The World According to Harmony the Cat

In any dispute with the human(s) of the house, the opinions and desires of the cat take precedence.  The cat is the undisputed ruler of the premises, otherwise known as the territory.  There are no exceptions to this.

The house or apartment, and everything in it, belong to the cat.  The cat allows the human(s) to live there and use the furniture and other items because humans are useful.  They have opposable thumbs, capable of opening cans of food and performing other tasks for which cats are not designed.

The cat is permitted to hog the bed and any comfortable chair.  Again, there are no exceptions to this.  The cat is also allowed to hop onto tables and any other surfaces, as long as the cat is capable of jumping high enough.

The cat may stick her nose into anything that excites her curiosity, including purses, bags, and cardboard boxes.  Any cardboard box or paper packing material is for the use of the cat until she tires of it.

Humans make perfect pillows, and it is essential to use them.  The cat must pin the human down so they cannot move until the cat is good and ready to get up.  Alternatively, the cat may lie on top of the human’s head, although this isn’t as soft as other parts.

The cat is entitled to treats whenever she wants them.  If the human(s) is(are) unwilling to dispense unlimited amounts of goodies, the cat is allowed to use blackmail to obtain them.  This includes threatening to run out the door when the human opens it and refusing to move from a human’s favorite chair unless the human brings out the treat container and gives some to the cat.

As seen from all the above examples, the cat must train the human(s) to live in harmony with them.

Training Your Human 101, by Harmony the Cat

The Professor

Lesson 1:  Treats

Harmony:  Since the time of the Pharaohs, 4,000 years ago, humans and cats have shared their homes with each other in a mutually satisfying arrangement.

Me (Human):  Actually, cats became domesticated around 12,000 years ago in the Middle East, but not in Egypt.  Egypt came later.

Yes, but mentioning the Pharaohs is a good attention getter.

Okay.  It’s your lecture.  I just thought I’d point out ...

Not while I’m talking!

All right.  Whatever.  Sheeesshh!

So obsessive!  Now, where was I.  Oh yes.  Since the time of the Pharaohs (pause, looks at human)  cats and humans have shared their lives together.  This arrangement has been highly beneficial to the cat, providing him or her with potential servants ...

“Slaves” is more like it.

... ahem ... to cater to the cat’s every whim.  To achieve this end, a certain amount of training is required.  In this first lesson, I will teach you how to obtain treats from your human.  This is a necessary skill, if you don’t want to spend your whole life eating only food that has been scientifically tested and all that rubbish so that it’s good for you, makes your coat shine, etc., etc., etc.  Bo-ring!!

Expensive, too, especially if you turn your whiskered nose up at it, walk away and let it turn into little stinky rocks!

First, you must put Plan A into action.

I can’t wait to hear this.

Plan A is known as “The Buttering Up Phase.”  This should begin as soon as your stomach tells you it's time for some treats, preferably every time the human gives any sign of getting up from a chair or a couch.  Your tactics consist of nose nudges, head butts, and leg rubs.  If the human ignores these, a love bite or two gets the message across.  Pester the human until he or she starts to yell.  If the big ox still won’t move, go on to Plan B.  Scratch the furniture and/or chew on a piece of trash.  THAT is guaranteed to get the big jerk up and heading for the kitchen.  By the way, those same tactics work when it’s mealtime, and the human is late with it.

Hmmph!

Oh, and if you're an indoor cat, there is one more way to get treats.  Wait until you know the human will be heading out the front door, sometimes with a load of garbage and stuff for recycling, other times just with those jingling things that they stick into the door to make it open.  Get right under the human's feet, ready to spring out the door.  I guarantee you the human will immediately divert you by going into the kitchen and putting treats in your dish.

You always do this when I’m in a hurry to get out the door and go somewhere or when I have my hands full.

I don't care.  I'm a cat.  Caring about human stuff is against the Great Cat Code of Behavior.

Is there such a thing?

Oops!  I think I just let out a secret.  Class dismissed.  If anyone from the Cat Behavioral Squad comes along, you don’t know where I’m hiding!

Harmony’s Cat Café and Spa

The Entrepreneur

Someone leaked the news to my cat Harmony that a new Cat Café is opening in Boston.[1]  This put an idea into her little cat brain.  Instead of opening a café where humans can come to have coffee or tea and play with adoptable kitties, she would open a café and spa for cats.  It would be the ultimate feline luxury experience.

I told her not to even think of doing that.  I forgot that she never listens to me.

She didn’t waste any time.  I went out the other day to run some errands and came home to find that my living room had been turned into a cattery.  Every stray and outdoor cat in the neighborhood was there.  Somehow, my cupboard had been raided and all my bowls and small plates were now on the living room floor, filled with milk, water, dry cat food or catnip.  Two tabbies sitting by themselves in a corner were drinking cream from my Rosenthal porcelain teacups.

The kitties nearest the catnip-filled bowls were either running in circles or sprawled on the floor, stoned out of their pint-sized heads.

Harmony saw me standing at the door with my mouth open and came over to me.  She bumped her nose on my leg and rubbed herself against me.  She always does this when she’s trying to butter me up.

“What in this entire universe and beyond have you done?”  I asked, when I could finally speak.

“Isn’t it great?” said Harmony.  “They each paid me one treat to get in, and I have a two-drink minimum at two treats per drink.  Spa treatments cost extra.”

“How did you get my things down from the cupboard?”  I asked.

“I paid the Great Dane across the street to take them down.  He’s clumsy and his breath smells like five-day-old farts, but he’s tall and strong.”

“Get those little hairballs out of here!”

“I can’t do that.  I took payment from them and promised them a complete experience.  If they don’t get what they paid for they’re going to shred every piece of furniture in the apartment.”

I rolled my eyes.  “How long do they plan to stay?”  I asked.

“Uh, well,” said Harmony, “These are the ones who wanted spa treatment.  That’s where you come in.  You have to be the one to give the treatments.  We couldn’t get any other human to do it.”

“Oh no!”  I said.  “Count me out.  I’m not going to take a chance on getting my arms and face shredded!”

“They won’t scratch you,” said Harmony.  “They want the treatments.  They said so themselves, and I made them hold up their right paws and swear they wouldn’t attack my workers.”

I agreed to become a kitty manicurist/bath attendant/masseuse for the afternoon, until we could get all the clients to leave.  I was sorry I made this agreement.  Harmony had lied.  Even though they had all asked for their treatments, they reacted to being massaged, bathed and manicured the same way almost every cat reacts.  By the time the last cat left the apartment, my arms looked like they had been put into a bread slicer and there was blood all over the bathroom.

I put alcohol and bandages on my arms, then proceeded to clean up the mess in the living room.  Harmony gave me some nose nudges and leg rubs, but I ignored her.  I was pissed.

After I cleaned up the living room and washed the dishes, I found Harmony in the living room.  Cats can’t smile, but, if they could, she would have given me the biggest fake smile she could manage.

“If you ever do anything like that again,” I said.  “I’m having cat for breakfast!”

“Ah, you know you love me,” she said.  “I’m little and cute and funny.”

She walked away, slipped into the closet and lay down for a nap.

---

[1] https://www.purrcatcafe.com

Life With Harmony the Cat: The Ten Commandments for Humans

I am Dictator of the House,
and you may speak to me
when I deign to notice you.

My name is Harmony and I am a cat.  Now that we have established that, I’ll get to the point.

There is a two-legged, mostly hairless creature who lives in my house.  I call her Big Human.  It has come to my attention that Big Human has often written about me, including here.  It’s only fair to give me equal time.

Typical Human (Female)

Because I do not have fingers or opposable thumbs, I have persuaded Big Human to type this into the Big Flat Thing That Does Funny Stuff.  I did this by staring at her, meowing forcefully and threatening to bite her ankles.  It works every time.

Here are my Ten Commandments for Humans.

1.                   Thou shalt acknowledge The Cat as master and obey The Cat in all things.  If more than one cat shares the domicile, thou shalt obey the Top Cat first, then all the others.

2.                   Thou shalt acknowledge that The Cat is master of the house and owner of all things therein, including porcelain figurines, Christmas nativity statues, hairpins, rubber bands, pens, pencils, Q-tips, jewelry and anything else that is in or about the house, and that The Cat is free to do anything to these items, up to and including hiding them under the furniture and knocking them off the shelves.

3.                   Thou shalt never do anything to annoy thy master The Cat, including poking him in the buttocks or blowing on his ears when he is sleeping in order to make him twitch.

4.                   Thou shalt not ignore thy master’s head butts, nose nudges and leg rubs when it is time to feed her, lest thou suffer a good swatting.

Humans have been known to
throw these at cats when they
don't have a squirt bottle handy.

5.                   Honor thy master at all times, lest she overturn trash cans or do some other mischief to gain thy attention.

6.                   Thou shalt permit thy master to kill bugs, mice, birds and other small prey, thou must not become wrathful when thy master presents thee with dead or half-dead kill, and thou must acknowledge the fine hunting lesson that thy master has just given thee.

7.                   Thou shalt present thy master with choice food of a savory character, served at the right times, with no exceptions.

8.                   Thou shalt provide thy master with attractive scratching posts or pads, or allow thy master to sharpen his claws on the recliner, the sofa or the table legs.

9.                   Thou shalt spay or neuter thy master lest thou be forced to suffer thy master to take part in loud, yowling orgies by the back fence, along with the neighborhood alley cats.

10.               Thou shalt not force thy master to abandon any chair or bed, or any spot where he is taking comfort, lest thy master turn his back on thee and give thee a cold shoulder.

If all humans who live with cats obey the above commandments, you will make us very happy.  A happy cat means a happy household.

Any questions?

Ghostbuster Kitties

Cats can see ghosts.  Everyone knows this who has ever watched a cat stare at what appears to be a blank wall.  Yesterday morning, I went to an AMC Loews theater and saw the new Ghostbusters in IMAX 3-D.  It struck me that, in case of a ghost apocalypse, New York City would not need a team of humans armed with proton packs in order to annihilate the spectral assailants.  All you would need would be cats.  Lots of them.  New York City has cats.  Lots of them.

In spite of what everyone has heard, cats can be trained.  Aspiring cat trainers are recognizable by the scars on their arms, legs and faces and the little holes in their clothing.  It would be a simple process to take these scratched and bitten humans and train them to be cat whisperers.  Once this initial goal is achieved, the next step would be for the cat whisperers to gather all the stray cats in the city, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.  If music proves to be an effective feline attractor, I recommend The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Solomon Linda.  That song has an easy hypnotic effect.

Once a cat finds a ghost, it is imperative to get the cat to chase the offending spirit away.  Cats are notoriously averse to obeying humans.  It will have to be in the cat’s interest to attack a ghost.  I recommend using laser pointers.  The minute a cat spots an invisible entity and begins to stare at it, its cat whisperer can take the laser pointer and point the little red dot in the direction in which the cat is staring.  The cat will attack the red dot and, in the process, scare the invisible pants off the ghost, who will fly off into wherever startled spirits go.

I think I should present this plan to the office of the Mayor of New York City, once I have it perfected.  I wonder how a letter of commendation would look on my wall.

Superstition Shmuperstition

I live with danger every day.  At least, some people think I do.  I am a superstition flouter.

Take chain letters and chain emails.  I hate those things.  It's easy to get one started.  All you need are a basic ability to write in a fairly coherent manner, a vivid imagination and several gullible friends.  That thing will go viral in about two days.  It's like a global game of Telephone.  By the time the letter gets around, enough has probably been added to or subtracted from it to make it even scarier than the original.  Get around it will, too, because, even with the non-superstitious, there is something in one corner of one little brain cell that says, "You will be toast if you don't pass this on to at least 20 people within the next 30 minutes."  So, just to be on the safe side, they pass the letter on and on and it ends up in my inbox.

I take one look, and delete it.  To prevent any evil from descending on me, I say a prayer.  Then I spend the next couple of weeks wondering if I'm going to be hit by a bus or come down with Bubonic Plague.

This is all you need to get a chain
letter traveling around the world.

Black cats are beautiful, and I would love to adopt one someday, if my present cat, Harmony (a brown tabby) allows it.  There's no living on the edge here.  Well, I take that back.  Living with any cat is living on the edge.  They are clever little critters, as well as being fast, limber, athletic and able to squeeze into small spaces and hide, and they take great pleasure in outwitting their humans.

A clever, fast, limber, athletic
creature plotting to outwit her
human

​I don't make a habit of walking under ladders, but that has nothing to do with superstition.  I just don't want any of them to fall on me.  If I'm in a crowd, though, and the fastest way to walk past people is under a ladder, I will walk under it, after first assessing how sturdy it looks and reassuring myself that I am not going to be flattened by collapsing metal followed by whoever is climbing the ladder when it falls on me.

I never throw salt over my shoulder.  I even forget why people do that.  It seems silly, because (1) it’s a waste of perfectly good salt, and (2) someone will just have to clean it up off the floor.  If I were the mother of the house, the roommate or the hostess, the salt thrower would have the choice of cleaning it up or getting more salt shoved up his nose.  At least, that’s what I’d be thinking while getting out the broom and dustpan.

I find it hard to believe that everybody in the whole world who was born under the sign of Pisces is going to have the same kind of day that I will have.  So why the daily horoscopes?

I could go on with this, but I think I have aroused some angry spirits with this post, and it’s better to quit while I’m still ahead.

Along the Kitty Trail

I love my cat, Harmony.  She's funny and cute and she loves me.  She's also very smart and very mischievous.  I think she secretly laughs at me a lot.  Anyway, she loves to play tricks on me.

Lately, she has been amusing herself by pulling gloves off the top of my dresser and putting them in the bathtub.

Yesterday, she outdid herself.  I came home to find a neatly set out trail of gloves (and one scrunchie), stretching from the dresser, which is in the back of my living room, to a cardboard box that was sitting in the vestibule.  If you don't believe me, here is the evidence.  I promise you, I did not touch any of the items on the floor until AFTER I took the pictures.  This is all Harmony's doing.