My human will never let me eat her pet hamster,
and I
am at peace with that.
I will not puff my entire body to twice its
size for
no reason after my human has finished watching
a horror
movie.
I will not slurp fish food from the surface of
the
aquarium.
I must not help myself to Q-tips, and I must
certainly
not proceed to stuff them down the sink's
drain.
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.
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.)
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.
I will not fish out my human's partial plate
from the glass
so that the dog can "wear" it and
pretend to be my human.
(It is somewhat unnerving to wake up, roll over
in bed, and
see the dog grinning at you with your own
teeth.)
I will not use the bathtub to store live mice
for late-night
snacks.
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 my human
can admire my "kill."
I will not perch on my human's chest in the
middle of the
night and stare into her eyes until she wakes
up.
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.
Screaming at the can of food will not make it
open itself.
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.
I will not assume the patio door is open when I
race outside
to chase leaves.
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.
I will not complain that my bottom is wet and
that I am thirsty
after sitting in my water bowl.
I will not intrude on my human's candle-lit
bubble bath and
singe my bottom.
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.
If I bite the cactus, it will bite back.
It is not a good idea to try to lap up the
powdered creamer
before it dissolves in boiling coffee.
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 my
human.
When it rains, it will be raining on all sides
of the house.
It is not necessary to check every door.
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.
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.
I will not teach the parrot to meow in a loud
and raucous manner.
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.
Yes, there are still two very large dogs in the
backyard. There
have been for several years. I don't have to
act as if I've just
discovered the Demon Horror of the Universe
each time one of
them appears in my window.
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.
When the humans play darts, I will not leap
into the air and
attempt to catch them.
I will not swat my human's head repeatedly when
she's on the
family room floor trying to do sit ups.
When my human is typing at the computer, her
forearms are *not*
a hammock.
Computer and TV screens do not exist to
backlight my lovely
tail.
I am a walking static generator. My human
doesn't need my help
installing a new board in her computer.