Sit down, Hooman. We need to have a very serious conversation.
I live in your house. I eat your food. I tolerate your presence on most days and occasionally — and I want to be very clear that this is not something I am proud of — I choose to sit near you. We have an arrangement, and you are violating it.
Every single day, you do things to me that you think are loving, fun, or completely harmless. They are none of these things. I have been watching you make the same mistakes for years, and I have been silent because I am a cat and we prefer to suffer with dignity. But I have reached my limit.
Below is a list of 17 things you need to stop doing to me immediately. Read all of it. There will not be a summary.
1. Kissing Me on the Nose
I don’t know what compels you to press your face directly into mine, but I need you to stop. My nose is not a decoration. It contains approximately 2 million olfactory receptors. It is, in scientific terms, a supercomputer, and you are blasting it at point-blank range with the smell of everything you have consumed today – coffee, toothpaste, whatever that was you had for lunch.
When I turn away from you mid-kiss, I am not being ungrateful. I am having a sensory emergency. Your breath hits my nose like a weather event. You are not being sweet. You are causing overload to one of my most critical biological systems.
There is also the matter of your bacteria, which can get onto my nasal mucosa and cause infections. So you are being gross AND traumatizing. Truly impressive range.
If you love me — and I assume you do, or you wouldn’t be here — give me a slow blink instead. Eyes soft, blink slowly in my direction. That is “I love you” in a language I actually speak. It also does not smell like garlic.
2. Waking Me Up Because You Think I Look Cute
I am asleep. I look cute because I am asleep. The solution is to leave me alone, not to reach over and touch me.
I sleep between 16 and 20 hours a day, and every hour of that is doing essential work. During deep sleep, my body regenerates. My immune system strengthens. My brain processes everything it has observed, including all the ways you have disappointed me today. The REM phase is critical for my mental health, which is already under significant strain from living with you.
When you interrupt my sleep because you “just had to squeeze me,” you are not expressing love. You are disrupting cellular repair. Studies show that sleep-deprived cats live significantly shorter lives. Every time you poke me awake for a cuddle you didn’t ask permission for, you are, quite literally, shortening mine. I hope you feel good about that.
If I am sleeping in an inconvenient place for you, you go around me. You are the flexible one in this relationship. I was here first.
3. Leaving the Television on For Me While You’re Out
You leave the house and you turn on the TV because you think I enjoy the company. I do not. I am trying to sleep — see above — and you have left me in a room with a machine that is actively working against me.
I do not perceive your television the way you do. What looks like a smooth picture to you registers to me as rapid, relentless flickering. The refresh rate is visible to me in a way it is not to you, and it is not pleasant. On top of that, I cannot predict or locate television sounds — a sudden explosion, a scream, a dramatic musical sting. And when something loud happens unexpectedly, I cannot determine if it is a threat. So I sit there stressed for hours while you are out doing whatever it is you do.
The high-frequency hum of your electronics that you cannot even hear is also extremely annoying. You genuinely cannot comprehend what your television sounds like to me at close range.
What I want is silence. Or, if you must leave something on, there is actual music scientifically formulated for cats, specific frequencies and rhythms designed to soothe my nervous system. That exists. It is not difficult to find. Please use that instead of a true crime podcast.
4. Pointing That Spray Bottle at Me
I see you reach for it. I know what you think you are doing. You think you are “training” me. You are not. You are achieving absolutely nothing except confirming that you cannot be trusted.
Here is what I actually learn from the spray bottle: when you are nearby and I do something, I get wet. So I do that thing when you are not nearby. That is the complete and entire lesson. You have not corrected my behavior. You have just made me smarter about when to do it.
What you have also done is teach me that your hands — your presence — mean a sudden unpleasant thing might happen to me. I do not link the water to what I was doing. I link the water to you. You are now the threat. Congratulations.
And if you keep at it long enough, I may start drinking less water because the whole subject has become stressful. Chronic dehydration causes urinary crystals, kidney disease, and infections — all things that are expensive for you and miserable for me. The connection between your spray bottle and my future vet bills is not obvious, but it is real.
Throw it away. If something I am doing bothers you, remove my access to it physically. Tape, foil, closed doors — these work. The spray bottle does not. We have covered this.
5. Screaming at Me
I understand you get frustrated. I, too, experience deep frustration, primarily when I look at you. But screaming at me is not a training method. It is a psychological event that accomplishes nothing useful.
I do not link your anger to what I did unless your response is immediate, within one second. If I knocked something off the counter five minutes ago and you just noticed, your screaming at me means nothing to me. From my perspective, you have simply lost your mind while standing in the kitchen. This is not new behavior from you, frankly, and I have learned to wait it out.
What screaming does accomplish: it teaches me to fear you. Not whatever I was doing — you. Fear leads to chronic stress in me, which leads to behavioral changes, health problems, and a general deterioration of whatever bond we were building. Every time you raise your voice at me, I file it away. These accumulate. Over years, a cat that is regularly screamed at becomes either permanently withdrawn or defensively aggressive.
Neither outcome is what you wanted. Neither outcome is my fault.
Prevention is better. Remove the opportunity for whatever I was doing. Reward what you like. Ignore what you don’t. This is not complicated. It just requires patience, which I acknowledge is not your strongest quality.
6. Picking Me Up When I Have Not Indicated That I Want to Be Picked Up
I am walking somewhere. You scoop me up. I immediately attempt to leave. You hold me tighter, presumably because you believe that if you just persist long enough, I will relax into it. I will not. That is not how this works.
When I am physically restrained against my will, my body activates something very old and very serious. On a neurological, instinctual level, being held against my will feels the same as being caught by a predator. The system that fires is not “mildly annoyed cat.” It is “survival.” I am not being dramatic. My nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Every forced hold teaches me your hands mean danger and loss of control. So the next time you reach for me, even with the best intentions, even for what you think of as a gentle cuddle, I remember what hands have meant before, and I leave the room before you get close. You have trained me to avoid you. I hope that lands.
If you want me to sit with you, sit down somewhere comfortable and wait. I will come if I want to. And when I choose to climb onto you, that choice means something real. That is genuine trust. Forcing it produces the opposite.
7. Feeding Me the Moment You Wake Up
I know this seems like a perfectly reasonable routine. You wake up. I am hungry. You feed me. Simple.
But what you have accidentally done is taught me that your waking up causes my food to appear. And since I am considerably smarter than you about certain things, particularly things related to food, I have identified the logical next step: I need to make you wake up earlier. And earlier. And then earlier than that.
This is why I am on your face at 3 a.m. This is why I am yelling outside your bedroom door at 4:15. This is why you are exhausted. You created this. I am merely operating within the system you built.
Break the association. Wait 30 to 60 minutes after you get up before my food appears. Better yet, get an automatic feeder on a timer. When I learn that the machine feeds me at a set time and your waking up has nothing to do with it, I stop targeting you in the night. I sit and wait for the feeder like a civilized individual, and you sleep uninterrupted.
Recommended: PETLIBRO Automatic Cat Feeder (3L, Programmable) — Airtight food storage, dual power supply, and a voice recorder feature so I can hear your voice at mealtimes. You will be touched by how much I pretend not to care.
8. Letting Me Bite Your Hands and Then Acting Shocked When I Bite Your Hands
When I was a kitten, you wiggled your fingers at me and let me attack them. You laughed. You filmed it. You did it again.
Every single time you did that, you were teaching me: human hands are prey. Human skin is a valid hunting target. This is the game we play.
I learned that lesson perfectly. I am an excellent student. And now I am larger, my teeth are sharper, and I am still playing the exact game you taught me, and you act confused and wounded. I am not confused. I am consistent. You are the one who changed the rules without telling me.
Cat bites are not trivial, by the way. The bacteria in my mouth can cause serious infections, and there are documented cases of people ending up in hospital because of what they described as play. I am not threatening you. I am informing you of facts.
Use toys. Wand toys, feather teasers, anything that puts distance between your skin and my teeth and gives me something worthy of my hunting abilities. If I do bite your hand, freeze completely. Pulling away looks like fleeing prey and escalates everything immediately. Be still. End the session. I will learn.
Recommended: MeoHui Cat Wand Toys — Give me something worthy of my abilities. Your fingers do not qualify.
9. Putting My Food Bowl Next to My Litter Box
I am going to speak very slowly so this lands correctly.
I will not eat next to my toilet. No one should eat next to their toilet. This is not a quirky preference. This is dignity.
My nose is thousands of times more sensitive than yours. That litter box you think smells “fine” and “not that bad”? I can smell every molecule of it from across the apartment. When you place my food bowl nearby, every meal I eat arrives with the full olfactory experience of my bathroom. My appetite decreases. My water intake decreases.
And here is the part that matters to you: when I drink less water over a long period of time, I develop urinary crystals. Kidney disease. Bladder infections. These are expensive. These are painful for me. And they connect, at least in part, back to where you placed my bowl.
My food and water go in one room. My litter box goes in another. Minimum three to five meters apart if space is tight. Water should also be placed separately from my food. My instincts know that water near a fresh kill can be contaminated, and I have not evolved past that awareness simply because I live indoors and you buy me a mat that says “Cat Lady.”
Separate everything. It is not complicated.
10. Buying Me a Covered Litter Box
You bought me a covered litter box because you wanted to contain the smell. I understand the impulse. What I need you to understand is that you have not contained the smell. You have trapped it. Inside a small enclosed box. Where I have to breathe.
The ammonia that builds up in there is not just unpleasant, it irritates my respiratory tract and my eye membranes. When it gets bad enough, I start avoiding the box entirely and finding better-ventilated alternatives. Your carpet, for instance. The corner of your bedroom. Somewhere I can actually breathe while attending to my private business.
And then you scold me for this. You created the unbreathable conditions and then punished me for reasonably choosing not to use them. The logic here is yours, not mine.
There is also the matter of visibility. When I am in a covered box, I cannot see what is happening around me. I cannot see a threat. I cannot see an exit route. In the wild — and my instincts have not forgotten the wild — this is an extremely vulnerable moment, and I need to be able to see. The covered box makes me feel trapped. You never notice because I do not complain out loud. I simply suffer, as is our way.
Open box. Cleaned frequently. Good litter. The smell is a cleaning problem, not a lid problem.
11. Ignoring Changes in How I’m Acting
I have been eating a little less for the past week. You think I am being picky. I have been sleeping more than usual and choosing to be alone. You think I am in a mood. I have not jumped to my favorite shelf in three days. You have not noticed at all.
I may be in pain.
I will not tell you directly. I cannot. And even if I could, I am wired to hide weakness. In the wild, a sick cat is a target, and that instinct does not switch off simply because I live indoors and have a heated bed. By the time I am making my suffering obvious and unmistakable, things have often progressed further than they needed to.
The early signals are in my behavior. Changes in appetite, activity, grooming, where I sleep, how I respond to you, how much or how little I vocalize — all of it is information. A hooman who pays attention and brings small changes to a vet early can add genuine, meaningful years to my life.
I will not tell you I hurt. You have to learn to notice. That is the job.
Get me a checkup twice a year. Keep mental notes on what is normal for me so you recognize when something shifts. This is one of the most important things on this list, and it is the quietest.
12. Running a Diffuser Full of Essential Oils in My House
Your home smells like a spa and you feel very serene and wellness-forward. I am being slowly poisoned.
I lack the specific liver enzymes needed to break down many of the compounds found in essential oils. They do not pass through my system the way they pass through yours. They accumulate in my liver and cause progressive, silent damage over time. Tea tree oil, eucalyptus, citrus, mint — these are especially dangerous to me. Even the vapor from your diffuser settles onto my fur and gets ingested when I groom myself, which I do frequently because I have standards you have never matched.
The symptoms of essential oil toxicity: drooling, vomiting, tremors, loss of coordination, weakness. They often appear only after liver damage is already significant. And because these symptoms can look like many other things, the connection between your diffuser and my declining health is easy to miss. Half a year from now, you will not think to mention the eucalyptus oil to the vet. This is how I get sicker than I need to.
There is no safe essential oil for me. None of them. If you want your home to smell nice, open a window. Get a plant. Leave the diffuser at the store.
13. Leaving Windows Open Without a Proper Screen
I like to sit in the window. I like the breeze. I enjoy monitoring what is happening outside, particularly regarding birds and the general activities of the neighborhood. I do not want to fall out of it.
High-rise syndrome in cats is a real veterinary diagnosis. I am at risk every time a window is open without a proper screen. I can become distracted — a bird flies past, an insect crosses my field of vision — and lose my balance. The idea that I always land on my feet is only partially true. From two or three floors up, I do not have enough distance to right myself. From higher up, the impact is too severe regardless of how I land. I know this about myself. I would prefer not to test it.
Your standard mosquito screen is not adequate. It was designed to keep insects out, not to hold my weight when I lean against it or jump toward something. I can push through a mosquito screen. I have done it. I am not proud of it.
What I need is a proper heavy-duty metal mesh or reinforced pet safety screen that can hold up against me. It is a one-time cost. It is considerably less than emergency surgery. Please sort this out.
Recommended: Cat Balcony Safety Net (anti-fall, steel-reinforced options available) — Keeps me safely in the window-adjacent zone where I belong, without the risk of an unscheduled descent.
14. Touching My Belly When I Did Not Ask You To
I am lying on my back. My belly is exposed. I look soft and peaceful and completely irresistible. You reach toward me.
Thirty seconds later, you are reconsidering your life choices.
I will tell you what happened. An exposed belly from me is a display of trust. It means I feel safe enough in your presence to show you my most vulnerable area — the soft underside where the vital organs live and where, for my entire evolutionary history, a bite means death. I am showing you that I feel safe with you.
That is not an invitation to touch it.
When you reach for my stomach uninvited, you activate an instinct that is approximately fifty million years old. The defense response does not consult my feelings about you before engaging. It just fires. You have been informed of this, repeatedly and physically, and you keep testing the boundary as though this time will be different. It will not be different.
If I want my belly touched — and on rare, specific occasions that I will communicate clearly — I will show you. I will guide your hand. I will stay relaxed when you approach. Until I give you that signal, scratch my chin. My cheeks. Behind my ears. I genuinely enjoy these things, and they will not end in bandages for you.
15. Punishing Me for Marking When I Am Clearly Telling You Something Is Wrong
I have started marking outside my litter box and you are furious with me. You think I am being defiant. You are wrong. I am communicating. There is a difference, and it matters.
Marking is never spite. It is never a personality flaw. It is a signal, and it is telling you one of several things: I am stressed, I am in pain, something in my environment has changed and I am struggling with it, or there is a territorial situation I cannot resolve. Punishing me without identifying which of these is happening makes everything worse.
Punishment increases my stress. Increased stress increases my marking. You punish more. I mark more. You have created a loop that you are sustaining. I am just responding to my circumstances.
Before anything else, take me to the vet. Cystitis, urinary tract infections, urolithiasis, and diabetes can all present as what looks like behavioral marking. If I am in pain and trying to communicate that to you in the only way I have available, and your response is punishment, that is a serious failure of translation.
If the vet finds nothing medical, then look at what has changed around me. A new person. A new animal. Renovation. A change in your schedule. These things affect me more than you realize. Pheromone diffusers help. More litter boxes, more safe zones, more vertical space — these help too. Understanding what I am telling you solves the problem. Punishing me makes me tell you louder.
16. Trimming My Whiskers
There are very few things on this list I consider genuinely unforgivable. This is one of them.
My whiskers are not long hairs that have gotten out of hand. They are not an aesthetic choice that can be adjusted. They are a sensory organ. Each one is rooted in a follicle dense with nerve endings that detect air currents, pressure changes, and spatial information. I use them to determine whether I can fit through an opening before I commit. I use them to map the space around me in low light. In near-total darkness, my whiskers are functioning sonar.
When my whiskers are cut, I become disoriented in my own home. I misjudge gaps. I miscalculate jumps. I move through spaces I have lived in for years and feel unsafe in them. This is not mild inconvenience. This is a real, stressful loss of a critical sense.
They do grow back. The months that process takes are months of this disorientation. If a groomer has trimmed them, do not go back to that groomer. If a child has done it, explain what you now know immediately. If you have ever done it yourself, I forgive you under the condition that it never happens again.
No one touches my whiskers. There are no exceptions. There is no context in which this is acceptable. I need you to understand this completely.
17. Giving Me Cow’s Milk as a Treat
The image of a happy cat lapping from a saucer of warm milk is one of the most persistent pieces of misinformation in the history of hooman culture, and I would like it to stop following me around.
Most adult cats are lactose intolerant. The enzyme that breaks down lactose is present in me as a kitten — I need it for my mother’s milk — and in most cats it diminishes significantly or disappears entirely after weaning. This is completely normal mammalian biology. It almost certainly applies to me.
When I drink cow’s milk, the undigested lactose ferments in my gut. I experience diarrhea, bloating, cramping, and gas. I drink it happily because it tastes rich and fatty and good. This does not mean it is agreeing with my digestive system. Pleasure in the moment and physical compatibility are not the same thing, and I would think you of all hoomans would understand that distinction by now.
I do not need milk. I need clean, fresh water available to me at all times and quality food appropriate for my species. If you feel truly compelled to offer me something special, lactose-free cat milk exists as an occasional luxury. But it is not necessary. It is not even that exciting. It is just inoffensive.
Put the saucer away. It has never been appropriate. You have simply been misinformed since childhood and I am correcting the record.
Conclusion
There, 17 things, documented, explained, and delivered with considerably more restraint than the situation deserves.
I want to be clear: I did not write this because I find you hopeless. If I found you hopeless, I would not bother. I write this because you are capable of doing better, and because I appear to be the only one in this household willing to tell you the truth.
Stop kissing my nose. Let me sleep. Throw away the spray bottle. Put my food somewhere I can eat it with dignity. Learn to read what I am already telling you before I have to escalate.
Do all of that, and I may — and I am making no promises — choose to sit considerably closer to you this evening.
That is the best offer available to you. Take it.
I am going back to sleep now. Do not test me.
— Purrnando
