Hi Everybody,



I've been reading the posts in this group religiously since I discovered it and the Tonkinese several months ago. You all have such beautiful cats! I hope to have a couple of kittens join our family some time in the near future. This has been such a great way to learn more about the breed, thank you for sharing your experiences and knowledge!

I subscribe to the Good Clean Funnies List by e-mail and read the following funny today and thought y'all might appreciate it.



-Jennifer



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 assumes the paper

is more important than you. It 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 disembowelled

animal. Some believe that humans prefer these gifts already

dead, while others maintain that humans enjoy a slowly

expiring cricket or rodent just as much as we do, given

their jumpy and playful movements in picking the creatures

up after they've been presented.



After much consideration of the human psyche, we recommend

the following: cold-blooded animals (large insects, frogs,

lizards, garden snakes, and the occasional earthworm) should

be presented dead, while warm-blooded animals (birds,

rodents, your neighbour'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 obligated to your human for only 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 take you only so far.



Received from Pastor Tim.

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