. 29. We will not be the parties responsible for the tomato with tooth marks in it lying on the bedroom floor. 30. We will not fight over the catnip. 31. We will not form the Starving Kitty Chorus a full hour before feeding time. 32. We will not give our humans dirty looks and expect them to stop what they're doing to fill our food dish if there are only a few pieces missing. 33. We will not steal canteloupe seeds out of the garbage can, then vomit them up several hours later. 34. When I "ask" for one more tidbit of your garlic chicken, I will try to keep my tail out of your food. 35. When I am fed along with my little brother and sister, I will not gobble my food in record time so I can steal their food before they have barely started. I know we are eating the same thing, and their food is not better. 36. When I finish my supper, I will not stand on the human's chest and belch in his/her face. 37. When Mommy is sharing her dinner with me, I will remember that she does not like my paws in her food. 38. When my Mommy feeds my kitty treats in the morning I will not hit her hand so more comes out than what I'm supposed to get (he does this to me every morning and he also hits my hand when I put his water down so it spills and then he mews at me when he gets wet). 39. When one of my humans opens a can of tuna or chicken and puts three little piles on a plate (one for each cat), I will not gobble all three piles and hiss at the other two cats if they approach. f) ---Games/Playing--- 1. Curtains are not for climbing. If I forget, I must be careful not to snag my collar on a hook and almost hang myself. 2. Demolition Derby is NOT a cat-oriented pastime. 3. I do not need to climb into EVERY box in the household. 4. I will not climb the wallpaper in my human's new house. 5. I will not drag Mom's knitting around the house, unravelling it in the process. 6. I will not hide in the kitchen drawers and jump out at Mommy. 7. I will not jump onto the [aaa] to knock over the [bbb] or I will be [ccc] (if they can ever catch me, that is). aaa - fireplace mantel, counter top, window box, entertainment center bbb - wedding album, vases, dishes, house plant, curios ccc - scolded, locked in the basement, (shot, punted, terrorized)* *(These are jokes! I only THINK of doing these things. God, how I think of these! 8. I will not leave the plastic rings from milk carton jugs in Mom and Dad's bed, then insist that they play fetch with them in the middle of the night. 9. I will not lurk under the bed and pounce on the unsuspecting human's feet when s/he is getting in or out of bed. 10. I will not play "Charge of the Light Brigade" with the other cat in the hallway at 3 a.m. 11. I will not play "find the mouse" on the bed at midnight. 12. I will not play the game "tiger attack" when Mommy is weeding the garden. 13. I will not play Tarzan of the Drapes. 14. I will not play trapeze artist on the curtain rods. 15. I will not sit on top of the kitchen cabinets playing 'vulture'. 16. I will not turn on the toy train at 5:00 a.m. and watch it like some car race with my visiting kitty friends as it derails, flashes it's headlight, and makes choo-choo noises. 17. I will not use my female human's chest as a springboard. 18. Mommy does not like it when I grab her ankles and sink my teeth in as she walks past. (When I turn out the lights at night to go to bed, Siesta runs up behind me, grabs me around the ankle with both front paws, hangs on, and sinks her teeth in. She does this *every* night.) 19. The bed is not a WWF wrestling ring. 20. The doorjambs are not made for climbing. 21. The living room is not a jungle gym with walls and curtains to be climbed. 22. The outer windowsills, on floors 3 and above, are not good playing grounds. (Ours fell down 4 floors, limped a couple of days afterwards). 23. The piano is for humans to play. 24. The roof is not a racetrack for cats (or crows). 25. When humans play ball games in the garden, I will not attack and move the balls. 26. When the humans play darts, I will not leap into the air and attempt to catch them. 27. When Mom has friends over, I will not sneak up behind them on the back of the couch and jump at their heads. g) ---Hampering--- 1. Although exploring the new house is my right as lady of the manor, will not go into the kitchen cupboards, through the small hole, behind the dishwasher and into the walls. And if I do, I will not stay there four hours making Mommy think I've gotten out and gotten lost. And when I come back I will not immediately get the other kitty to show him the neat cave I found. I will also give up trying to get back to the cave after a couple of weeks of being spanked for trying to get into the cupboard. 2. Even if I *can* read the newspaper through my butt, Mommy isn't going to ask me for a summary and would rather read it herself. 3. I *will* allow Mommy to have more than one quarter of the bed, even if she doesn't deserve it. 4. I do not need to "help" by dragging my face across my human's hands when she is trying to paint her fingernails. 5. I do not need to finish the note to the human's teacher so that it reads: Dear Mrs. Smith, I would like to thank fgke fgbyhgiq hefeugfwfgfla 6. I do not need to help my human type. 7. I do not need to jump into the kitchen sink every single time my Mommy turns on the faucet. 8. I do not need to race across the kitchen floor and stick my head into the refrigerator every time my Mommy opens the door. I also don't need to try to climb inside because I like all the interesting smells and want to investigate. 9. I do not need to supervise the human when s/he is working at the kitchen counter. 10. I do not need to supervise the painting of the guest room while perching on the newly-painted windowsill. (Both our cats did this and were subsequently dunked to clean them off!) 11. I will cease my obsession with the box Mom and Dad keep their condoms in. This box is not for me. I will not knock it on the ground, I will not sit on it, I will not try to scratch it open. Especially when Mom and Dad are using the condoms. 12. I will never again roll down the driveway in front of Mom to show off to show off my gymnastic ability while she is carrying the groceries. 13. I will not act as if I'm being tortured when being flea-powdered. It is not painful. 14. I will not ask for the door to be opened when my human is making an international telephone call. 15. I will not attack my human's shoelaces when she is tying them. 16. I will not attempt to "help" Mommy while she's trying to cut out a new dress by lying down in the middle of the fabric on the table, and then trying to rip Mommy's arm off when she has to move me in order to avoid slicing off my beautiful tail. 17. I will not chase the humans while they are carrying a full laundry basket up the dark spiral staircase. 18. I will not climb into the ceiling when one of the tiles is removed, crawl around until I get to the storage room, climb out and yowl because I'm stuck while my human goes crazy looking for me. 19. I will not climb onto the Step when mom is working out. 20. I will not comb Mommy's hair with my claws in the very early morning even though I love her and want to make her beautiful. I will remember that she likes combing the tangles I create out as much as I like taking baths, and usually rewards my hairdressing efforts with a good soaking. 21. I will not crawl into open suitcase to help Mommy pack. 22. I will not fall asleep on Mummy's back or chest, then refuse to move when she has to get up. 23. I will not help Mom sweep or mop. Attacking the broom to save her does not help, nor does leaping upon the dust bunnies as she carefully puts them in a pile (spreading them all over the house again so we can chase the broom again). 24. I will not help Mommy with the jigsaw puzzles. She does not need me to warm the boxes, lie on the puzzle, or carry pieces off in my fur. 25. I will not hide Grandma's $35 prescription eyedrops or Grandpa's most expensive blood-pressure pills so well they haven't turned up almost *four* years later. 26. I will not hold the pen in my mouth while my human is trying to write. 27. I will not insist on taking a long, leisurely drink from the tap every morning when Mommy runs the water to wash up and brush her teeth. It makes her late for work. 28. I will not jump into Mommy's lap while she is breast-feeding the small human. 29. I will not jump on Mommy's back while she is getting into bed, so I can have a "free" ride to get some kitty treats. Mommy says it hurts her back and she will "get" me if I do it again. 30. I will not jump on Mommy's lap immediately prior to the commercial breaks. 31. I will not jump onto the table where my human is doing her jigsaw and slide to the other edge, sending all the pieces flying in a million directions, and most of them into the heating duct. 32. I will not jump up on the stove and knock the battery-powered clock into the pot of boiling macaroni. 33. I will not keep Mommy from making bead necklaces, no matter how enticing they are to drag away and kill, because I will get my paw poked by the beading needle. 34. I will not knock the brush Mommy uses on me into the garbage can just because I don't like it. 35. I will not lie directly behind my human when she is putting on her makeup in the morning. If I forget, I will not rip her ankle/leg to shreds when she backs up and steps on my tail. 36. I will not play with the ribbons when Mom is wrapping (Christmas) gifts. And I will not try to kill the curlicues of ribbon on the finished packages. 37. I will not pounce on the sheets and crawl under them when Mommy is trying to make the bed. 38. I will not put my head in my human's mouth while he is trying to eat. 39. I will not ride on the string mop while Mom is cleaning the floor and then grab her ankles and hold on when she tries to remove me from the mop. 40. I will not run directly under foot when my human is trying to groggily make her way to the bathroom in the morning. 41. I will not scratch at the bedroom door at 5:30 a.m. when my human's alarm goes off, even though I know she hits the snooze button several time, and then proceed to follow her around all morning, meowing constantly, until she has to stop in the middle of brushing her teeth, to run downstairs and feed me so I will leave her alone long enough to get ready for work, and then decide I'm not hungry after all. 42. I will not show my sympathy when Mommy is having an asthma attack by sticking my furry little body in her face. All this does is make Mommy kick me off her lap. 43. I will not sit on Mom's hand and purr while she is using the computer and then hiss at her when she tries to use the mouse. She is allowed to move her hand out from underneath my hot fat body. 44. I will not sit on my human's lap, refusing to get up, until she can no longer feel her lower limbs. 45. I will not sit on the key marked "Del". 46. I will not slam-dunk my tail into Mommy's first and *only* cup of coffee in the morning, as Mommy's coffee maker only brews 1 cup at a time. 47. I will not snooze on top of the TV, with my tail dangling over the screen, while Mom is trying to watch something good. 48. I will not sneak up behind Mom when she is concentrating on work and yowl as loudly as possible to get her attention. 49. I will not spelunk into every garbage can when Mommy takes the garbage out, and then swear at her in kitty language when she tips me back out to replace the liner. 50. I will not sprawl on the papers my human is trying to mark. 51. I will not stand in front of Daddy's face when he is trying to retrieve one of my paper wads from beneath the refrigerator. 52. I will not stand on my hind legs and bat at the TV screen when figure-skating is on. Mommy wants to see Todd and Michelle, not me. 53. I will not suck on the afghan/sweater Mommy is trying to make. 54. I will not swat Mommy's head repeatedly when she's on the family room floor trying to do sit ups. 55. I will not trip Mommy or Daddy on the way to the kitchen, even if they are walking too slow. 56. I will not try to bite Mom's pen when she is writing and reaches the end of a line or when it comes within biting range. 57. I will not try to nibble the comb/brush when my Mommy grooms me. 58. I will not turn into a octopus with suction paws when my human tries to put me into a cat carrier. 59. I will not wait until Mommy gets in her car, then jump on top of the open garage door and howl like mad when it starts to close. I will not act like Mommy was trying to commit a violent act against me for days afterward. I will especially not do this on a weekly basis. 60. I will refrain from knocking Mommy's wallet off the kitchen table and hiding it under one of the chairs or table. (My cat did this to me one morning. I ended up tearing around the house looking for the wallet when I happened to see it under one of the chairs.) 61. I will remember not to rub against Mommy's hand when she is trying to put in her contact lens. She will pet me when she is finished. She does not appreciate cat hair in her eyes or having her contact lens knocked to the floor where she will spend a good 15 minutes searching for it on hands and knees. 62. I will remember that in order for the human to get the food into my bowl, she needs her coffee. I will learn to be patient and not try to trip her as she pours water into the pot. This only gets us both hurt and does not get me fed any faster. 63. If I continue to get into, under, over, in front of, and behind EVERYTHING, one of these days I'm going to get stuck and Mommy is going to laugh. 64. If I have just run across my human's face, ripping open her bottom lip with my razor sharp claws, I will not then attempt to trip her up as she stumbles to the bathroom with blood pouring down her chin. 65. If Mommy has a pan full of hot grease in her hands and is juggling six raw eggs at the same time, I will not climb her leg. 66. It is not necessary to burrow into the laundry basket and then play Tiger Attack when Daddy decides to fold up the laundry. 67. It is not necessary to lick off Mommy's deodorant or perfume by scaling her leg. 68. It will not assist my human's golf game in the least if he has to learn to putt around me. I can let the ball pass without knocking it off line. 69. Leaping into the box and chasing my tail does NOT help my human pack. 70. Mom hasn't hacked off a limb with the nail clippers yet, so I don't have to yowl like I'm being disemboweled when she trims my claws. (Note: be careful when trimming claws not to cut the very sensitive quick! --HR) 71. Mommy will clean up the dishes after cooking -- she doesn't need my help. 72. My Mommy does not need my help when mounting and framing photographs for an art exhibition, and trying to get in the way will only result in my risking being spray-mounted and matted myself. 73. Sitting on the piano bench when my human plays is permissible. Sitting in the piano itself is not. (Note: Mavis hasn't done this since I played a two-arm power chord while she was in there ... ) 74. When Mommy bends over, I will not leap onto her back, refuse to move, then lie down as if I'm going to go to sleep! 75. When Mommy is busy at the computer and not paying enough attention to me, I will lounge on the desk, curl up in her lap and wash, sleep, or settle for only one hand petting me, instead of pestering her every five minutes to play with me. 76. When Mommy is typing at the computer, her forearms are *not* a hammock. 77. When Mommy takes a walk, she does not need my help to find her way home. Crying on the neighbour's porch will not shorten her visit, either. 78. When Mommy or Daddy is typing on the computer, stomping around and crying and complaining will not get them to get up. Neither will sharpening my claws on the chair they're sitting on. It will just get me sprayed with the squirt gun. 79. When my human comes home from work and wants to pet me and I ignore her, she will eventually give up and settle in to read the paper. This is NOT the perfect time to crawl up in her lap, smash the paper and purr affectionately. h) ---High-tech--- 1. Computer and TV screens do not exist to backlight my lovely tail. 2. I am a cat and cats aren't meant to send faxes. (Our cat stands on the fax and sends cover pages to anyone who happens to be in our preprogrammed list.) 3. I am a walking static generator. Mom doesn't need my help installing a new board in her computer. 4. I am not transparent: I shouldn't sit in front of the TV screen. 5. I do not need to attack incoming faxes and chew them so that the humans can't read them. 6. I will not (hang up the phone | press the buttons) when the human is on the phone. 7. I will not attack the answering machine and purr all over it when Dad calls home to leave a message for Mom. 8. I will not barf up hairballs on my Mommy's computer keyboard anymore. 9. I will not bat ewirvmdsjut0958 at the keys of Mom's computer, and expect treats to come out of the back (why else would Mom spend hours sitting at the stupid thing?). 10. I will not bring the city police to the front door by stepping on the speaker phone button and then the automatic 911 dial button. 11. I will not call Mom's mother-in-law long distance at 2 a.m. 12. I will not call someone on the phone. (Yes, this happened. 1) Step on the speaker button 2) Step on speed dial button.) 13. I will not chew on the antennae of the cordless phone when Mommy's trying to talk. 14. I will not chew through the cords to my Daddy's sound blaster speakers, especially since he just replaced the other set I chewed through. Daddy needs those speakers so he can hear all the cool noises when he plays computer games. Besides, there are plenty of other cords jumbled back there to chew on, like the printer, fax, phone, computer, keyboard, etc. 15. I will not demonstrate my intelligence by playing with the alarm clock and a) turning on the alarm in the middle of the night, b) turning off the alarm so my human doesn't wake up, c) changing the time. If I do this, my human will be angry, not impressed. 16. I will not faithfully chase the cursor around the screen. 17. I will not get caught watching Oprah when Mommy comes home. (Seriously, I came home to find a 6 month old kitten loafing on the back of the couch watching Oprah--she had to turn on the TV AND change the channel to get there.) 18. I will not get jealous of Mom's computer. 19. I will not head butt the control pad/joystick when the human is 10 seconds away from completing a game after 2 hours work, when on his last man. 20. I will not jump on the answering machine at 3 a.m. causing the messages to play and make Mommy think someone has broken into the apartment. 21. I will not jump on the break key when my human is on the modem. 22. I will not jump onto Daddy's computer while he's working on it and short out a 25 amp fuse with my rabies tag. 23. I will not jump up on the microwave and push the phone off with my paw. 24. I will not knock a speaker onto the fax phone, breaking both, if I feel I am being ignored. 25. I will not knock over the stacks of CDs. 26. I will not knock the phone off the hook just to hear the neat BEEP-BEEP-BEEP noise it makes when left that way for a few minutes. 27. I will not pee down the back of the television, causing its innards to short out, melt, and spew cat-pee-scented smoke throughout the house. 28. I will not press the reset button on the computer. 29. I will not pull the phone cord out of the back of the modem. 30. I will not push the VCR off the top of the TV. 31. I will not reset my human's alarm clock by walking on it. 32. I will not send secret kitty code messages into cyberspace while Mommy is trying to answer her e-mail. 33. I will not sit on the answering machine while Mummy is gone, causing all of the messages to play and be lost forever. 34. I will not sit on the keyboard when Mom is trying to load new software. The computer and Mom both make funny noises when this happens. (It took me three tries to get my net software loaded.) 35. I will not sleep on the TV/computer moniter and swipe at anyone who tries to move me. 36. I will not step on the 'alt', 'cntl', and 'delete' keys simultaneously. 37. I will not step on the (volume control | channel changer | power button) on the (stereo | VCR | TV) remote. (I make sure they point away from the item in question to avoid this after the stereo started getting really loud seemingly on its own one morning.) 38. I will not stomp on the stereo remote and increase the sound level to 120 decibels when Mom is playing Nine Inch Nails, and then attack the speaker. 39. I will not stuff my nose into the ink-jet printer and get high on the ink fumes. 40. I will not toggle Mommy's word processor from insert to overtype mode. 41. I will not trample my paws on Daddy's keyboard when he is e-mailing in a vain attempt to send mail to all my little kitty pen pals around the world. 42. I will not try to climb on the human's lap when he/she is using the laptop computer. 43. I will not try to grab the arrow on the computer monitor every time Mommy uses her mouse. 44. I will not try to sprawl across the computer keyboard, even though I like the sound the keys make and the way they feel under me, causing Mommy to drop it on the floor while trying to take it away. 45. I will not turn off the answering machine when I play, which greatly upsets my human and destroys her already impaired social life. 46. I will not use the keyboard as a springboard trying to catch the pretty flashing cursor. 47. I will not walk/sleep on the cable box in the master bedroom and invoke Parental Control on the Playboy Channel. 48. I will not walk on the keyboard when my human is writing important emio gnaioerp ga3qi4 taija3tgv aa35 a. 49. If either or both of us yanks the modem cable out of the back of the computer when Mom has spent FIFTEEN MINUTES dialing up and getting a modem that WORKS on the other end, we *will* get screamed at and kicked out of the bedroom. 50. Incoming faxes are for the humans. They are not attacking me, even though the paper hits me in the tusch when I am napping. 51. Mommy does not need my help when she is printing a document. Sticking my paw in the printer *will* hurt. Tearing the paper as it comes out of the printer only makes Mommy mad. 52. Mouse cables and phone cords are not prey. (Dee has nailed one mouse and 5 phone cords...that I know of.) 53. The computer speakers are *not* dangerous, no matter what weird sounds come from them. They do *not* need to be killed. 54. The phone is not eating my human's ear. I don't have to scale his leg to save him. 55. The sound of the electric can opener does NOT necessarily mean it's feeding time. 56. The vacuum cleaner is my *friend*. 57. There is no need to turn on the TV and stare at the fuzzy-white screen. (Cerridwen's addition - "Mummmy always says somthing about a upholstergeist".) 58. When Mommy and I are visiting at Grandma's house, I will not wait in ambush for someone to open the screen door and then dash out, especially at night. Mommy and Grandma know that I'm not sure which house is mine so they will have to chase me in their pajamas and stocking feet, and this is then I usually get a spank. 59. When the answering machine is on and a human is talking, I will not walk on the machine causing it to stop recording and to cut off the caller. i) ---Human-Related--- 1. Considering the fact that I am 20 lbs of pure muscle (ok, maybe a *little* flab) I acknowledge that Daddy's "family jewels" are *not* the ideal launching pad to reach the open bedroom window. Especially, 3 o'clock in the morning. 2. Dad's mother is allergic to us. We will therefore not insist on her attention *only* when she visits. 3. Daddy's eyelids are not toys to kill when they move -- like when he is waking up. 4. Daddy's privates and my springy cat toy are not interchangeable. 5. Daddy did not want to have me neutered, and I will not take it out on him by trying to neuter him back. 6. For some reason, even though I think it's fun, biting Mommy on the back of the knee is not an effective way to get her to play with me. 7. Kneading my human's back is good. Kneading my human's privates is not. 8. I accept that when I ask to play tag through the house, there is a real possiblity that I may lose. If this should happen, I will NOT seek to draw blood to gain my revenge for the humiliation. 9. I am not an alarm clock and am not obligated to wake the humans. 10. I do not need to climb Mount [insert human's name here]. 11. I do not need to jump on the little human's back while she watches a horror movie. 12. I do not need to take the dirty diaper to the diaper pail. The human is quite able to do that himself. 13. I don't need to check Daddy's aim in the bathroom. 14. I have really long hair. I shouldn't be miffed when I visit the litter box right after it's been changed and Mommy can't stand the 'eau de cat litter perfume' in my fur and she sneezes. 15. I must not jump on my human sibling's head or push toys down on her from the bed head. By making her jump I am not saving her life. 16. I must not stalk my human sibling as she lies in her bed just because she has turned out the light and stopped moving. She is not dead, just trying to sleep. 17. I must remember that Mommy does not appreciate having to explain the small hickies that I leave on her neck to Daddy. 18. I shall not adopt two families or else one of them will spend three days believing me drowned during a hurricane when the other family has shut me up for my own safety. 19. I shall not arrange for my identical twin to die on the front lawn, causing heart attacks when Mom walks in for her tea. 20. I will allow the human to get back to sleep after he goes to the bathroom. 21. I will remember that even though Daddy's balls look like toys, he doesn't like it when I play with them. 22. I will not alter my local gravity so that my normal 10 pounds increases to *40* when I walk on the sleeping humans. 23. I will not ask to be (fed|petted|let out) when the humans are making whoopee. 24. I will not attack Mommy's ear just because she put me on a diet. 25. I will not attack Mommy and Daddy's feet while they're making whoopee. 26. I will not balance my 25 pound body on my human's full bladder. 27. I will not be miffed at my human all day and then kiss her on the nose at 2:00 a.m. to tell her that she is forgiven and can now pet me. (My male cat has pulled this on me on several occasions.) 28. I will not bite my human's feet when she is using the computer. 29. I will not bite Dad, no matter how much I despise him. 30. I will not bite my Mommy's foot through the duvet. 31. I will not bother Mommy when she's practicing her suture patterns. 32. I will not bring june bugs into the house from the porch, climb up onto my Mommy's lap, and the proceed to let them go to tumble, buzzing excitingly, into the crevice of her crotch. I will most definitely not then try to help by fishing around in there with my little paw, claws extended to full length. 33. I will not climb Mom's legs when my brother is getting a ride on her shoulders. Nobody wins and I have to go to my room. 34. I will not diarrhea poop all over the little human when she picks me up. 35. I will not eat the flowers Mom's date brought, and then hork them back up again five minutes later on said date's shoes. 36. I will not follow Mommy into the closet in the morning. She can dress herself. 37. I will not go lick, lick, lick, *chomp* on the human's chin, especially when he is trying to sleep. 38. I will not groom the back of Mommy's neck. 39. I will NOT have a total hissy fit and bite my Mommy's hand and give her blood poisoning and cost us $500 in vet bills and in bills to take care of Mommy! 40. I will not hiss at my granddad when he is nice enough to clean my litter box and feed me while my human is away. 41. I will not hurl myself from the window sill onto my Mommmy's tummy when she's trying to sleep, especially when she's just had an emergency appendectomy. 42. I will not jump from the dresser onto Mom's pregnant belly to get to the dish of ice cream that Dad is eating, even though her belly is the highest spot on the bed. I will also not show my face in the same room for the next hour until she is over her distress. 43. I will not jump into the human's lap, and then see how far I can get the tip of my tail up his nose. 44. I will not jump into the neighbors' open window when they are not home and then stare blankly at Mommy as she screams at me to come out. 45. I will not jump onto Daddy's back while he and Mommy are making whoopee, miss the airbrakes, and leave red skid marks across his backside as I fall off and go face first off the bed. (Needless to say, that cat no longer bothers us. He was scared enough by the screech and landing face first on the floor between bed and wall. He's fourteen and I wonder why we let him live that long.) 46. I will not jump onto Dad's stomach when he is taking a nap and spit a foam ball in his face to encourage him to play fetch with me. 47. I will not jump up and bounce off of innocent people's thighs when they are walking through the dining room, even if the 3 metre run up is really fun. 48. I will not kick my Mama in the face, pull her hair, or bite her toes at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning. Nor will I do this to her new boyfriend the first night he stays with us. 49. I will not leap from great heights on to my seated human's genital region. 50. I will not leap onto visiting grandmother's shoulders by catapulting myself from the back of a chair after getting a running start from across the room. (Yes, my cat actually performed this circus stunt, almost sending my grandmother into coronary care) 51. I will not lick or nibble Mom's cheek when I want to be fed in the morning. 52. I will not lie directly on Mommy's bladder to wake her up at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday. 53. I will not lie next to my human's ear and purr as loudly as I can to show my devotion. 54. I will not make my feet smaller, so that they gore the human when I'm standing on his chest/belly. 55. I will not meow at the nice delivery people to open the door for me. While they are nice people and will do as I wish, they have no idea that I am an indoor cat. 56. I will not nibble affectionately on Mommy's ear in the morning, making her wake up suddenly and violently with a profound case of the giggles. 57. I will not nip or swat the neighbors' little rugrats when they play nicely with me, even when they start to bore me. This embarrasses Mommy, especially when the brats' parents are present. 58. I will not open the window coverings and cause the unclothed human to flash his/her neighbors. (The little scamp likes to play on the window sill with the vertical blinds and has done this to me.) 59. I will not pee on Mama's boyfriend's wallet when they have an argument. Especially if they have already made up. 60. I will not pretend I can't hear my Mommy calling me when she can see me from where she is standing, especially when it is pouring rain and she is getting drenched on my account. 61. I will not rearrange Mommy's hair when she sleeps, making her look like an even more scary hag and making her frighten herself when she gets up in the morning and crosses in front of the mirror. 62. I will not run along in front of Mommy and then come to a dead STOP in front of her, making her nearly trip and squish me flat, *especially* after I've awakened her at some ungodly hour demanding to be fed. 63. I will not show affection by attacking Mommy so viciously it would seem I consider her prey; it scares her half to death. 64. I will not sink my new, sharp teeth into my Mommy's flesh as a sign of affection; the scabs don't match her new bikini. 65. I will not sit inches away from Mommy's face and stare at her so that she will scream when she opens her eyes. 66. I will not sleep on grandpa's chest and then sneeze in his face to wake him up. (My Birman with allergies did this to my father.) 67. I will not snap the underwear of my human when he is getting dressed and is not paying attention to me. 68. I will not sneak out of the house and make my human go outdoors in her nightgown during Hurricane Hugo to look for me. 69. I will not sneak outside when I *know* I'm an inside cat, causing Mummy to chase me and fall into the pool when she's only dressed in a nightgown. 70. I will not sneak up behind my human so that when he turns around he either trips or twists his ankle when trying to avoid stepping on me. 71. I will not sniff my Mommy or Daddy's underwear and make a goofy disgusted face. 72. I will not stare at the humans while they are making whoopee. 73. I will not step on the scales at the same time as Mommy, causing her to shriek "I've put on 2.5 kilos in a week!" 74. I will not stick my head into Mommy's mouth to see where all the noise is coming from. 75. I will not stick my paw into Mommy's mouth while she's sleeping. 76. I will not try to play with Mommy when she is scolding me. 77. I will not use my human to hide behind in hide and seek. 78. I will not use my human's chest as a launch pad to the top of the couch, or when I spring up from her lap because something frightens me. (I had 8 gouges from toenails in my cleavage when Raven did a "turn & burn" on my chest when a car backfired outside and scared the hell out of him.) 79. I will not use my human's stomach as a trampoline. 80. I will not wage full scale war on my human's head at 3 a.m. (or 4 a.m. or 5 a.m...), when she is obviously asleep. 81. I will not zip out the front door when the delivery man comes and the house guest answers the door, and then is forced to run all over the neighborhood chasing the 'cat on the run' in her house coat. 82. I will play with the humans when they want, not when I want. 83. If guests arrive for Christmas it is not essential to disappear for the next week. 84. If I'm going to knead my paws (not claws!) on Mommy, the least I can do is knead on her shoulders so I'll double as a masseuse. 85. If I must give a present to Mommy and Daddy's overnight guests, my toy mouse is much more socially acceptable than a live cockroach, even if it isn't as tasty. 86. If Mommy has company, I will not jump on the dining room table and stick my face in the food immediately after using the litter pan/licking my rear. This behavior does not help convince squeamish humans that cats are clean animals. 87. It is impolite to move in with Mummy's ex-boyfriend. 88. Just because my human bends over does not mean he wants me to jump on his back. 89. Just because my human is lying on top of her boyfriend on the sofa, it doesn't mean I can lie on top of her at the same time. 90. Just because someone wants to stroke me does not mean they are axe-murdering, sheep-stealing cannibals. 91. "Mummy's boyfriend" is not synonymous with "mortal enemy". 92. Mommy and Daddy making whoopee is *not* an invitation for me to jump onto Daddy's back for an exhilarating round of "Kitty Cat Rodeo". 93. Mommy's breasts are not pillows that need fluffing. 94. Mommy's stomach is neither a launch pad nor a landing strip. 95. Mummy's hair is not dental floss. 96. Mummy and Daddy's cocktail parties are not enhanced by my hiding behind table legs and attacking guests' ankles. 97. My Mommy's finger is not a teething ring. 98. My human is capable of grooming himself. There is no need for me to, especially when he is trying to sleep. 99. My human is permitted to move his feet under the blanket without my pouncing on them. 100. Next time the human's mother visits from England, I will not crawl into her bed, just as she's falling asleep, and bite her butt. 101. Sniffing Dad's privates while he and Mommy are making whoopee is dangerous. 102. The doctor on a house call does not need assistance. His bag is not the perfect hiding place. 103. The human doesn't bite my whiskers, so I won't bite his beard. 104. The top of the refrigerator does not exist so that I may get on my Dad's shoulders more easily. 105. The pillow on the bed belongs to Mommy. I am not supposed to cuddle around Mommy's head and slowly push her head off the pillow while she is sleeping. 106. We will not hiss at or run away from our human sister when she comes home from college for a weekend or a holiday. 107. When Dad's girlfriend is reaching for him under the covers, I will not pounce on the area she is reaching for from the top of the dresser. 108. When Mama has a full mug of hot (coffee/tea/herbal tea) in her hand, that is not a good time to head-butt her hand in an effort to be petted. 109. When Mama has guests over, I do not need to make a beeline for the only guest who is allergic to cats, jump in his lap, turn around, and wave my dander-laden tail under his nose. 110. When Mommy and Daddy are trying to do the 'wild thing' I will not curl myself around Mommy's head and refuse to budge no matter how frantic the activities may get! 111. When Mommy and Daddy's 2-year-old grandnephew comes to visit, I do not need to run away from him. After all, he's not that much bigger than I am. However, it is wise to run away from the 3-year-old next door who pulls my tail. 1. When Mommy has to leave me at auntie's until she gets an apartment and job, it is very bad form to rake auntie's face with claws when she's trying to comfort me, play with me, and give me attention and protection, three times in one day. Auntie is a kitty person, and will treat me with the dignity I think I have; and will not turn out to be an axe murderer. (I just love the four stitches I had to have; with my face ripped from cheekbone to chin--the cat just had her claws trimmed -- and the cat is still breathing, but I think it's face guard time) 2. When visitors come over I will remember that visiting humans are not giant cat toys. I will not: a) Climb their legs like trees b) Steal their coats and try to hide them under the end table c) Steal pens out of female visitor's purses d) Kick their arms with my back feet until they bleed e) Play in their hair, no matter how interesting their shampoo or hairspray smells to me f) If the visitor is a small child, wrap my front legs around the said child's waist and bite said child's finger, scaring said child half to death (My cat Percival has, at one time or another, done all of the above) 3. While licking the human's lips *will* wake her up effectively, it will *not* induce her to feed me. j) ---Mess Making--- 1. Even though it's OK to help Mommy clean house by licking dust of the blinds, it is NOT OK to get carried away and bite through the strings on the blinds and ruin them entirely. 2. I do not need to eat the tasty feathers on my human's dreamcatcher, even if it's up high where I can only swat at it, at 3:30 a.m. I do not need to rustle around inside the lingerie drawer (where it now resides) for said dreamcatcher, until I can steal it. 3. I must keep in mind that even though Christmas trees smell wonderful and have lots of lovely bark, they are not appropriate for climbing as they are not attached in any significant manner to the floor. Climbing Christmas trees will lead to the inevitable tree toppling. Said toppling may result in: 1. Spillage of tree water (corollary: tree water tastes yucky); 2. Breakage of heirloom ornaments; 3. Toppling of television sets; 4. Crashing of said tree through a nearby window (happily, not injuring the kitty who is reporting this lesson) 4. I must not chew on electrical cords, especially when the appliances to which they are attached are turned on; Mommy says I will kill us both. 5. I weigh too much to nap on Mommy's little cardboard lingerie chest. Since I've already made one collapse, I will refrain from napping on the other one. 6. I will leave the inflatable pillow in the bathtub alone. My claws do not do it any good. 7. I will not attempt to jump from the bed onto the top of Mommy's brand-new mahogany armoire. It's too high for me and I have to dig my hind claws in, gouging the wood beyond repair, in order to make it. (My cat Mouse did this and I was *not* impressed with her acrobatics.) 8. I will not bite the mini-blinds when no one is home just because there are birds in the trees outside that I can't get to. It is not the miniblinds' fault. 9. I will not chew on every wicker basket I see. 10. I will not chew the buttons off Mommy's bathrobe. 11. I will not chew the corners off my human's books/comics. 12. I will not chew up and destroy my family's tough rubber summer sandals. 13. I will not climb on top of the cabinet in the bedroom and knock down grandma's vase, given to her by her mother, if I am not fed at 7 a.m. 14. I will not dig up the carpet to expose the foam pad beneath, chew numerous little bits out of the pad, and strew them about the living room. 15. I will not find a way to sneak into the fireplace, (even thought we have it blocked off, he is a magician) when Mommy and Daddy are not home, so that I am covered from head to toe in soot. (especially since I happen to be white!) 16. I will not get on Mommy's studio workbench and dump about five pounds of beads, stone chips, and other tiny things onto the floor at 2 a.m, when Mommy just crashed after pulling a long day. I will not work one earring off each card and bat it into places she can't find, when she has to get up and deliver it all at 7 a.m. 17. I will not go to the bathroom, and then pretend to bury the unwanted material by clawing everything but the litter (The outside of the litterbox, the furnace and the floor). 18. I will not grab an entire mouthful of toothpicks and drop them into the stove burners (the toothpicks got put away fast after that one). 19. I will not gut my Bill Clinton catnip doll on the living room rug. 20. I will not jump up from the floor, onto to the sideboard to knock over Dad's 60 year old Art Deco figurine that WAS made of ivorine, brass and marble. 21. I will not knock the 20 oz. jar of Vaseline off the dresser and then sit back and watch the puppy eat the entire contents. (And most of the plastic jar.) I will not do the exact same thing two weeks later. 22. I will not make snowflakes out of a whole roll of paper towels/a whole box of kleenex/an entire head of lettuce. 23. I will not miscalculate my leap and smash Mummy's much-loved figurine collection. 24. I will not "move" the fishbowl off the kitchen counter just because it isn't normally there. Mom doesn't like finding motionless fish on the floor (after stepping into water and broken glass in the dark!). 25. I will not pull all the bagged food (rice, beans, macaroni) out of the pantry and drag the bags through the house after chewing holes in them. 26. I will not rend Mom's dressing gown by climbing up and down it while playing in the closet with my brother. 27. I will not shed on my human's new clothes the day before school starts. 28. I will not shred at least one roll of toilet paper a week just because I think it's cute. 29. I will not shred the Bad Kitty List. 30. I will not shred the kitchen sponge all over the carpet. 31. I will not shred the newspaper while someone is reading it. 32. I will not tear the mini-blinds and their brackets out of the wall when Mommy is on the phone with her boss. She is only embarrassed when she has to explain the racket and is NOT impressed by my athletic ability. 33. I will not tear up the curtains. If I do tear up the curtains, I will not look at the humans like they're crazy while they're yelling at me. When they're done, I will at least wait until their backs are turned before doing it again. 34. I will remember that the hallway curtains are only hanging from a tension rod, and I will not pull down the entire thing, curtain, rods, and all. 35. If I chew on the fringe of Mommy's new wool rug, I will get kicked out of the living room. Ditto if I play "mouse" with Mommy's silver service. 36. If I rip a hole in the box spring cover and take a nap in the box springs, it may be dangerous to my health when Mommy and Daddy decide to take a nap. 37. Mommy's diaphragm is not a chew toy, and I will not poke holes in it with my teeth then bring it downstairs to show to all her party guests. 38. No matter how fun it is, I will not chew through the dangling leather ties on my human's coat. Shoelaces aren't there for gnawing either. (Combat boot laces are especially enticing). 39. We do not count ourselves clever for having sent Mom's sewing machine on a three foot ride to the floor from the kitchen table, thereby nixing Mom's only means of revenge by turning us into earmuffs. 40. When Mommy gives me a fuzzy lambswool duster to play with, I will not tear hunks of fluff out with my teeth and leave them all over the carpet. 41. When Mommy's too busy on the computer to pay attention to me, I will not spill her coffee across the computer. k) ---Miscellaneous--- 1. Having my claws trimmed is a good thing and doesn't hurt, so I shouldn't struggle. 2. I am a cat, not an escape artist. 3. I don't ALWAYS have to be the centre of attention. 4. I realize that I am not supposed to be in the kitchen, so I won't sneak past Mommy when she has her back turned. 5. I will not climb up the side of the house to get to the top deck. 6. I will not freak Mommy out when the power goes out by hissing and screaming at nothing, so that Mommy thinks someone has broken in. (It turned out to be one of my friends--but of course Max and Ginger weren't sure.) 7. I will not hide in the baby's carriage and cause it to rock back and forth mysteriously, making Mommy think it's haunted. 8. I will not hide under the back porch, leash and all, so that my humans will forget me and leave me outside all day (or all night) long. 9. I will not join my human while he/she is on the roof by climbing the ladder or the nearby tree, and then demand to be taken down from the roof because I can't remember how I got up there. 10. I will not jump off the ceiling fan when Daddy comes home and turns it on. (I have NO idea how he got up there! It scared the S**T outta me!) 11. I will not pace the perimeter of the house when I want to be let out. 12. I will not put my tail/paws in places where they can be stepped on. 13. I will not sink my claws into Mom's shoulder to get better traction for a jump. 14. I will not try to dig to China from my litter box. 15. I will not use my psychic powers to project myself into my Mommy's dreams when I am hungry, causing her to dream that I am a talking cat, and I can say "Where's my supper." 16. I will show remorse when I'm being scolded. 17. If I will not groom myself, I must not rip Mama's hand off when she tries to do it for me. 18. Looking adorable after misbehaving will not negate my crime. 19. Mommy knows I like to have my butt scratched; I do not need to stick it in her face when I want to remind her. 20. "NO!" does not mean, "Not while I'm not looking" or "Try again in 5 seconds". 21. No matter how much I rub against it, the squirt gun is not my friend. 22. The 12-pack of beer contains nothing of interest to cats. 23. The bed is not "home free." 24. There are NO Martians hiding in the new drapes. (Especially since I helped Mommy make them!) 25. We will sit still for 5 seconds while Mom tries to take our photograph because Mom loves us and just wants to show us off to her friends. l) ---Misuse/Misappropriation of Items--- 1. I am not a Christmas tree ornament. Just because I wasn't allowed to "help" decorate it doesn't mean I should climb up and perch on a branch. 2. I will never again steal two of Mummy's clean bras off the line, drag them under a chair in the living room and chew them until they are nice and soggy. This makes Mummy really really cross. 3. I will not bury Mommy's hair barrettes or other personal belongings in my litter box. She does not appreciate digging for treasure. 4. I will not drag off a whole loaf of bread, shred it to pieces (leaving it inside the bag), and then hide it under the couch. 5. I will not drag the apple peels out of the garbage to play with them. 6. I will not drown my human sister's dolls face down in my water bowl. 7. I will not fish out Dad's partial plate from the glass so that the dog can "wear" it and pretend to be Dad. (It is somewhat unnerving to wake up, roll over in bed, and see the dog grinning at you with your own teeth.) 8. I will not hide under the clothes on Mommy's dress form and then try to use the item as a scratching post and scratch my Mom. 9. I will not jump on the kitchen counter and make off with the roast beef (or the roast chicken). 10. I will not nap in the bathroom sink when Mommy has company. 11. I will not pee in my little human's potty. 12. I will NOT pee on my step-Mommy's bathroom rug - especially after the fourth time (2nd new rug), when my punishment was taking an unwilling shower so I could appreciate how the poor, helpless rug feels. 13. I will not pull dirty socks out of the laundry basket and a) leave them artfully scattered around the house when my Mom brings guests home, or b) soak them in my water dish and leave them on my Mom's pillow. 14. I will not remove all the nifty shiny things from the jewelry box on top of the five-foot tall clothes dresser. 15. I will not retrieve used sanitary products from Mommy's waste basket and then bring them to the living room. 16. I will not roll in all the fresh laundry to reduce the static cling in my fur. 17. I will not snitch dinner from the humans. 18. I will not steal 12 Hershey's kisses per night from the holiday candy dish, unwrap them, play hockey with them, and leave some under the area rug where they will be immediately found, while hoarding others amongst the pillows so I can play for days on end. 19. I will not steal all the macadamia nuts out of the bowl and chase them all over the house, though they DO roll so beautifully when still in the shell. Ditto for hazelnuts and hard candies. 20. I will not steal an open package of bandaids from under the bathroom sink. If I do, and my Dad sees me, I will not stop and stare at him and then run away and hide the bandaids in the pantry. If caught, I will put the Bandaids back where I found them. 21. I will not steal Mom's pendant and hide it under the pillow. 22. I will not steal Mummy's Cheetos and leave them all licked but not eaten on her bed. 23. I will not steal soda straws out of Mommy's drinking glasses when her back is turned. 24. I will not steal the other cat's toys. 25. I will not steal the roach bait from under the bathroom sink to play with when Mommy has left the cabinet door open and turned her back. I will especially not put teethmarks in the package, lest I risk being whisked immediately to the vet. 26. I will not steal the scrub pad from the sink and drag it all over the house. 27. I will not steal used tissues, no matter how excitingly they rustle. Neither will I chew holes in magazine covers. 28. I will not surf on the Age-of-Aquarius furniture. 29. I will not take any and all little boxes (ie: cigarette packages, condom boxes) from the coffee table and hide them in the basement on my "invisible" cat bed. Neither I nor things I have stolen are rendered invisible when I place them on my bed, and when I decide to chew on the cigarette packages at 2:30 a.m. I will get caught. 30. It is not nice to play "hide the palmetto bug in my human's bedclothes." It bothers him when wiggling cockroaches crawl on his legs, then emerge from the sheets. 31. Next time the human gets a new nerf gun, I will not steal and eat the foam darts. 32. Photographs aren't meant to be licked. They have no nutritional value whatsoever. m) ---Night-time--- 1. At 3 a.m. I will not go tearing through the house as if the hounds of hell were on my tail. 2. Continually stepping on Mommy's bladder at 4 a.m. is not the best way to get attention. 3. During the middle of the night while my human is asleep, I will not awaken my human by chewing/ripping paper up into wet, sticky confetti causing her to step into the disgusting gooey mess when she comes to take my paper "prey" away. 4. Getting to go into the backyard is a privilege, not a right. I will not wake up my humans and demand to be let out at 3 a.m., because I'm only allowed out during daylight; and even I can see if it's still dark or not. 5. I do not have to pace the length and breadth of the human's bed every single night when he's trying to sleep. The bed has not changed sizes since last night. 6. I do not need to make a 2 a.m. bed check of my humans, and clean my Mommy's nose and lick my Daddy's beard until they have to hide under blankets. I can do the check a lot later in the morning. 7. I do not need to wake Mommy up at 3:00 a.m. by chewing on her head. 8. I must not jump from the bathroom counter to the top of the bathroom door, sending the door smashing into the side of the tub, then try to balance my 32 pound body on the top of the door while crying with fear. 9. I must not repeatedly swat the alarm clock in an effort to make it go off so the human will get up and feed us. Nor will I swat the human. 10. I must not wake Mommy up in the morning by dropping a coffee maker on her head. That is not how humans use coffee to wake up! 11. I must remember Mommy's head is not a female cat and I must not try to mate with it at 2 a.m. 12. I realize that my humans do not wish to have hourly night watch reports on sectors 4 and 5 (which they commonly call the windows next to the bed). I can quietly patrol these areas without meowing loudly and stepping all over them in bed while saving my sector report for the next morning. 13. I will not bring offerings of toy mice to Mom and Dad in the middle of the night (she's an inside kitty...she's been deprived of the chance to bring real ones!). 14. I will not charge myself with static electricity and zap my sleeping Dad at 2 a.m. 15. I will not chase the other invisible cats across Dad's belly and groin in the middle of the night--particularly not at 3:30 a.m. 16. I will not chew on Mommy's hair while she is sleeping. 17. I will not clean my human's ears in an attempt to awake him/her. 18. I will not decide that 3 a.m. is the perfect time to get some attention by meowing piercingly until my Mommy wakes up and tosses me (gently, mind you) onto the floor. I especially will not proceed to poop on the carpet behind the blowing fan, thus wafting the delicate scent of my poop over to my Mommy and making her gag in her sleep. 19. I will not drag crinkly plastic into the bedroom and play with it incessantly at 3 a.m. 20. I will not drag dirty socks up from the basement in the middle of the night, deposit them on the bed and yell at the top of my lungs (Burmese LOUD yowling) so that Mommy can admire my "kill." 21. I will not flick my tail on Dad's face at 3 a.m. while enjoying sleeping on Mom's pillow. 22. I will not go under the bed and yowl at 4 a.m. to wake the human and not get squirted. 23. I will not groom Daddy at 2 a.m. 24. I will not hide under the footstool and wait for my unsuspecting human to make a trip to the kitchen in the middle of the night so that I can run out from under it, jump up, grab her around the waist and charge off at turbo-speed leaving her passed out on the floor in a dead faint from fright. 25. I will not jump from the nice perch my daddy made for me onto his face in the middle of the night making him look like a really scary ad for razor blades. 26. I will not jump into the little corner space behind the 6 foot bookshelves so that Mommy and Daddy have to unload all of the shelves and move the bookcases at 1:00 a.m. 27. I will not jump on Mommy's head at five a.m. while trying to save her from a bug on the wall above the bed. Having wakened her, I will not convince her with my persistence and anxiety that it is a large spider. I will not cry in disappointment at the door when she evicts me, having turned the light on (in a fit of arachnophobia) to find only a tiny cockroach. 28. I will not knock my kitty treats into the garbage can and then run around the house knocking over garbage cans looking for them at 3 a.m. 29. I will not knock pennies off the nightstand at 3 a.m. in order to get Mom's attention. 30. I will not knock the kitchen trash can over at 3 a.m. EVERY NIGHT scavenging for scraps. 31. I will not lick Mommy's eyelids to wake her up, no matter how hungry, bored, or lonesome I am. 32. I will not lick Mommy's eyes while she is trying to sleep. 33. I will not lick the heater with my raspy tongue at 2:00 am in a passive-aggressive attempt to get my Mommy out of bed so she can feed me. This only gets me squirted. 34. I will not lurk at the side of the bed during the night or I will be stepped on by the human getting up to go to the bathroom. 35. I will not make lots of noise at 4 a.m. to awaken the humans. I will not get food, but instead will get a kick, or squirted, or something thrown at me. 36. I will not make scratching, poop-covering-type sounds all over the house at 3:00 a.m. making my human lie awake listening to see if I'm about to poop/pee all over one of his prized possessions. 37. I will not pace on my Mommy's boobs at 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings just because I am so excited that the birds are finally waking up, completely neglecting to acknowledge the fact that my Mommy would really like to sleep in to at least 8 a.m. 38. I will not pick the hours between 1 and 4 a.m. to do 'thundering paws with auto-reverses' throughout a small apartment with hardwood floors. Furthermore, I and my buddy will not use the daybed with our human in it for the spot to do the 'turn and burn' on that end of the run. She does not appreciate 30 pounds of cat every few minutes. 39. I will not play Attack Cat in the middle of the night when Mommy moves in her sleep. 40. I will not play mole in the middle of the night and burrow under the covers to touch my cold nose to Mommy's warm tummy. 41. I will not play with the nice springy doorstop so that it goes "SPROING" at 3 a.m. when I am bored. 42. I will not prowl around the apartment yowling at the top of my voice just because the human has gone to bed and left me alone. I certainly do not need to sound as if I'm dying an agonizing death. (Part Siamese. Which part? Just the voice!) 43. I will not put my paw in my human's mouth while she is asleep. No matter how inviting her tonsils look. (My oldest does this to everyone that sleeps with their mouth open.) 44. I will not shut the bedroom door in the middle of the night so that Daddy walks straight into it because he doesn't want to wake Mummy by switching on the light. (The loud bang his face makes hitting the door wakes Mummy every time!) 45. I will not sit in the middle of the living room after everyone's asleep and then meow at the top of my lungs as if something were wrong just so they'll all get out of bed and run into the room in a panic, just because I'm lonely. 46. I will not sleep on Dad's face, lick his nose, and nibble on his ear while he tries to sleep at night. 47. I will not sniff Mom's face at 4 a.m. to see is she is still breathing. 48. I will not steal the corks from wine bottles and hide them, only to bat them down the wooden stairs at 3:00 a.m. 49. I will not unlatch the window screen so I can go outside in the middle of the night. 50. I will not use my human's head as a ladder so that I can look out the window at 3 a.m. to watch the cat brawl taking place on the car roof outside. 51. I will not wedge myself between the wall and antique mantel clock over the fireplace, causing the antique clock to crash to the floor at 3 a.m. 52. I won't attack Mommy's foot through the blanket at 3 a.m. Even if she *is* moving it. 53. I won't climb to the top of the refrigerator and knock everything off, especially not at 3 a.m. 54. I won't jump on Daddy's face at 3 a.m. when he is very sick and scare the s**t out of him. 55. I won't pick a fight with another cat on the roof at 3 a.m. (I noticed most things in your list happen at 3 a.m. This is perfectly true. Cats *always* do their nefarious deeds between 2:30 and 4:00 a.m.) 56. I won't step on Daddy's tummy at 3 a.m., then hide behind the TV while he turns every light in the house on looking for me. 57. It is not necessary for me to drag my mouse-on-a-fishing-pole all over the house at 3 a.m., scaring the whole house. 58. It is permissible to purr and nuzzle my human at an hour other than two in the morning. 59. Just because the alarm clock goes off at 5:30 a.m. does not mean that the humans are getting up at 5:30 a.m. It is not necessary to scratch at the door each and every time the snooze alarm sounds. That's why it's called "snooze". 60. Mom gets upset when I get onto the highest point in the bedroom when she is trying to sleep. Just because Mom's hips are the highest point does not mean that I have to climb them. 61. Mommy's orthopedic pillow is not a custom built cat bed for my fat rear. She does not like me sneaking onto it in the middle of the night; and rolling over to come nose to touch with my rear; or having me decide I need more room and kick her in the back of the head with claws. (He still tries to sneak onto the "sacred pillow" any chance he gets.) 62. My human does not react well to being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of me sucking on my adopted brother's ears. 63. Singing to the cat on the other side of the front door is a no-no at 2 a.m. 64. Seeing a pigeon on the balcony railing doesn't mean I should attempt to use my human as a springboard to reach the bedroom window sill, particularly if I miss the jump, hang precariously from the sill gouging chunks from the wall in an attempt to claw my way up, and finally fall on the human's face. Especially at 6 a.m. Particularly when she didn't get to sleep until 4 a.m. 65. We will not play Herd of Thundering Wildebeests Stampeding Across the Plains of the Serengeti over Mom & Dad's bed while they're trying to sleep. 66. We will not play Westlemania outside our humans' closed bedroom door at 4 a.m. It is not necessary to body slam the other cat against the door. 67. We will not run up and down the stairs like a stampede of elephants just to wake up Mommy. 68. When Daddy and I are alone at night, I will not get up into the attic (where I am strictly forbidden to be) at 3 a.m. and drag a Barbie doll by the hair down two flights of stairs, banging on every step, so that Daddy thinks there is a burglar in the house. (He was on the point of calling 911 when he noticed Maxie sitting at the foot of the steps with his new toy in his mouth.) 69. When I wake my human up at 5:00 a.m. to be let out, I will really go out, instead of waking him up again at 5:15, 5:30, 5:45, etc. 70. When Mom shuts me out of the bedroom at night, I will not reach my paw under the door at 4 a.m. and twang the door-stopper until she comes out and pays attention to me. This goes double when she has another human in there with her. 71. When Mom rolls over in her sleep, it is not an invitation to attack her feet. 72. When rushing dementedly round the apartment, I will remember that I need more than twelve inches to pull up on the hardwood floor, in order to avoid crashing into the metal drawer at the bottom of the stove. In particular, I will remember this at 3 a.m. 73. When sharing a bed, I do not need the three-quarters nearest the wall. 74. When the pipes burst at 5 a.m. and get my paws wet and float my food dish away, I will not run and leap on Mom crying at full voice, then run like hell when the giant truck mounted Vacuum Monster's big brother comes. 75. Yowling and pounding on the bedroom door will *not* get us fed at 6 a.m., but may result in something much more unpleasant instead. n) ---Not All There--- 1. Fast as I am, I cannot run through closed doors. 2. Flea collars are meant to be worn, not left as calling cards. 3. I acknowledge that the ceiling fan is definitely out of reach. I will no longer try to jump up and catch it. 4. I am 20 lbs and that is too big to stuff myself into the Kleenex box in order to take a nap. 5. I cannot and never will be able to catch snowflakes through a closed window. 6. I cannot leap through closed windows to catch birds outside. If I forget this and bonk my head on the window and fall behind the couch in my attempt, I will not get up and do the same thing again. 7. I cannot spring at a bird through a fence. 8. I do not need to sit in the shower, especially when it is wet. 9. I do understand that at least one of my humans has to leave the house to go to work. I will not mope through the place yelling and swearing at the one that dared to leave; and I will not make Mommy call Daddy and have him talk to me...aka "Here. Talk to YOUR problem child." just so I'll shut up so she doesn't snap my neck. (The 14 year old knows what phones are about; 'Daddy' had surgery and I'd call him every evening and have him talk to this mourning cat. After three days, I sat down to make the call, and he jumped up in my lap and started purring as soon as I picked up the receiver. He knows he can't see or smell the person, but he can hear them; and when he closes his eyes and starts purring; he's quit worrying and mourning.) 10. I have a wonderful cat door and therefore do NOT need to sit by the door meowing until someone opens it for me. If I refuse to use the cat door normally I shall not enter by it when the family is out, setting off the burglar alarm and sending the expensive security guards around. 11. I have heard the alarm clock go off at the same time every weekday for the past two years. I do not need to get frightened by it and sink my claws into Mommy's inner thigh to "help" her wake up. 12. I now realize that just because the Baby Cat is wet (from being caught in the rain) it doesn't necessarily mean that it's bath-time and bolt back out the door with a crazed look on my cat-face. 13. I should not run for my life every time the toilet is flushed; my human does not appreciate having chunks of flesh torn out of his person. 14. I will learn my name and answer to it, and it isn't NO. (At age 7, I'm still not sure Inky knows her name.) 15. I will look BEFORE I jump into the tub to see if there is any water in it. 16. I will never be able to walk on the ceiling. Staring up the wall and meowing at it will not bring it any closer. 17. I will never be able to walk on the chair rail. Though it could get me slightly closer to the ceiling, it's just too skinny. 18. I will not assume the patio door is open when I race outside to chase leaves. 19. I will not back up off the front porch and fall into the bushes just as my human is explaining to his girlfriend how graceful I am. 20. I will not bite Mommy's new sweater just because it is the same color as me. 21. I will not bite my Mommy on the legs to tell her I love her. 22. I will not break the lock on Mommy's sewing kit so that I can attack, kill and eat two yards of nylon carpet thread and then have Mommy and Daddy spend $536.02 to have it retrieved from my intestines, and then return home only to try and break the lock on the new and much more sturdier sewing kit so I can wreak vengeance on the thread that caused me such a tummyache. 23. I will not climb a tree to the point where the ladder cannot reach me, live off my fat for a week (all the while meowing piteously) and finally force my humans to call the fire department (who is never very happy about it). 24. I will not climb around on balconies. (Malkuth's purrsonal addition. He did this and fell off. Now he's brain damaged.) 25. I will not climb on top of the garbage can with the hinged lid, as I will fall in and trap myself. 26. I will not climb out of a third-storey window and shimmy my way up to the roof, only to yowl my head off and refuse to come down once I get there. 27. I will not climb the curtains and get my claws stuck so my human has to wrench me free, causing me to scratch his/her face in order to escape the terrible curtain monster. 28. I will not climb up on the roof while I have my leash on, thereby setting myself up to get hung when Daddy tries to get me off. 29. I will not complain that my butt is wet and that I am thirsty after sitting in my water bowl. 30. I will not consider myself "invisible" just because I am partly hidden around a corner, under the sheets, under the newspaper, etc. and act surprised when my human catches me midway through a good pounce. 31. I will not crawl into my Mommy's (unoccupied) jeans and get my head and paws stuck when coming out the cuff end. If I do, I will not try to defy the laws of gravity by digging my claws into the jeans when Mommy is trying to extract me. (Besides being fat, Kramer's not too smart.) I will not do this a third time since the second time I tried it, Mommy had to cut me out of her brand new Levi's with a very sharp scissors. And I am very sorry that I screamed at her and hyperventilated when she was only trying to free me. 32. I will not crawl into the engine of Daddy's car. The engine doesn't know that I'm there and that's why my paw stayed and I didn't. 33. I will not eat all my food in less than 5 seconds even though Mommy told me not to and then barf it up all over my bed and sit there and wonder why she hasn't come to clean it up. 34. I will not eat the Peace Lily plant, and then complain loudly and piteously when I puke all over the floor. 35. I will not flick my tail underneath either one of my Mommies' feet and then become loudly offended when they accidently step on it. It's not their fault I am secretly masochistic. 36. I will not force my way into the unfinished second floor, then get stuck in the wall and make my humans cut a hole in the wall to get me out. 37. I will not get behind the drawers under the water bed and hide for three days. 38. I will not get stuck in rolled up newspapers. 39. I will not go berserk trying to catch the stock ticker crawl on CNN Headline News. 40. I will not go to warp speed and tear about the house after leaving something obnoxious and uncovered in the litter box. 41. I will not go tunnelling down the heat ducts when Mommy has the grates off to fish out all my lost cat toys. 42. I will not hide in the litter box for a week; and if I do I will not hide under the waterbed and hiss at Dad for a month after he washes me because I smell revolting. 43. I will not hide under the hot, burning stove when a stranger is in the house, singeing my fur in the process; nor will I gouge bleeding holes in my Mommy's flesh when she puts me under the faucet to cool me off. 44. I will not jump down the cold air return to explore while Mom's retiling the kitchen floor. I cleaned out all the duct work for her...but I also fell in the furnace! Normally a white cat, I was dark grey when Mom rescued me. She made me clean myself up...and it took a *long* time. 45. I will not jump up on Mommy's synthesizer when it is set on "cymbal crashes"; it will give both of us a coronary. (I've never SEEN a cat jump so high for so long; she couldn't figure out that getting off the keys would make those hideous noises stop.) 46. I will not leap 7 feet through the air to hang from the bird cage and meow in fear. 47. I will not lick Mommy's plaster arm cast. 48. I will not lie down and purr in the path of advancing cars. 49. I will not lie on the stove while Mommy is cooking, put my foot on the burner, burn all the fur off of the bottom and smell up the house with stinky burnt hair smell. (It took almost a month for Kairo's fur to grow back.) 50. I will not meow to be let out when there is a foot-plus of snow on the ground. Neither will I make a break for the door to play in the snow. (The snow on this occasion was so deep that Miles could barely walk in it). 51. I will not put my paw under a moving sewing machine needle. (Thank god my "Mommy" wasn't using pink thread, she wouldn't have been able to find the thread to pull it out of my paw.) 52. I will not remove Mommy's stuffed bear from her dresser and kill it EVERY SINGLE DAY. 53. I will not repeatedly climb up to the unfinished second floor, managing to always fall through the crack in the ceiling. 54. I will not run and hide just because the new guy moves. 55. I will not run for my life when my toy "jingle ball" jingles at me. 56. I will not scoop the water from my bowl (and wonder why my paw is wet!). 57. I will not scratch the cover of the litterbox for five minutes in a stupid attempt to cover up my poop. (She smells it and thinks hmmm...it's still not covered and just keeps scratching!!!) 58. I will not set my fur on fire by brushing my body past a lit candle on the kitchen counter (lends a whole new meaning to the phrase "put the cat out"). 59. I will not show off to Mommy's company by parading across the coffee table and waving my beautiful tail in the candle flame. (This was an exciting event. Her tail was very full with fluffy hair about 5 inches long.) 60. I will not sit and stare at the front door for hours on end, in the vain hope that my burning gaze will melt the lock and the door will fly open on MY command. 61. I will not sit happily on my human's lap and purr, and then suddenly hiss at and bite the human. 62. I will not sit on the dining table as if it were an alter, staring up at the ceiling fan until it is turned on and then scream loudly a sound that sounds very similar to "BEER!!!" and make Mommy go into fits of giggles in front of company and have to explain to them that I'm praying to the God of Beer who lives in the ceiling fan. 63. I will not sit on the dinner table and get so stoned from the smell of pepper that I start rolling around and wiggling on my back. 64. I will not sit outside and get covered with snow, then come inside and demand to be dried off by towel or hair dryer. Furthermore, I will not do this several times a day. 65. I will not sniff lit candles and then look at Mommy like it's her fault when I singe my whiskers off. 66. I will not spend hours paintstakingly stalking (the other cat, my Daddy, a lizard, a toy, etc.) only lose interest and become distracted by something much more intriguing like licking my butt. 67. I will not squeeze myself behind the water heater and get stuck, forcing my humans to lift me out with a rope, nearly hanging me in the process. 68. I will not stick my head into a plastic grocery bag full of crushed aluminum cans, get it caught around my neck then proceed to tear through the house at 100 MPH while cans fly everywhere. 69. I will not stick my paw into any container to see if there is something in it. If I do, I will not hiss and scratch when Mommy has to shave me to get the rubber cement out of my fur. 70. I will not suck on the end of my tail until it is wet and pointy and then stick it into Mommy's face for inspection. 71. I will not try to climb into the *tiny* space between the storm window and window, meow when I get stuck, then try to rip off Mummy's arm when she tries to help me. 72. I will not try to drink out of the bathtub when Mommy is in it and expect her to help me out when I fall in. She will not help me in the gentle way I would like if I am clinging to her chest and complaining that I didn't expect it to be that wet. 73. I will not try to jump into the hot oven when my Mommy puts food in there to cook. 74. I will not tunnel through the sleeper sofa, wedge myself under the hide-a-bed, and then meow piteously and expect Mommy to pull the whole thing out. I will also not scratch Mommy if my tail gets stuck in the springs in the process. 75. I will remember that if I sharpen my claws and get stuck on the screen door, I will be dragged outside when Mommy/Daddy comes back in the house. 76. I won't run in front of Mommy's car as she pulls into the driveway. 77. If I am being sent to my room for punishment and crying doesn't do any good, head-butting the door repeatedly not solve the problem. It will only give me a headache. 78. If I bite the cactus, it will bite back. 79. If I climb a tree I can use my claws to stay attached. This does not work with metal lamp posts. 80. If I climb my human's bike, it will fall and scare the sh*t out of me. 81. If I climbed up that tree, I can climb down. 82. If I growl at the door when someone knocks, I will not hide under the bed once the door is opened. I should investigate. 83. If I have to get up in the middle of the night for a drink, I will not get lost in the hallway...and if I do, I will not cry plaintively at the top of my voice for someone to help me find my way. 84. If I hide in the closet, I may get locked in. Same goes for cupboards, the refrigerator, the dishwasher... 85. If I must sleep on warm, freshly-dried laundry, I will at least wait until it is out of the dryer. 86. If Mommy bails out of a piece of lawn and that funny gurgle happens; I should not stand there and wonder what she's crazy over; over one of the pop-up sprinkler heads. When it pops up, I shouldn't act shocked, betrayed, and blame her for it. She did try to call me. 87. Jumping on the roof of our new apartment building eliminates all chances of ever being allowed on the balcony again. 88. Just because my Mommy is wearing shoes does not mean she has transformed into an evil monster to run from with all due haste. 89. Just because it's high doesn't mean it's safe. I will not jump onto wall shelving units that hold priceless Buddhist bell collections because the shelves will invariably come down and damage everything but me. 90. Lit candles can burn me if I get too curious. 91. Mommy is always in control of the vacuum cleaner. She will not allow it to devour me. 92. My Mom's threaded needle is not food, and the $350 it took to get it out of me does not make humans happy. 93. My clumsiness is no-one's fault but my own. 94. My human does not admit untrustworthy people into his apartment. No one he has brought in is an axe murderer. I *can* be sociable, and will live to tell the tale. 95. No matter how hard I try, I will not fit into the kleenex box/cassette box. Really. [My husband didn't believe Loki would try until I threw down the box.] 96. Open windows are not meant to be jumped out of. 97. Running down a ladder head first is a silly thing to do. (Again, my eldest cat has done this for years too, and often misses a rung and ends up hanging onto one rung with her front paws with the rest of her swinging in the breeze.) 98. Running water cannot be captured by batting it with my paw. 99. The bed isn't so high off the ground that I need a running start from the living room to get on it; nor do I need to brake by applying my claws to his legs. 100. The hot steam iron isn't a good toy -- I will stay away from it when Mommy is ironing. 101. The human with the frizzy clown wig on is the same one I live with, not a horrible new monster to run from. 102. The reading lamp is not evil. We don't have to periodically kill it. 103. The shortest point between me and my Mommy is not along the window sill, behind the curtains, at the back of the computer, under the cables, over the modem, around the wine glass and across the keyboard. 104. The top of a lit and roaring Franklin stove is not a good place to sit. 105. The top of an open door or window is not wide enough for a cat to lie on comfortably. Descent may also be difficult and/or rapid. 106. Twenty pound kitties should not climb to the top of small trees and cause them to bend in half. 107. Water is for drinking, not for dancing in. 108. When Daddy is cleaning the gutters, I will not nap on the ladder steps. 109. When I am chasing my tail and catch my back leg instead, I will not bite down on my foot. This hurts, and my scream scares Mommy. 110. When it rains, it will be raining on all sides of the house. It is not necessary to check every door. o) ---Other Critters--- 1. A covered up bird cage is not a bed. 2. All prey captured will be eaten outdoors. The human isn't thrilled by feathers all over the dining room. 3. Birds LIKE to KEEP their tailfeathers. 4. Birds do not come from the bird feeder. I will not knock it down and try to open it up to get the birds out. 5. Contrary to popular belief, the squirrels in the back yard are faster than me and can climb the fence faster than me. Therefore there is no point in trying to catch them. 6. Dead animals floating in the pool and not meant to be batted at so that they bob up and down, the young human does not enjoy picking them up because he thinks they are alive and nearly having a heart attack. 7. Fish that jump out of the tank are not toys. 8. Garden lizards and toads make a cat very sick if bitten. 9. Humans do not need fresh, wiggling gecko tails deposited on or in the bed at 3 a.m. 10. I do not HAVE to chase that chipmunk just because it's too stupid to run away from me. (I must admit, chipmunks are REALLY dumb rodents.) 11. I do not need to sniff Mama and Daddy's pet snake, it will bite my nose. I definitely do not need to do this 4 or 5 times in a row, it makes Mama think I'm not quite all there. (The snake's only 2 feet long, so it can't bite that hard yet.) 12. I do not need to torment the neighbor's little square-faced dog daily. I do not need to bite its neck and ride its back to chase it out of the yard, even if it *does* venture into my territory. 13. I have lived with my sister since birth. There is no need for alarm when I encounter her in the hallway. 14. I love my brother and my sister, so its OK if they want to snuggle with Mama. Occasionally. As long as I don't see it. And when they do snuggle with Mama, I will not attack them, knock them off her lap, and expect her not to scold me. 15. I must not lick the other cat's behind in front of Mommy and her friends. 16. I must not stick my claws in the rat cage; the rat will bite and will not let go and it is not the human's fault that he can't make it let go. 17. I must remember that dead mice, rats, birds, etc. are not appropriate gifts for humans. 18. I promise my Mommy and my siblings that I will not attack a skunk again and expect them to welcome me into the house. My Mom doesn't even want me to cuddle her. 19. I recognize that you brought that other cat home as a friend for me and not as a target of guerrilla attacks. 20. I should keep in mind that the pet piranha can defend himself. 21. I will allow my new younger brother to use the food bowl, water bowl, and litter box. 22. I will not attack another cat while his/her head is sticking out of the litter box. 23. I will not attack whatever dog comes innocently sniffing around the bushes at the front of the house. 24. I will not attempt to climb into the gerbil cage. 25. I will not beat the dog up anymore because he's stupid, (being stupid is punishment enough). 26. I will not bite my brother's balls. 27. I will not bite my sister's butt until she hisses. 28. I will not bite my sister's tail while she is sleeping on my Mama's stomach and then expect my Mama to let me sleep there. 29. I will not blame my mistakes on the other kitty (especially not in her presence). 30. I will not bring home live prey, and then release it inside the house, so I can show the humans my hunting technique. 31. I will not bring in a live baby bunny on Easter morning to allow the kids to witness "the miracle of Easter". 32. I will not bring live, buzzing cicadas into the house and then let them go when they are too soggy to be fun. 33. I will not bring live snakes into the house. 34. I will not catch a mouse in the back yard, use it to play mouse hockey with my sister, eat half of it and then throw it up in the yard while Daddy is trying to patch the lawn. 35. I will not catch and eat lizards. They always make me sick and I always wait until I'm in the house to throw up on the carpet or furniture. 36. I will not catch mice to give to the dog to eat. 37. I will not chase the dog, I will not eat the dog's food, and I most certainly must not walk up to the dog and for no reason smack him. 38. I will not drop a live vole at my human's foot so that it runs up her leg. 39. I will not entice the dogs to chase me so they will get in trouble. 40. I will not gang up with two other cats and lurk at the bathroom door to attack the fourth cat who is leaving the litter box. 41. I will not get bored when killing bugs. I will kill them 100% or let Mummy step in and finish the job. 42. I will not growl and hiss at the German Shepherd next door causing him to pee. 43. I will not harass the gerbils/hamsters/guinea pigs. 44. I will not have urine wars with the new cat in the house on the kitchen counter. 45. I will not hide behind the planter while my identical twin goes next door to rile up the dumb poodle and get him to come over here where we can BOTH attack him. (My Mom's huge Persians, Clem and Clyde, used to trade off the hiding and baiting jobs. The poor poodle never did figure out that there were TWO cats.) 46. I will not hide under the BBQ grill when it is covered and growl at my adopted sister. If I'm as tough as I think I am, I will growl at her without hiding. (although I really should try to be nice more than 5% of the time) 47. I will not hurl my tiny, 6 lb. body at the parakeet cage on top of the bookcase in the bedroom, causing the cage and all 3 occupants to plummet 6 feet to the floor, mortally wounding one of the occupants. Even though it really made my other siblings (including the dog) happy to see the 2 surviving birds flying free throughout the room until Mom rescued them. (Mom's note: Once a new cage was purchased, it was also bolted into the wall to avoid a repeat of the above. This safety device has not been put to the test yet, as far as I know.) 48. I will not jump on the dog. 49. I will not knock the cat bed off the bookshelf while another cat is in it. 50. I will not lie in wait for the dog on the deck, making her scared to come up the stairs. 51. I will not lie on top of my siblings so that they cannot breathe - even if they are on Mommy's lap. There is room for all of us kittens. 52. I will not make Mommy nervous by making her think that I am sitting on my newborn kittens. 53. I will not prove my skills a great hunter by bringing in living specimens, or dead ones for that matter. If I DO bring said living specimens in, I will try not to laugh when Mommy puts on her robe in the morning only to discover a lizard inside the robe climbing up her back. 54. I will not pounce on and try to mate with my "cousin", Grandma's female cat; this serves no useful purpose, as we are both neutered, and I am the one who gets scolded and locked in the guest room. 55. I will not pounce on the mosquito hawk bugs and then wonder why they don't get up and play some more. 56. I will not push fish bowls off the top of the refrigerator while my human is at work just to watch the fish wiggle. 57. I will not put a live vole in my food bowl and expect it to stay there until I get hungry. 58. I will not round up my neighbour's sheep. (Hard to believe, but earlier this year I found N.D.F., one of our big black and white males, had rounded up one neighbour's flock of fifty sheep into a corner of their paddock. He didn't seem to know what to do with them next, so I left him to it...) 59. I will not sit next to the bird cages licking my chops while the birds thrash about in panic. 60. I will not sit on the balcony rail in plain sight of the dog next door when the dog's owner is sick with a headache and make the poor dog have a coronary barking at me. For hours at a time. 61. I will not sit on the rat's aquarium and stare at him while he cowers in fear. 62. I will not slap the other cat between the back legs three days after his penis has been amputated, nor will I pull at the stitches. (This was done due to chronic bladder stones that were painful to pass. --ed) 63. I will not sneak into where the guest kitty is staying and eat all her food. I have to stay on my special diet for my kidneys. Also, guest kitty has claws and I don't, and my Mommy doesn't like vet trips (which is what happens when I won't let Mommy care for me and my scratches get infected). 64. I will not stalk my neighbor's cocker spaniel and scare it half to death. 65. I will not stalk the deer in the apple orchard next door. They have sharp hooves and could hurt me if they weren't laughing so hard. 66. I will not stuff my rather large self into the rather small bird feeder (with my tail hanging out one side) and expect the birds to just fly in. (My eldest cat has done this for *years*...) 67. I will not teach the parrot to meow in a loud and raucous manner. 68. I will not terrorize my older and less active feline roommate. His tail is not a toy. 69. I will not try to eat the hamster, while ignoring other rodents that are deemed undesirable. 70. I will not try to teach the human child to hunt at 8:08 a.m. by bringing a live chipmunk into the house for her to catch. I will especially not do this when she has to catch her school bus at 8:10 a.m., causing the child to miss the bus trying to learn her lessons from me and relocate the chipmunk back outside. 71. I will not torment dogs by staring at them when they are being walked on a leash. 72. I will not torture the dog across the street by stretching out on the apron of the driveway and staring at her. 73. I will not try to encourage the 7-foot boa constrictor to break out of his cage. He would not be a good playmate. 74. I will not try to pick fights with cats looking in the house through a door or window. (Lizzy was inside looking through the screen door, growling at a cat outside. She must have said something really bad because the outdoors cat tried to crash through the door. He managed to buckle the bottom of the door, creating a gaping hole. If that wasn't bad enough, by the time we got there [along with our 6 dinner guests], Liz was trying to squeeze out the hole so she could go kick the interloper's butt.) 75. I will not try to taste the gerbils when Mom is holding one. 76. I will not watch Mommy scold my brother for attacking our sister, and then do the exact same thing myself. 77. I will receive no sympathy from the human if Ysidro the rat bites me when I stick my paw in his cage. 78. I *will* subdue my natural instincts when my human is petsitting his neighbor's parrot. 79. I will try to be more tolerant of my canine brother. I will not swat and hiss at him until he pees on the floor. 80. I will wait until my human's bird-loving girlfriend leaves before bringing in a half-dead, still chirping, baby bird. 81. If I am chasing a mouse indoors and it runs behind some furniture I can sit and wait for it instead of meowing for someone to move it. 82. If I catch a mouse, it is not essential to kill and half consume it on the most expensive rug in the house. If I am removed from the most expensive rug and put outside I shall not rush in through the cat door with the mouse and make a beeline for that rug. 83. If I do catch a chipmunk, I will NOT proceed to eat it on the driveway when Mommy is trying to have a garage sale. (Needless to say, we lost a few customers because of that one.) 84. If I choose to jump the baby gate at the foot of the stairs, I will *not* complain loudly when my canine brother pounces me in his deranged attempts to play. I will acknowledge that I *could* have stayed upstairs and will appropriately suffer in silence. 85. If I find a mouse in the apartment, I will kill it. I will not use it as a puck in an eight-hour game of hockey with my sister while my human is trying to sleep. 86. If I give my human a "present" (mouse, bird), I don't have to freak out and rip the house apart looking for it after she has flushed it down the toilet. 87. If I must bring a bird into the house, I will ensure it is dead and not just playing possum. (It took 2 hours to get and then clean up after the scared bird being chased by husband and two cats). 88. If I push the side of the kiddie pool in to drink at the water where Mommy is keeping her koi inside for the winter; a) I will get a lot of water on the carpet. b) the one koi is big enough to nip my tongue, and get the whole thing in its mouth. I should not make such hideous noises and leave a water trail when b) happens. Mommy will NOT feel sorry for me. 89. In the middle of a dinner party, I will not leap on to the table in order to snatch the palmetto bug (great big cockroach) that is flying near the chandelier. Furthermore, when I catch the palmetto bug, I will not walk all over the dinning room table with my prize in my mouth to display to all the humans. While they may be impressed with my hunting prowess, they do not like to see dying cockroaches while they are dining. 90. It's OK for the other cat to use the litter box. 91. Licking the other cat on the head is cute. Licking the other cat on the butt is not. 92. Lizards *need* their tails, and I do not have to capture them to bring home and drop into Mommy's shoes when she's not looking. (This was a former roommate's cat, who, in addition to lizard tails, would stalk and kill avocados for Mommy as well, bringing them home with only 1 small bite taken out of them.) 93. Meowing at Mommy to bring the halogen torch over so I can look for maimed millers to kill is not cute. Especially at the top of my lungs. And sitting there and howling while one fries because it hit the element (which is a smell that won't leave) isn't necessary. Mommy isn't responsible for the miller committing suicide instead of becoming my playtoy. 94. Mom will never let me eat her pet rat, and I am at peace with that. 95. My human is not impressed when I bring home dead squirrels. 96. No matter how much I want him to be, my human is not impressed when I bring home squirrels that were hit by a car a day or so earlier and leave them in plain view on the walkway. 97. Now that I'm neutered, I will no longer chase and mount the spayed female cats. 98. Regardless of how many times I try, the smaller cat can fight back and will kick my face when I try to rip her throat out. 99. Regardless of what I think, my human does not want to learn how to hunt. I must refrain from bringing home live chipmunks, mice, moles, birds, etc. 1. Rottweilers are not to be f**ked with. 2. Rottweilers can be f**ked with only if your aim is accurate enough to land a claw on the tongue. (Again, my Calico did this and our Rot no longer f**ks with cats. We thought she was going to have to have stitches.) 3. Snakes do not taste good. 4. Sometimes, the yellow-and-black flying bugs [bee!] bite *back*! (Fortunately, no damage other than severe Loss Of Dignity). 5. The (110 lb Husky cross) dog is not a pillow. 6. The black animal with white stripes is not a plaything. 7. The cockatiel *likes* to be left in his cage. 8. The dog's nose has a right to exist. I will not attack it when the dog is asleep, as neither the dog nor the human (who does not enjoy having a heart attack) enjoy this and I will be locked outside. 9. The cockatiel cage is not an indoor tree. 10. The German Shepherd is not to be ridden on or attacked at random. (Again, my eldest did this for years, until the dog died...) 11. The goldfish likes living in water and should be allowed to remain in its bowl. 12. The neighbor's yard is *not* my territory. Therefore I will *not* launch myself from the fence onto thier dog, grab said dog around the neck and claw his scalp to a bloody pulp. This will *not* get me praise from *anyone*. It will only get me busted down to cheap cat food as Mommy tries to offset the cost of having the dog's head stitched up. 13. The other cat does not like it when I play with her tail. 14. The other cat has a right to use the litter box. 15. The other cat is not a horse for me to ride around the dining room (Emmitt the kitten hides on the dining room chairs and leaps on Siesta's back as she runs past, then rides her around the house while she howls for help.) 16. The other cats are not chew toys. 17. Walking around the house with cockatiel feathers in my mouth is not funny. 18. We are cats, thus we can hunt. We will not stand at the back door begging for Deli Cat when there are 40 crows doing the can-can across the yard. 19. We promise we will kill the rodents that are already IN the house, not bring in extras so that we can pretend to be doing our job. 20. We will not: stalk, bite the tail of or look at in an evil way, the wolf hybrid--it makes him extremely neurotic. (not much of wolf dog, but his the only one we got!) 21. We will not torment the dog by jumping off the fridge and landing on him. 22. When Mom leaves the lid to the aquarium where Casper the gerbil lives slightly askew (when we're feeding him or cleaning the tank), this is not my invitation to catch and eat him. If I try to knock the lid off all the way, I will only get the s**t scared out of me, and I will get caught. 23. When Mommy is holding the hamster, no matter how tasty it looks and how much I dislike it I will not try to eat it. (Maggie actually picked it up in her mouth and shook it.) 24. While I am in the ICU for the second time due to things I ate that I wasn't supposed to, I will not pull my IV's out in order to squeeze through the bars of my cage and into the cage of my neighbor, the Yorkshire terrier, in order to spit, hiss, and scare him so badly that he has to be in an oxygen tank for a whole day. 25. While on the roof, I will not jump out on the telephone wires more than five feet to catch a bird that is perched there; if I do this, I will fall. (My boyfriend's cat did this; he caught the bird too--and ate it! Didn't seem to be hurt, but he sure scared his humans.) p) ---Plants--- 1. Eating the aloe vera plants will not make my fur shiny. 2. I am a carnivore. Potted plants are not meat. Neither are silk plants. Hanging potted plants are not meat either, so I will stop devising ways of getting to them. 3. I do not need to scent-mark the prickles of the expensive ball-cactus enough to knock the ball off. 4. I do not need to shake the ficus tree, causing leaves to fall down, and then drag the leaves all over the house. Mommy doesn't appreciate finding leaves in the shower, her bed, or my litter box. 5. I will allow Mommy to enjoy her roses for at least one day before I chomp them. (Alexander isn't happy until every flower is just a stem and the petals are all laying on the table around the vase. He eats a few of the petals and slaps the rest to the floor.) 6. I will not chew on the silk plants; these do not aid my digestion. 7. I will not climb up the side of the window to get to the hanging plant only to slip and dangle from the curtains. 8. I will not eat all of Mommy's plants and then barf them up all over the white living room carpet while Mommy is not home. 9. I will not eat spider plants and hallucinate behind the toilet. 10. I will not eat the Christmas tree, vomit the needles all over the rug and make my Mama spend $50 to "detox" me. 11. I will not hurl plants off the window sill onto my Mom's head in the early hours of the morning. 12. I will not try to attack the potted plant on the book shelf by climbing up Daddy's back while he is watering the plant. 13. If Mummy and Daddy continue to find the pot-plants lying on their sides when they come home in the evening, I will be banned from the living room. 14. Lily pads will not support my weight. Jumping from the pond edge onto the dinner plate sized green thing; will just shred the leaf, make me swim for it, and get Mommy mad at me for shredding the lily and having to dry me off. 15. Mummy is perfectly capable of pruning the pot-plants herself. I will not assist by biting off all the dead leaves, even if they do make wonderful toys. 16. My human is a good gardener, and the plants do not need extra fertilizer. 17. The ficus tree that is indoors is meant for decoration, not for me to play "Tarzan of the Jungle" on. 18. Umbrella palms are not substitute grass. If I chew on them, I will be in trouble. I will not barf up the leaves on the floor and expect Mommy to be pleased. I will not run over and start chewing on the plants as Mommy is coming for the tub full to take to the meeting to give away. She will be upset with me. 19. When the human picks me up, it is not to help me reach the hanging plants. q) ---Scratching/Noise--- 1. Although yowling in the shower produces a lovely echo, Mommy doesn't appreciate my operatic abilities. Especially at 3 a.m. 2. A closed door is not an attack on my personal freedom. I will not scratch or meow loudly if a door is closed. This is especially important when I have been banished from the bedroom for bad behaviour. 3. Crying out "Where are you?" sounds stupid when you're nearly a fully grown cat, you know your humans are inside, and it's only a little three bedroom bungalow anyway. 4. I do not have to crawl into the tiled bathtub enclosure and yodel "poor poor pitiful me" at the top of my lungs just to hear the echo. At any time I can sneak into the bathtub. 5. I'm supposed to claw the scratching post, NOT the couch. 6. I can fit through the cat door so I don't need to cry and scratch at the door until someone lets me in. 7. I do not have a quiet meow; I should therefore not make a ruckus when my human is on the phone. (Note: Random *had* to make his presence known by meowing loudly while I was recording my voicemail greeting ... I decided to leave it.) 8. I do not have to howl at the top of my lungs when: I want to go out, don't feel good, or just to announce that I have to make a big poop. (He really does that! And, if he's howling just as he's about to be sick it comes out more like a distorted yodel!) 9. I do not need to hiss at every visitor to make them feel at home. 10. I will not attach myself to Mommy's calf (esp. after she has just put on stockings to go to work) or Daddy's hand, and bite and scratch just because I got the impulse to do so. 11. I will not bite Mommy whenever she tries to sing with her Alanis Morrissette record. 12. I will not cling to the outside of the screen door at eye level, howling, if I want to come in. 13. I will not get into a catfight outside at 4:30 a.m. so that my human wakes up and has to rescue me and/or chase me all over the apartment complex. 14. I will not lie under the coffee table and hiss at all of Mommy's guests. 15. I will not meow at the top of my lungs when I want to go outside. I will not meow louder, right in Mom's face, when she tells me to be quiet. I will learn that when Mom locks me in the mudroom so she can't hear me, it is punishment, not a step towards being let out. 16. I will not meow pitifully when my humans are having sex. 17. I will not meow plaintively from another room and then pretend it wasn't me when Mommy comes to find out what's wrong. 18. I will not perform impromptu plastic surgery with my claws upon my Mommy's face. 19. I will not play the "jump and snag the door jamb 5 ft from the floor, hang, and drop" game. 20. I will not run about the house yowling at the top of my lungs after being fed. 21. I will not rush out from behind the couch all of a sudden and bury my claws in Daddy's leg. 22. I will not scratch the children of lawyers, no matter how much they chase me or how hard they pull my tail. 23. I will not scratch up the windows when trying to get in the house. 24. I will not shred the carpet and the front door in a temper because I am not allowed out at 3 a.m. 25. I will not use Mommy's brand NEW overstuffed sectional as a giant scratching post. 26. I will not use the nicely carved kitchen table leg or the kitchen drawers as my scratching post. 27. I will not wedge myself between Mommy and her boyfriend when they are in bed and then dig my claws into her boyfriend's abdomen and pretend to be just stretching. It's OK for Mommy to share her bed with someone besides me. 28. I will not yowl during Dad's bagpipe records. That is not an attacking cat. 29. I will stop hissing at Mommy's sister-in-law, even if it does make Mommy laugh. 30. If a door is closed, I do not need to try to open it by scratching at it, yowling, and digging at the carpet. 31. If I have to hiss at just 1 person in the entire world, it will not be the judge at the cat show. 32. If I scream and someone comes running, something had better be wrong. 33. If I use Mommy's arm as a scratching post, I will have to endure the unpleasant ordeal of having my nails trimmed. 34. It is not really necessary for me to howl at the top of my lungs every time I hear someone in the hall outside the apartment door. 35. My human and her friends can sing without my assistance (a Siamese wailing is quite something.) 36. The human has provided me with a scratching pad, a scratching post, and a scratch box. I should therefore not tear up the comic boxes and wallpaper. 37. My pet I.D. tags are not musical instruments, and I will not spend all night jingling and shaking them to get attention. 38. My singing does not provide cultural enrichment. 39. Scratching posts were meant to be used, not laughed at. 40. The closet is a bad place to go to sharpen my claws. 41. When my Mommy has me closed in the bedroom and she's nearby there is a reason for it and I will not to cry like I'm being tortured. 42. When my human is getting my food from the pantry, I can stop meowing. I do *not* need to redouble my efforts. r) ---Sleeping/Personal Comfort--- 1. A loaf of unbaked bread is not my pillow (ours once slept on the dough made into bread and left to rise on the kitchen counter). 2. A silk dress is not to be pulled off its hanger and used as a nest. 3. Even if my human finally lets me sleep on her sheepskin coat, arguing about getting off is ungrateful. 4. Even though sleeping in the dirty laundry is more kosher than sleeping in the clean laundry, it's still not a good idea, because if Mommy goes to pick up the dirty laundry and I start to wiggle, she's going to freak and hurl me AND the laundry across the room. (We'd been having a problem with raccoons in the house.) 5. I will not brace my eighteen-pound butt against the headboard, put my front paws on Mommy's forehead, and roll her head off of the pillow to make more room for me! 6. I will not cat nap in the bottom of the Moluccan Cockatoo's or African Grey's cage, even if I have just gorged myself on millet and Mom left the door open. 7. I will not crawl into the open sofabed while Mom is asleep on it, so that she doesn't know I'm in it and shuts it up on me. Then, when she almost has a heart attack from hearing my piteous groan and releases me, I won't run and hide so she can't check to see if I'm hurt or not. 8. I will not claw a hole in the sofa/box spring to make a nest. 9. I will not climb six feet up in the fake Christmas tree, causing all the branches to bend down, just to get a better view of the living room. 10. I will not jump into the chair after my human gets up to do something. 11. I will not knock things off the coffee table so I can lie down more comfortably. 12. I will not lie down with my butt in the human's face. 13. I will not lie on clean laundry just after its been folded, no matter how warm and snuggly it might appear. 14. I will not lie on my human's face in the middle of the night. 15. I will not lie on my human's girlfriend's chest with my butt in her face. 16. I will not sleep INSIDE the back cushion of the sofa, even if it is fun to pull out the padding. 17. I will not sleep on my human's freshly washed and waxed car, especially since I drool in my sleep. 18. I will not sleep on my human's head. 19. I will not sleep under the blanket on the couch so that people sit on me. 20. I will not steal all the covers, as humans don't have fur and get cold easily. 21. If I am allowed to snuggle under the covers with my human, I will not launch an attack on the cat sleeping on the other side. 22. "If you like it, lie on it" is not a philosophy accepted by humans. 23. If it's cold and rainy out, it is not my human's fault there is no sunbeam to snooze in to bake my old bones. I will not howl and be impossible until they either turn on the heat so I can sleep on the vent; or put a heating pad on the rocker for my napping pleasure. (Done both for peace and quiet...) 24. Mom has the right to breathe. So I will refrain from completely covering her face with my 15 lb body while she is sleeping. Even if her breath *is* the warmest air in the room, I won't have it at all if I succeed in suffocating her. 25. Mommy's face is not a pillow. 26. Morning wake-up calls for breakfast will be more polite. 27. Night time is a good time to *sleep*. 28. The human has a right to the pillow too. 29. The litter box is not a good place for a nap. It makes me smelly. 30. The outdoor heating/AC unit is NOT a good place to sleep. 31. The phone is not a bed (my cat ruined one of our phones by pushing all the buttons at once while he was sleeping). 32. The newspaper, Mommy's important papers, the phone book, the synthesizer, etc. are not special items made especially for my comfort in sleeping. 33. The top of the monitor is the compromise place. I may gently put myself up there, with no launching. I will stay off the printer, computer, keyboard, mouse pad, LAN box, and the rest of it. The person in front of the computer has the right to move my tail to see what's on the screen, otherwise I can find somewhere else warm to sleep. s) ---Toys--- 1. All those neat catnip toys are not for me, unless they are seconds. The nice ones Mommy is going to try to sell so that she can go to college. 2. Beanie Babies are not cat toys! 3. Bundles of pipe cleaners are not Santa's gift bag. 4. Habanero chilies are not toys. Neither are the St. Bernard's nice round dog kibbles. Both are unpleasant for people to step on. 5. I do not have to beg for an ice cube every time someone opens the freezer door. 6. I have a whole house full of toys and a companion cat to boot. I do NOT need to take a dried poop out of the litter box and play floor hockey with it and get my friend to help me play. 7. I will not bat every toy I own under the couch and then meow until someone comes and gets them (at 3 a.m.) for me. 8. I will not destroy a toy the first time I play with it. 9. I will not drag the magnets (and the papers they are holding up) off of the refrigerator and then bat them underneath it so that they adhere to the underside. 10. I will not fish tomatillos out of the bowl, roll them off the counter and down the hallway, and leave them in the bedroom for Mom to step on when she gets up to feed me at 3 a.m. 11. I will not ignore my new toy only to suddenly find it interesting at 3 a.m. 12. I will not kill my human's scalp and skull after a lock of hair falls within biting/clawing distance. Human heads are not chew toys. 13. I will not knock my toys under the refrigerator. 14. I will not meow loudly until someone gets me a Q-tip to play with. 15. I will not put my lovely new rabbits foot in Mom's roller pan when it is filled with nice pink paint AND expect her to throw it for me so I can fetch it. 16. I will not raid the ashtray for used pipe cleaners. 17. I will not scalp my toy furry mice. 18. I will not take wrapped hard candy from the candy dish, prance around the house like it was once alive and I caught it, and then play with it in the empty bathtub in the middle of the night keeping Mommy awake and making her sleep through her alarm in the morning. 19. I will not toss my poop out of the litter box and play hockey with it. 20. I will not try to attack Mummy's flower wreaths. They are not toys. 21. I will not use Mommy's perfume bottles for bowling pins. I will not use tomatoes from the garden as bowling balls. I will not play marbles with the cherry tomatoes, swatting them under closed closet doors for my Mommy to find three weeks later. 22. I will not view Mummy's egg collection as the Promised Land and do everything in my power to get to them. 23. I will not wait until my people have visitors before I go and get a tampon from its box and bring it downstairs to kill it. 24. If Mummy or Daddy are kind enough to retrieve my ping-pong ball from under the sofa, I will not immediately knock it underneath again. 25. Mom's cross-stitch threads are not to be played with. 26. Mommy's black suede gloves are NOT giant tarantulas that need to be killed. 27. Mommy's nail file is not a toy, especially when she is using it. It also does not belong under the sofa or refrigerator. 28. Mommy's tampon box does not hide cat toys. Visitors are surprised when they try to catch my "white mouse toy" in the living room. 29. My human's car and house keys are not toys and are certainly not something he wishes to play search-and-find when he is late for work. 30. New, unwrapped tampons are *not* toys, even if the wrapping does crinkle. 31. Pipe cleaners are for pipe stems and are not kitty toys. 32. Potatoes are for human consumption, not cool toys to roll down the basement stairs in the middle of the night and then hide so Mom doesn't find them till they are very, *very* old. 33. Q-tips are not fun toys that my human puts into the trash can for me to drag out and shred. 34. The dice have a right to live. (When Fizgig was a kitten, she would sit on the coffee table and bat at the dice, just to watch them fall, and then would glare at me until I put them back on the table for her to attack again.) 35. The scrunchies in Mommy's hair need to stay in Mommy's hair. I should not try to remove them with my teeth so I can play with them. 36. There is nothing in Mommy's tote bag that needs to be hunted down and slaughtered. 37. Waste baskets do not have toys in them. t) ---Veterinarian or Illness-Related--- 1. A rabies shot is not the worst thing in the world, so I will not make a noise like an enraged cougar when I get one. 2. Defying gravity and staying inside an upside-down cat box is not impressive - it is merely showing off. (Quite a feat for a 5.5 kilo kitty, and he did it twice in 10 minutes!) 3. I do not need to caterwaul continuously at the top of my lungs every time I go to the vet. It is the "vet," not the "Met," and I am *not* auditioning. 4. I will learn to relax at the vet's office so they will start writing things in my records like "Good Kitty" and "Sweet Kitty" instead of the stuff that's there now like "MEAN!!", "BITER!!!", and "GET HELP!!!!!" 5. I will learn to relax going to and from the vet's office in the car so I don't drool all over the back seat. 6. I will not catch things bigger than I am and leave a long trail of blood behind me as I drag it home because Mommy then thinks that whatever it was caught me. This is especially bad when I am so full I can't move fast enough to escape from being stuffed in a cat cage and carted to the vet before anyone realizes I am not the one who is bleeding! 7. I will not pee on my human when she tries to give me my ear mite medicine. (I had to wrap her in an old sheet to absorb the pee and wash it every time I gave her the medicine.) 8. I will not shriek and yowl like I am being beheaded when Mommy tries to put me in my travelling box. I know that going to the vet will make me feel better and I really do love staying at the kitty-cat motel when Mommy's out of town. 9. I will not spit my antibiotic pill out a half-hour after it is administered. I need it to get better. 10. I will not hiss and spit at the vet, even though I don't like what she does to me, because it embarrasses my Mom greatly. 11. I will not shake pink amoxicillin drops all over the vet or my humans or their furnishings after they think they have put it into my mouth. 12. I will not use that tone of voice and those words at the vet. Mommy is fearless about my swearing; and will make me cooperate even if it takes a towel and laying on me. If I use the 'reserved list'; I will get yelled at and sprayed by Mommy with the squirt bottle. The vet is not a mortal enemy, this is for my own good; and Mommy has probably had most of this done to her, and she's still in one piece....so she won't believe my propaganda anyway. (If this cat bites me, he really gets it and he knows it. He has the 'bad word list'; and the serious-no-hold-barred-furious-swear-list; last time he stuck to the first one, and the vet lets me do the holding down-his official notation is "owner will assist with treatment" and "no claws") 13. The vet is my *friend*, and only does what she does for my own good, so I will *not* require the use of 3 veterinary assistants to hold me down in order to keep me from ripping out her throat. 14. When Mommy is trying to give me the medication I need, I will not jam my tongue to my upper palate, thereby denying access to my throat. 15. When the vet takes my temperature, I will not make him have to turn me upside down to do it and I won't hit the ceiling either. Many thanks to the following contributors: Raven Adams, Marcie Alburn, Brandy Alexandre, John Ard, Mary Arnold, Santiago Arteaga, Marie AuBouchon, Christopher Bates, Sonja Becker, Shannon Bell, Paula & Thomas Bellman, Adam Beneschan, Lynda Benson, Joye Billow, Becky Birchmeier, Leslie Blitman, Chris Bolton, Lynda Bray, Diana Bredfeldt, Richard Bridgman, Frank Brown, Marla Brownfield, Ross Brunetti, Terecia Burgess, Cris Cantin, Tamzin Cater, Katrina Chapman, Sonja Chichak, Jill Christiansen, Amy Clark, Susan Clark, Jocelyn Clarke, Dale Clapperton, Catherine Coburn, Heather Coolie, Leslie Conder, Linda Condry, Stephanie Corbitt, Janis Cortese, Ellen Cotter, Chris Coulson, Carol Crespil, Patricia Cryan, R.E. Cubby, Suzanne Currie, Rana Cushing, Jamie Cushner, Sherry Davis, Caroline Day, Raven Delaval, Liz Dell'Orfano, Carol Denehy, Ruth Desjardins, Leslie Devlin, Meghan Donovan, Shannon Driscoll, Krista Dugas, Cheryl Dunkin, Bob Eager, Patti Easley, Michelle Edwards, Judy Ehlen, Jill Eppler, Paul Fahn, Debra Faison, Lisa Falzetta, Jessica Farrell, Marty Faville, Kelly Farmer, Sandra Feldman, Jamie Ferguson, Nicki Ferguson, Leslie Fisher, Elizabeth Flynn, Andrea Foster, Anthony Fowler, Jennifer Frankhauser, Laura Frazer, J. Frazier, Carl Fongheiser, Sonja Fowler, Mary Fox, Maggie Fox, Russ Frey, Matt Fuller, Judy Gans, Diane Garske, Carolyn Gauntt, Jenny Gayle, Jeffrey Gelman, Phyllis Gerstenfeld, Geof Gibson, Jill Gillham, Sarah Glass, Dianne Good, Ed Gordon, Pria Graves, Linda Greco, Charlotte Griffin, Krissie Griffiths, Troy Guidry, Anthea Fraser Gupta, Leah Guren, Bonni Hall, David Hall, Tomas Hallin, Peter Hartikka, Francis Harvey, Julie Hay, Nancy Hayes, Daniel Hedrick, Kim Heikkinen, Amy Hendrix, Leaha Henson, Rochelle Hess, Steve Hawley, Judy Henry, Tina Hicks, Carl Hill, Petra Hinds, Nancy Howells, Roger Hurrle, Beth Hunter, Elizabeth Irish, Kathleen Jenkins, Carol Jones, Heather Kalisiak, Julie Kangas, Judy Kawamoto, Pat Keene, Heather Kelly, J.M. Kelley, Joanne Kenny, Brigette Kirk, Bo Kjellson, Margaret Kleinman, Toby Koch, Richard Koob, Karen Kotchek, Kay Klier, Ellen Knutson, Gary Koerzendorfer, Diane Krouse, Lisa LeFever, Roxanne Lederman, Andy Lehrer, Lenore Levine, Scarlett Lewis, Wendy Lindboe, Andria Lishka, Dave Litchman, Kathryn Litherland, Lara Little, Michael Lopushansky, Christine Lowe, Jamie Lubin, Keri Luiz, Anita Lukka, Andy Lundell, Caroline Lutes, Sandra MacDonald, Carol Maffettone, Stephen Mamber, Kris Markum, Jon Martin, Kristi Maryes, Heidi Mathews, Patsy Mays, Susan McCaffrey, Valerie McCallister, Holly McCord, Linda McGilvray, Rachel McGrath, Carolynn McLaughlin, Susan McLaughlin, Richard Medeiros, Shirley Meeks, Randi Merrifield, David Merriman, Sherri Mickel, Edward Miller, Laurie Miller, Nancy Milligan, Amy Minick, Amy Miran, Elise Mitchell, Beth Moeller, Matt Mol, Robin Colleen Moore, Jennifer Moorhead, Peter Morris, Shana Morrow, Linda Muckey, Theresa Muir, Kathy Murphy, Tina & Joe Muncie, Mindy Mymudes, Jack Nadelman, Dan Nagy, Janusz Nastalski, Rhonda Neff, Wendy Nibeck, Erica Nielsen, Lynne Nishihara, Debbie Nunn, Mimi O'Brien, Shena O'Brien, Lynda Oleksuk, Vicky Oliver, Linda Oravecz, Paul Osmond, Tracy Painter, Naomi Paiss, Christopher Palma, Marylin Palmer, Didi Pancake, Jennifer Patterson, Shelagh Paulsson, Daniel Payne, Collene Pearce, Leslie Pearson, Louise Penberthy, Julie Pennartz, Colleen Penrowley, Chock Perry, Erika Phipps, Mark Pickerill, Devera Pine, Tiffany Pleadger, Sally Plecor, Lisamarie Pocza, Michael Porter, Alexa Pontzer, Bonnie Potter, Doug Powell, Anne Prestamo, Meghan Price, June Pulliam, Alice Ramirez, Tim Ramsey, Lucinda Rasmussen, Susan Read, Debra Rebel, Monique Reed, Ann Reesman, Patti Revelle, Harold Reynolds, Elisabeth Riba, Anne Robotti, Andrew Rogers, Alison Rosenstengel, RosaKiana Rossi, Kathie Rupert-Wayne, Hildy Sanders, Martin Sant, Michelle Sawyer, Meg Schell, Karen Schlosberg, April Schmaus, Eric Schrepel, Joachim Schuster, Debbie Schwartz, Bronwyn Scrutton, Anne Seales, Manuel Sepulveda, Julie Shapery, Krystal Shaver, Lisa Sheard, Terron Shoemaker, Kama Sue Siegel, Sharon Siewert, Dan Sikorski, Kirsten Sjostedt, Joanne Slaven, Charles Slaustas, Pamela Smith, Eric Snyder, Steve Snyder, Beverly Sobelman, Ogden Sparks, Beth Sparks-Jacques, Kris Stark, Donna Starner, Paul Ste. Marie, Amy Stewart, Christopher Stewart, Arlene Stillwell, John Stomieroski, Eric Storch, Missy Sturtevant, Saima Sultan, Bev Sutton, Cindy Swafford, Ben Swartz, Becky Swayze, Kevin Sweet, B. Taylor, Casey Taylor, Lori Taylor, Elizabeth Thiers, Debbie Thomas, Matt Thompson, Anne Threston, Matthew Tierney, Beth Toll, Tracy Tomes, E.M. Tubbs, Melissa Updyke, Karen Urel, Pamela Vanderwiel, Connie Varnhagen, Stephanie Wagner, Lucy Walsh, Michael Warning, Dave & Audrey Webb, Rosemary Webb, Brian Wieting, Amy Westwood, Alison Weatherston, Tabitha Wharton, Greg Williams, Tracy Wilkinson, K. Wilson, Ingrid Witvoet, Octavia Wong, Allen Wright, Jenny Wohlford, Rene Zandbergen, Christine Zwane. Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. (Victor Borge) BAD HUMAN! This is the reverse of the "Bad Kitty!" List. That is, what would your cat(s) make you write on the chalkboard after committing a "crime"? Send your suggestions to Harold Reynolds. Note: "Master" is supposed to be a gender-neutral, politically correct term. First posting: October 8, 1993. Last Update: September 8, 1997. a) ---Comfort of the Master(s)--- 1. I will allow my master to lounge on my closet shelf on top of the cashmere sweater my mother gave me. 2. I will be sure that my masters are comfortable in bed, only then will I arrange myself around the available space. 3. I will chase away any noisy workmen from my side of the building so they don't scare my master under the bed. If unsuccessful, I will return frequently to the bedroom, lie on the floor beside the bed and reassure my master until the noise has stopped. 4. I will gladly roll onto my other side when my master paws me on the cheek at 3:30 a.m. so she can "snuggle." 5. I will keep the window open at all times, summer or winter, for my master to sit in. 6. I will let my master sleep on my notes as I'm trying to study. (I'm sure I can read through the fur if I try hard enough!) 7. I will never shut a closet door without checking to be sure my master is not lurking within, *especially* if I am leaving the apartment. All guests will be similarly instructed. 8. I will not chase my (white-furred) master off of the black sweater drying in the laundry room. 9. I will not go on vacation and leave my cat in a kennel. 10. I will not let the sheets of my bed touch my master's head when it is time to go to bed. 11. I will remember that my master and her friend use the car from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. I will attempt to ensure that the car is in the car port during this period for their sitting pleasure. 12. I won't shove my master out of the middle of the bed. 13. When my master is sleeping on some portion of my anatomy, I will not disturb my master by getting up to attend to such mundane matters as answering the telephone or going to the bathroom. b) ---Disobedience Giving Possibly Severe Repercussions--- 1. I should never deprive my master of his litter box for five hours or more by packing it in advance when moving, then putting my master in a cat carrier and taking him in the car to his new home hours away--and expect him not to pee in the cat carrier, thoroughly soaking the gushy, pee-absorbing car seats. (Boy did I learn my lesson. It took 6 months to get the smell out of the car.) 2. I will *not* pet my master while she's taking her bath. 3. I will be ready to play whenever my master is. 4. I will not fart when my master is under the bed covers. 5. I will not fuss when my master is patrolling the table, kitchen counter, or dresser for prey. 6. I will not go away for more than 24 hours without having someone stop by to adore and feed my master. 7. I will not ignore my master's signs to tell me when to start/stop petting, cuddling, playing, etc., no matter how subtle they are. 8. I will not leap on the seesaw just as the cat crosses it. 9. I will not let my master in/out "when I feel like it". 10. I will not lock my master out of the cupboards with an elastic band around the knobs. I also will not coat said band with Tabasco sauce to keep my master from chewing it so she can break in. 11. I will not place my *insignificant* belongings on the royal resting places (aka coffee tables, nightstands, and dressers), nor scold my master when s/he pushes them off. 12. I will not push my master from the kitchen counters or table. 13. I will not pull my master out of the trash bin when she is busy inspecting its contents. 14. I will not put my master in a cat carrier--ever, for any reason whatsoever. 15. I will open the bedroom door the *moment* my master mews -- regardless if I'm hard of hearing. 16. When I open the apartment door to take out the trash or do the laundry, I will allow my master out to patrol the hall and will accompany him on his rounds to sniff at each neighbor's door for as long as he wants. 17. When I return home, I will not wait to take off my coat or neatly deposit parcels before getting down on the floor to pet my master, who is *always* there to greet me at the door. 18. When my master gets onto my shoulders from the top of the refrigerator, I will take her to the otherwise inaccessible Forbidden Toy she is lusting after and not somewhere else. c) ---Food/Water--- 1. All human meals are to shared with my master at *his* discretion. All guests will be expected to comply. The smart ones know the correct protocol by which his excellency need only swivel his head to accept morsels offered by two or more adoring slaves. Any fools who object or find this unappetizing are not to be invited back. 2. All used dishes, and the aluminum foil in which meat has been cooked, are to be offered to my master to lick. 3. Attempting to hide catnip from my master is useless, so I shouldn't bother. 4. I *will* feed my master on demand. I will *feed* my master on demand. I will feed my master on *demand*. 5. I will feed my master all he can gorge. 6. I will immediately turn on any faucet my master wishes to drink from, even though he has water bowls placed in every area of the house. Elderly cats do need to keep their kidneys flushed, after all. 7. I will not assume my master doesn't like whatever is in the can I am opening. 8. I will not expect my master to forgo attempts to steal my sushi--this is simply asking too much of a cat. 9. I will not make my master wait 12 long hours between meals. 10. I will not move the food box when my master figures out how to get to it and knock it down from the shelf. 11. I will not pretend to be dead when my master is trying to waken me for breakfast. She isn't fooled and will never quit pestering! 12. I will not spike my master's food with medicine. 13. I will provide only the choicest morsels for the master's bowl, not poultry scraps. 14. I will not push my master away from my food. 15. I will refill the water bowl no matter how many times my master tips it over. 16. I will remember not to offer my master smoked salmon. This is *not* a delicacy just because my previous master liked it. 17. I will search to the end of the leash to see if my master is still outside before I leave for work and separate her from her precious food bowl all day. 18. I will share any can of tuna fish that is opened. 19. I will share the spicy bean dip with my master. 20. If I've decided to be sociable and sit in my human's lap and be petted, I should accept the fact that he might cough or burp or something, and not panic and shred his pants trying to escape the noise. 21. If I accidentally pour too much kibble into the measuring cup, I will give it all to my masters, rather than trying to put the excess back. 22. If I yowl for attention and try to jump into my human's lap, I have no right to panic and run when he reaches down to pick me up. 23. If my master is to be left alone with a visitor who is asked to feed him, said guest will be instructed that if s/he opens a fresh can of catfood, my master expects to be given the empty can to lick. 24. It is unforgivable to leave temptation in my master's path and expect him to resist. Pungent inedibles, such as steak fat or chicken bones, will be placed immediately inside the refrigerator, not left in an accessible container on the kitchen counter where he can smell them. 25. There must always be food in my master's dish. d) ---High-Tech--- 1. I realize that my master has the right to send e-mail messages to my master's friends too. 2. I will admire my master's tail if I am supplying a screen to back light it with. 3. I will not answer the phone when I come home if I haven't fed my master yet. 4. I will not assume my master is done reading the newspaper just because s/he is no longer looking at it or just because I am done with that page. 5. I will not complain when my master steps on the break key, or settles down on the computer keyboard. 6. I will not talk on the phone unless my master gets a chance to say "hi". 7. I will not talk on the phone when my master wants me stare at her and talk nicely to her. 8. I will not try to ignore my master when she comes over to join my phone conversation, because since no one else is in the room, I must be talking to her. (Who would *really* be talking to a piece of plastic anyway?) 9. If I put a fun moving screen saver on the computer, I will not shoo my master from the desk as he chases it. e) ---Loss of Dignity--- 1. I will make sure my master is not wrapped up in the covers BEFORE I snap the covers off the bed and send my master flying across the bedroom. If I do hurl my master accross the room, I will not, under ANY circumstances, laugh. 2. I will not apply the following undignified nicknames to my master: Bulge Boy, Mr. Chubb, Mr. Big, Blimpy, Hellraiser, Pest-Kitty, Food Vacuum, Oink, Menace to Society. 3. I will not brush my master when he jumps up on my lap just to be petted. 4. I will not chase my master with the awful noisy vacuum cleaner. 5. I will not climb/jump on the waterbed when my master is on it, then laugh when she gives me the How-Dare-You look. 6. I will NOT flush the drinking bowl when my master is having a drink! (Stormy practically hit the ceiling and looked SO offended as I laughed my head off.) 7. I will not give my master the bum's rush when she is trying to supervise me as I work at the kitchen counter. 8. I will not highlight my master's nose and ears in fashionable neon colors. 9. I will not inundate my master with stinky toothpaste/mouthwash breath after cleaning my teeth. 10. I will not laugh at my master if he gets confused when a meow sound comes from the computer. 11. I will not laugh (hysterically or otherwise) when my masters do any of the following: get stuck upside down in the corner behind the beanbag chair (hey, I fished him out); jump two feet vertically at the slightest noise; flip a cardboard box over on himself then walk it around the floor. 12. I will not laugh when my master chases her tail. 13. I will not make fun of my master's weight. 14. I will not move my master no matter where she decides to sleep. 15. I will not pull my master out from under the bed to show to guests, who are obviously dangerous and must be hidden from. 16. I will not scold my master when he leaps for the ceiling fan and bounces on me at 2 a.m. 17. I will not stick my finger in master's mouth when she yawns. 18. I will not surprise my master by kissing her while she is sleeping. 19. I will not turn on the water when my master is napping in the sink. 20. I will not weigh my master. 21. If I really, really *must* dislodge my sleeping master from my lap (permissible only under the most extreme conditions, e.g., because I am about to wet my pants or have lost all feeling in my legs), I will *never* DUMP him off, instead I will wake him gently, and offer him treats as an inducement to move on his own volition. 22. If my Master accidently steps on the treadmill while I am using it, I will *not* laugh at him when he shoots across the room. 23. If my master wishes to leap from the treadmill to the top of the bookcase and knocks my china dolls off, I will *never* scream at him. 24. My master is a creature of dignity. I will not feed him catnip in front of guests and/or videotape him afterwards. 25. No matter how cute I think it is, I will not put fabric antlers on my masters, take a picture of them and send it out as a Christmas card. f) ---Miscellaneous--- 1. Family members must stay home as often as possible. At no time should the house be left empty in the evening. 2. I can not be expected to flea powder the usual sleeping places (as per instructions on the can) as that would mean dusting the entire house. 3. I will *not* go to work and leave the kitties alone all day. 4. I will get up every morning at 6 a.m. (or earlier) and go to bed as early as possible. 5. I will leave the potting soil where it belongs -- on the floor. 6. I will leave the toilet seat up so my master can investigate. 7. I will not close the bathroom door thus separating myself, however momentarily, from my master. 8. I will not expose my master to my morning breath when she wakes me. 9. I will not invite any (scary) electricians or plumbers into the house. 10. I will not rush at my master when she is concentrating on balancing on the inch-wide balcony rail 25 feet in the air to see how the dog and I react. 11. I will sharpen my psychic skills, so that I can read my master's mind, no matter how feeble it may be. 12. I will take thousands of pictures of my masters, and show them to everyone I ever meet. 13. I will watch where I put my big feet. 14. No part of the house or piece of furniture is off limits to my master. Any destructible possessions are to be kept out of sight and out of mind; they do not belong in a cat-run home anyway. My master may not be held accountable, let alone (gasp!) scolded, for any oversight on my part in this regard. 15. There are no bad kitties, only bad humans. There are no bad kitties, only bad humans. There are no bad kitties... g) ---Other Critters--- 1. I will assist my master in chasing unwanted cats from the garden and house. But I will respect her right to invite her friends in. 2. I will graciously accept the wildlife offerings from my master. 3. I will let my master play with mice she has cleverly bought into the house to torture to death. 4. I will let the kitties play with the hamster. 5. I will not come home smelling of other cats or (even worse!) dogs. 6. I will not de-flea my sister's new master in my master's bathroom and expect my master to forgive me right away. 7. I will not fraternize with other cats. 8. I will not interfere with my master's perfectly normal attempts to assert his dominance by biting his brother. h) ---Politically Correct--- 1. My master does not barf hairballs, he is a floor/rug redecorator. 2. My master does not break things, she helps gravity do its job. 3. My master does not fear dogs, they are merely sprint practice tools. 4. My master does not gobble, she eats with alacrity. 5. My master does not scratch, he is a furniture/rug/skin ventilator. 6. My master does not yowl, he is singing off-key. 7. My master is not a "shedding machine", she is a hair relocation stylist. 8. My master is not a "treat-seeking missile", she enjoys the proximity of food. 9. My master is not a bed hog, he is a mattress appreciator. 10. My master is not a chatterbox, she is advising me on what to do next. 11. My master is not a dope addict, she is catnip appreciative. 12. My master is not a lap fungus, he is bed selective. 13. My master is not a pest, she is attention deprived. 14. My master is not a ruthless hunter, she is a wildlife control expert. 15. My master is not evil, she is badness enhanced. 16. My master is not fat, he is mass enhanced. 17. My master is not hydrophobic, she has an inability to appreciate moisture. 18. My master is not lazy, he is motivationally challenged. 19. My master is not underfoot, she is shepherding me to my next destination (the food dish!). i) ---Sanitation--- 1. I will change my masters' litter box at the first sign of stink, not when they have to get the point across by whizzing on the comforter. 2. I will keep the master's litter box as clean (or cleaner than) the human's bathroom. 3. I will not move my hand while my master is busy washing it. 4. The human will not say "Ewwww gross" when the master sneezes and then licks the snot off her fur. 5. The human will not stare at the master while she is doing her business, however, the master is permitted to stare at the human in various states of undress and/or physical activity. j) ---Toys/Playing--- 1. Although I have given my master many beautiful toys, I will understand that it is often more fun for him if I play, too, and I will not allow my own trivial activities to interfere. I will devote my full attention to his wishes, and not try to also do other things at the same time. Nor will I take offense when my master ignores the beautiful toys I have bought for him in favor of the plastic and cardboard wrapping they came in, pieces of string, or crumpled-up tea bag wrappers. 2. I will get an ice cube and throw it on the floor whenever my master requests one. 3. I will leave the lingerie drawer open so that my master may strew my undies around the apartment for his amusement. 4. I will let my master chase my highlighter as I'm trying to highlight texts. 5. I will let my master play with the fat rubber bands; once he has chewed through them, I will throw them away and replace them with new ones. 6. I will not buy lots of expensive, useless toys when the ring off a gallon of milk is perfectly fine entertainment. 7. I will not lure my master from his chair with a toy so I can sit in it. 8. I will not pretend to throw my master's toy and then hide it behind my back while my master runs off looking for it. 9. I will not seize my master's (current) favourite toy just because she is playing with it under the bed at 4 a.m. 10. I will not throw out the nightly bit of dental floss without first allowing my master to play with it for at least 5 minutes. 11. I will turn off the computer and play with my master when he attacks my behind through the chair. 12. I will retrieve all the foil balls and toys from under the sofa and refrigerator each and every day. 13. I will supply my master with toys and will not begrudge him if he decides to find some new ones on his own. 14. When my master attacks and kills the fur trim from the hood of my down coat, I will not complain; he is a natural born hunter. 15. When my master drags one of his favorite toys into the bedroom at 2 a.m. and cries for me to play with him, I will leap out of bed without delay and comply. When he sits high atop the microwave with his front legs dangling from the edge and repeatedly says "Er?", I will stop whatever I am doing at once and do what he wants: toss crumpled-up tea bag wrappers up to him to swat with his paw. Many thanks to the following contributors: Jennifer Accettola, Laura Allender, Merrie Bergmann, Becky Birchmeier, John Blaser, Caitlin Brome, Tamzin Cater, Susan Clark, Stephanie Corbitt, Patricia Cryan, Bob DeHaney, Ruth Desjardins, Anthea Fraser Gupta, Petra Hinds, Alex Johnson, Karen Kolling, Lisa Loeffler, William McDuff, David Merriman, Nancy Milligan, Christopher Palma, Devera Pine, Alison Reddick, Harold Reynolds, Lori Scarlett, Amy Scheeler, Karen Schlosberg, Paul Ste. Marie, Missy Sturtevant, Bruce Tobias, Connie Varnhagen, Stephanie Wagner, Jenny Wohlford.