by Bonnie Calhoun


The Cat's Laws

1. My human will never let me eat her pet hamster, and I am at peace with that.
2. I will not puff my entire body to twice its size for no reason after my human has finished watching a horror movie.
3. I will not slurp fish food from the surface of the aquarium.
4. I must not help myself to Q-tips, and I must certainly not proceed to stuff them down the sink's drain.
5. I will not eat large numbers of assorted bugs, then come home and puke them up so the humans can see that I'm getting plenty of roughage.
6. 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 my fur)
7. I will not stand on the bathroom counter, stare down the hall, and growl at NOTHING after my human has finished watching The X-Files.
8. I will not use the bathtub to store live mice for late-night snacks.
9. I will not perch on my human's chest in the middle of the night and stare into her eyes until she wakes up.
10. We will not play "Herd of Thundering Wildebeests Stampeding Across the Plains of the Serengeti" over any humans' bed while they're trying to sleep.
11. Screaming at the can of food will not make it open itself.
12. 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.
13. I will not assume the patio door is open when I race outside to chase leaves
14. I will not intrude on my human's candle-lit bubble bath and singe my bottom.
15. 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 my human has to shave me to get the rubber cement out of my fur.
16. If I bite the cactus, I know it will bite back.
17. When it rains, it will be raining on all sides of the house. It is not necessary to check every door.
18. 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.
19. The dog can see me coming when I stalk her. She can see me and will move out of the way when I pounce, letting me smash into floors and walls. That does not mean I should take it as a personal insult when my humans sit there and laugh.
20. I will not play "dead cat on the stairs" while people are trying to bring in groceries or laundry, or else one of these days, it will really come true.
21. When the humans play darts, I will not leap into the air and attempt to catch them.
22. I will not swat my human's head repeatedly when she's on the family room floor trying to do sit ups.
23. When my human is typing at the computer, her forearms are *not* a hammock.
24. Computer and TV screens do not exist to backlight my lovely tail.
25. I am a walking static generator. My human doesn't need my help installing a new board in her computer.