Congratulations! If you’ve found your forever home, you’ve successfully tricked a person or persons into thinking you are a helpless, adorable little creature who needs love.

Joke’s on them!

By now, you’ve already done a good job of pretending to be nervous and hiding under things while seceretly scoping the joint and surveying your humans for signs of weakness. You have inflitrated the base, and now it’s your job to take it over. Here are some tips for taking your place as Supreme General of the House.

Your humans have the innate ability to rationalize everything you do as cute. So, go ahead: pee on brand new coats, throw up on favored shoes. You can just act like nothing ever happened or like you have no idea what you did. It’s your right, after all, you are just a cat! Why would anything that occurs to you to do naturally ever be wrong? Just flash those baby blues or whiskey browns, let out a little meow. This is especially effective if you were allowed to infiltrate your base as a kitten–they will never forget how cute you were and are able to transpose that cuteness onto your adult self. Rub against their legs when they find your pee–it’s not an apology,–don’t worry, you will never apologize for anything–but when you act cute in the aftermath of ruining everything, they can’t punish you. They may yell out in frustration, but all you have to do is run away, and it’s like that yelling never happened.

No cats on the counters? What? What are counters? Glorious cool surfaces on which to spread out? If a place is accessible to you, that place then belongs to you, and you have every right to go there–especially if a human is preparing /eating food or working with any kinds of books, papers, or electronic devices. You may not even want attention all that badly, but you need to just let them know what’s what. Your human will grumble about you laying on the laptop, but will then proceed to take a photograph or repost what you typed on the keyboard for everyone to see. Most humans don’t lie on each other’s things and bat their eye lashes at each other, so they will love your unwarranted behavior. King-sized bed (the bigger the human bed, the longer you need to stretch out to take up as much space as possible), pile of towels, cardboard box, backpack, bathroom sink–wherever you see humans doing anything other than sleeping, you must sleep and/or lie there. It is yours, you own it, assert your dominance!

Did you get kicked off the bed–or worse, out of the room entirely? Have you gone once in the litter box and it has yet to be cleaned? Were you not let back outside immediately after having been let in? Did they pet you when you so clearly did not want to be pet, or held?! Hiss, scratch, bite, and pee. Don’t they remember who is in charge? Unlike dogs, who will blindly do whatever anyone tells them to do in hopes of food or attention, you have your wits about you and everyone else is supposed to operate around your schedule. The revenge-pee is the best behavior modifier: humans will do anything to avoid pee on things. Let them know that it’s yours and pee on it when you are mad. They will keep your box immaculate, let you outside whenever you wish in hopes that you will pee out there. You only have a few ways of communicating, and the “meow” is just too cute. So follow the logical order of things to express your dominance and anger: hiss, scratch, bite, and pee.

Remind humans of who is in charge by exercising your desire to scratch on things that should not be scratched on. The bed, the curtains, the tablecloth, the carpet. Scratching is just another way of marking territory, and it’s all your territory. The more you love something, the HARDER you should scratch it.

So, you’ve gotten your revenge by being mean. But there’s still work to do. You have to express your pity for your human sometimes, and curling up in their lap or on their face while they’re sleeping and purring is the best way to do that. Meow in a pretend conversation with them, they love that. Rubbing the legs is the ultimate cat hug, so rub against the legs. Show them you appreciate their routines by interrupting them as frequently as possible, for instance, every time a can is opened, assume it’s for you and interrupt the dinner process. Do cute things like run around the house screaming like a madcat for no reason and springing into boxes full of styrafoam peanuts.

Every time they point a camera in your face, rest assured that you are doing something cute-even if you have a real reason for doing it. Remember all of these things and do them when you need to be back on the human’s good side. They will instantly forgive you, because you are just a precious little gift who can really do no wrong!

But you’re really too smart for them, and have expertly manipulated them into servicing your every whim. Good job, cat! You always win! Congratulations on being King of the Castle!

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