The Cat Manual by Taylor Michael Ray

Author:Taylor, Michael Ray [Taylor, Michael Ray]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Humor
ISBN: 9780985007706
Published: 2012-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

The Clock

Humans may be our servants, but they are slaves to time. Due to a purely arbitrary association of time with numbers — a human invention — they are forced to go to work, go to school, catch a flight, drag us to the vet, apply flea medicine, or any of a thousand other unpleasant tasks, most of them best avoided, all according to the demands of their insidious device, the clock. For the cat, the only time that matters is feeding time. Thus, the cat’s job regarding the clock is twofold: help the human to ignore those times of little consequence, and help the human to meet, or, better yet, anticipate, feeding time.

In the first instance, it is useful to remind the human that gainful employment is an utterly bourgeois concept. You may do this by staying constantly underfoot whenever a human is getting ready for work; by hopping onto the bathroom counter in order to assist shaving or the application of makeup; by burrowing into the human’s lap should he or she try to catch the weather or decide where in the world is Matt Lauer (lap burrowing is especially effective if the human has chosen white slacks for the day); and by otherwise meowing and complaining vociferously that the human has no business going out, which is the obvious truth.

In the second instance, the cat must anticipate feeding time by thirty minutes or more each day, continually advancing requests for food according to the willingness of humans to give in early. For example, if you are normally given a can of aromatic fishy stuff at what the human clock terms 6 p.m., you should begin requesting it at 5:30. Better yet, 5:15.

Whenever the human glances anywhere close to the direction of the place where food is kept, run there as though you intend to open the cupboard and grab the can yourself. Should the human happen to walk anywhere in the house near feeding time, wind yourself in a figure-eight pattern about the person’s ankles until he or she feels as though walking in a pair of cat-fur boots. If the human looks at anyone or anything other the place where food is kept, interrupt the view. Explain that you have not been fed in days, perhaps weeks, and you need sustenance this very instant. As in immediately. Or sooner.

Should the human relent early — say, in the previous example, by opening a can of food at 5:45 — then on the following day, you should begin your demands fifteen minutes earlier, establishing your start time according to the previous day’s actual feeding. In this manner, the truly effective cat can circumnavigate the clock, eating at a progressively earlier time each day. After a period of months, you are back where you started, proving the circular nature of time and thereby reminding the human that keeping track of it is a silly and artificial conceit.

Alternatively, you can just knock the clock off the shelf.

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