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Being A Goddess Isn't Easy

Excerpt

Excerpts From A Cat's Guide To Human Beings

1. Introduction: Why Do We Need Humans?
So you've decided to get yourself a human being. In doing so, you've joined the millions of other cats who have acquired these strange and often frustrating creatures. There will be any number of times, during the course of your association with humans, when you will wonder why you have bothered to grace them with your presence.
What's so great about humans, anyway? Why not just hang around with other cats? Our greatest philosophers have struggled with this question for centuries, but the answer is actually rather simple:

THEY HAVE OPPOSABLE THUMBS.

Which makes them the perfect tools for such tasks as opening doors, getting the lids off of cat food cans, changing television stations and other activities that we, despite our other obvious advantages, find difficult to do ourselves. True, chimps, orangutans and lemurs also have opposable thumbs, but they are nowhere as easy to train.

2. How And When to Get Your Human's Attention
Humans often erroneously assume that there are other, more important activities than taking care of your immediate needs, such as conducting business, spending time with their families or even sleeping.

Though this is dreadfully inconvenient, you can make this work to your advantage by pestering your human at the moment it is the busiest. It is usually so flustered that it will do whatever you want it to do, just to get you out of its hair. Not coincidentally, human teenagers follow this same practice.

Here are some tried and true methods of getting your human to do what you want:

Sitting on paper: An oldie but a goodie. If a human has paper in front of it, chances are good it's something they assume is more important than you. They will often offer you a snack to lure you away. Establish your supremacy over this wood pulp product at every opportunity. This practice also works well with computer keyboards, remote controls, car keys and small children.

Waking your human at odd hours: A cat's golden time is between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning. If you paw at your human's sleeping face during this time, you have a better than even chance that it will get up and, in an incoherent haze, do exactly what you want. You may actually have to scratch deep sleepers to get their attention remember to vary the scratch site to keep the human from getting suspicious.

3. Punishing Your Human Being
Sometimes, despite your best training efforts, your human will stubbornly resist bending to your whim. In these extreme circumstances, you may have to punish your human. Obvious punishments, such as scratching furniture or eating household plants, are likely to backfire--the unsophisticated humans are likely to misinterpret the activities and then try to discipline YOU. Instead, we offer these subtle but nonetheless effective alternatives:
Use the cat box during an important formal dinner.

Stare impassively at your human while it is attempting a romantic interlude.

Stand over an important piece of electronic equipment and feign a hairball attack.

After your human has watched a particularly disturbing horror film, stand by the hall closet and then slowly back away, hissing and yowling.

While your human is sleeping, lie on its face.

4. Rewarding Your Human: Should Your Gift Still Be Alive?
The cat world is divided over the etiquette of presenting humans with the thoughtful gift of a recently disemboweled animal. Some believe that humans prefer these gifts already dead, while others maintain that humans enjoy a slowly expiring cricket or rodent just as much as we do, given their jumpy and playful movements in picking the creatures up after they've been presented.

After much consideration of the human psyche, we recommend that cold-blooded animals (large insects, frogs, lizards, garden snakes and the occasional earthworm) should be presented dead, while warm-blooded animals (birds, rodents, your neighbor's Pomeranian) are better still living. When you see the expression on your human's face, you'll know it's worth it.

5. How Long Should You Keep Your Human?
You are only obligated to your human for one of your lives. The other eight are up to you. We recommend mixing and matching, though in the end, most humans (at least the ones that are worth living with) are pretty much the same. But what do you expect? They're humans, after all. Opposable thumbs will only take you so far.

And just when I thought I had my human trained...

Well it seems I have made a judgement of error and gotten cocky with the way I THOUGHT I had my human trained. It appears I was in fact -- wrong. I know-- me, wrong, hard to believe. But! It's true. I was. This morning as my Mamma bounded out of bed she gave us her usual morning "Hello Lady Love's" and checked out our food water and litter box situation and bounced down the steps to the kitchen. After all was well in the potty, food, and water section I of course obliged and followed Mamma down stairs as it was of course 8:00AM and that as she SHOULD know... IS TREAT TIME. Well apparently I wasn't meowing loud enough thou I am almost 100% positive that was not the case as she simply said "Ms. Jade! Shh. Quiet down.", but 8AM came and went this morning with NO TREAT! So since she obviously has forgotten her training I have decided to put up protest (I do this often) and snub her when she decides she wants MY attention. HA! She'll get no attention from me until I get a treat!

~3 Hours Later~

Well it's three hours into my protest and it appears Mamma is completely unphased by my active pouting and out right snubbing. All she seems to care about is her..well I guess you could say boyfriend but not exactly since theyre not officially dating yet comming down this weekend to see her and babbling about how she hopes Randell gets to come. Ah PFT! To hell with Randell Mom. I already showed you I did not approve or like him when we visited him. In fact I snubbed him all week! Didn't you understand that. Hello! Earth to Mom. Forget him. It's all about ME. Well.... if he does come..the least the wretch can do is bring that nifty cat-nip flannel toy I decided was mine while I was there...and his nifty friend Diane which I decided I like--for now. UGH.
Maybe I should forgive Mamma now since well I like being fawned over and this snubbing and pouting isnt working on Mom anyway. Better yet..
I will let her think I forgave her and then tonight...
I WON'T SLEEP BESIDE HER AND TAKE UP MY HALF OF THE BED!
That'll teach her!
MWHAHA

~*Isis Jade*~

SAVE AKRON OHIO'S OUTDOOR CATS

http://www.aldf.org/article.asp?cid=249

I am begging you all to please, for the love of every cat in our beloved universe visit this site! Scroll down to the bottom and wrtie the city council! Forward to everyone you know! Contact ASPCA, Contact PETA something MUST be done!

You Can Fight City Hall
Published 10-27-03 (Akron, Ohio)
Not many people hate dogs. Not many people hate horses. Not many people hate chickens or goldfish. Yet for some inexplicable reason, certain people hate cats.

Just why is a mystery. But one thing’s clear: Cat haters have a new capital city — Akron, Ohio.

In 2002, the Akron city council declared war on cats by passing an ordinance that made any feline caught outdoors illegal — and subject to summary execution. At the time, councilman Michael Williams told his fellow council members he’d “sleep fine” if 20,000 cats died as a result. Sadly, it looks like Williams is getting his wish. More than 2,000 cats and kittens have been killed since the ordinance was passed, and dozens more are dying each week.

“What’s happening in Akron is both a tragedy and a travesty,” says ALDF Executive Director Joyce Tischler. “There are more compassionate — and effective — ways to control the feral and stray cat populations. But rather than explore these options, Akron’s leaders have gone on an indiscriminate killing spree.”

Fortunately, animal advocates in Akron are fighting back — and ALDF’s backing them up. (To find out what you can do, scroll down to the bottom of this page.)

With the support of an ALDF grant, attorney (and longtime ALDF member) J. Jeffrey Holland has filed suit on behalf of six Akron residents with cats. Holland and his clients say the city left them with no other choice.

“We did everything we could to seek compromise and common ground,” Holland says, pointing out that local activists presented the city with a variety of alternative plans that would use trap-neuter-return strategies to reduce the number of free-roaming cats. Though these models were based on successful programs in other Ohio towns, the council ignored them, passing instead an ordinance that essentially sentences outdoor cats to death.

“The council wasn’t interested in alternatives,” says Deanne Christman-Resch, co-chair of Citizens for Humane Animal Practices (CHAP), which was formed to fight the ordinance. “They basically wanted to round up cats because they consider them a nuisance. They claimed cats are a big health concern because of rabies, but that’s bogus. There hasn’t been a case of cat or dog rabies in this county for decades.”

It’s not just the city’s motives that have been called into question. So have its methods. The city hands out cat-traps to anyone who asks for them. As long as a trap is “active” — i.e., capturing cats on a regular basis — the individual is allowed to keep it.

“The city shouldn’t encourage any person to trap cats,” says Holland. “Abuse and neglect are inevitable.”

Not just inevitable — already all too common, according to Christman-Resch.

“We know that people are trapping cats to get back at neighbors because of personal feuds,” she says. “People who are in organized dog-fighting are trapping cats because they can use them to train their dogs. We’ve got animal dealers here who sell cats to research. A lot of these animals are never even making it to the pound.”

Even if a cat is actually picked up by the city, there’s not much hope he or she will survive long. Under the ordinance, cats are supposed to be held for three days before being killed, thus giving their guardians a chance (albeit an exceedingly short-lived one) to claim them. But CHAP has found case after case in which captured cats were put to death immediately because they were deemed “sick,” “flea-infested” or “feral.”

“Eighty percent are killed the same day they’re brought in,” Christman-Resch says. “More than 2,500 cats have been trapped since this started, and of those only three or four dozen went home with their guardians. And whenever anyone does actually manage to rescue a cat, they’re hit with all kinds of fees and fines.”

Of course, anyone who cares for an outdoor cat would be more than willing to pay a few fines in order to get their friend back. Sadly, however, by the time they find out their cat’s been captured, it’s probably too late.

That’s exactly what happened to Sue Richardson. She befriended a feral kitten last year, feeding the young cat after she was abandoned in Richardson’s neighborhood.

“I couldn’t bring her inside. I tried once, but my other cats had a fit and so did my neighbor downstairs,” says Richardson, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by Holland. “Still, I was trying to work with her to domesticate her. She got comfortable enough to sit with me in the yard in the evenings. Everyone in the neighborhood knew she was mine.”

Unfortunately, being outside made the cat — whom Richardson had named “Kitty” — fair game. Unbeknownst to Richardson, a neighbor set out cat traps, and eventually Kitty disappeared. When Richardson checked with the city, she found that a cat matching Kitty’s description had been brought to the pound and killed the same day.

“She wasn’t a danger. She wasn’t hurting anyone or damaging anything,” says Richardson. “The city had no right to do what it did. Granted, she wasn’t inside my apartment, but she was no less my cat.”

That’s how Rachel Neuwirth felt about Mikey, the indoor/outdoor cat she lost to the city’s traps. Mikey was neutered, vaccinated and wearing a collar when he was captured. Neuwirth found his collar tossed in the street near her house. Mikey she never saw again: A cat matching his description was killed due to an unexplained “injury” mentioned in the pound’s logbook.

“I’m really angry with the city,” says Neuwirth, who's also a plaintiff in the suit against the city. “There’s definitely a better solution than just picking up cats and killing them. It’s cruel. It’s not the cats’ fault people are too ignorant to spay and neuter their animals.”

So who’s fault is it? Certainly the city has done nothing to deal with the problem humanely — it doesn’t even have a spay/neuter program despite studies (presented to the city council by CHAP) that demonstrate that such efforts are cheaper and more cost-effective than killing.

“What does it say about a community’s government when both public sentiment and hard facts are ignored and numerous offers of expertise and assistance are rebuffed?” asks Becky Robinson, national director of Alley Cat Allies, which has been working with CHAP to fight the ordinance. “In the face of something so vile, everyone — not just the people of Akron — must stand up and demand that it stop.”

To do just that, click here and let the Akron city council know you don’t approve of its actions. You can also support ALDF and CHAP as they take the battle against the ordinance to the courts.

“You don’t need to be a lawyer to appreciate the time and resources it takes to fight city hall,” says Holland. “The city will use the full weight of its resources to win. We need everyone’s help today.”

Email the akron city council at: CityCouncil@ci.akron.oh.us

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