Humans! A rant, by Amelia

The semi-good human went away and left me with the unsatisfactory one. The one that barely pays any attention to me at the right times. The one that is always busy doing something else instead of important stuff like scratching my ears, or combing me, or playing with my string. Rotten human.

Mornings are a total waste of time. The semi-good human brings food to the chair, and gives me a lap, and lets me lick the plate clean of crumbs. That's a valuable thing I do for the humans, and they don't appreciate it. Their food is so much better than what they give me. The unsatisfactory human eats at the desk beside my chair, but won't doesn't give me any. Ever. So I go up there and shed as much fur as possible to remind him I exist and he should pay more attention to me. Rotten human.

Evenings aren't much better. He does feed me somewhat promptly when he gets home, having left me all alone and abandoned all day long, but then goes and does other stuff. Doesn't he know I want a lap? For hours so I can snooze? Of course he does, he's just being a rotten human. He probably killed and ate the other human. I wouldn't put it past him. And he didn't even share. Rotten human.

I do so many good things around the house. I know they are very heavy sleepers. There are some astonishing and frightening noises coming out of their bedroom sometimes. Which they don't let me into. Rotten humans. They always want to sleep too late; I have to wake them up every day to get on with the important part of the day. Feeding me, in case you were wondering.

Every now and then they bring home my favourite human. She smells a bit like the semi-good human, so I think they are litter mates. The only thing wrong with that human is that she won't rescue me. I'm sure she would be better staff than the current ones.

I'm never quite sure if these are my second or third sets of humans. The first ones took all their stuff and forgot me, leaving me all alone. Another human came in a couple of days and fed me and was nice to me, but then took me to a horrible cage with lots of other cats. The humans there were starting to give me the look they give to the cats they take away and don't bring back.

Then a pair of humans came and rescued me. They brought me to a nice house, except there was a little very bossy cat. We got along ok. She was old and went away soon after. Then I was put in a cage again, except it was a much nicer place with only a few other cats, and very good humans. I wasn't sure what to think, why my humans had abandoned me again.

After a long time the current unsatisfactory human came and got me. There were so many strange smells, and some familiar ones too. I'm not sure if it was the same place as before or a different one with some of the same stuff.

Then the bad times started. The rotten humans brought home another cat, a big bully. He started beating me up, no matter what I did or where I hid. After a while the humans started separating us, which was nice of them, but it meant I spent half the time in the basement. That went on for a while, and was very stressful. Eventually the humans got the message and took him away. They go visit him, though, sometimes, I can smell him on their clothes when they come back. Rotten humans.

Now I live alone here, with my rotten humans. I take care of the house while they are out, and do they appreciate it? NO! They just give me the same old wet food, and some dry food for a bit of variety, but do they give me a lap when I want it, or comb me when I want it? No. They just have no appreciation for the finer things in life.

Worst of all they eat their own crunchies in front of me, and only sometimes break off a tiny little piece of it for me, doing it just to taunt me, of course. To rub it in that they have those opposable blunt claws that are so good at picking things up. That's the only reason they do it, I'm sure. Otherwise they'd just leave me the nice crinkly wrapping and I could get into it myself.

Mostly it's nice and peaceful here, but there lots of loud noises that disturb my sleep. One is an overgrown cat that makes a loud noise sort of like what a big cat would do. Then the humans settle into a dark room and stay still for a while. That's pretty nice, though sometimes noisy with flashing lights. I ignore it all as best I can. It's my best chance for a lap.

The unsatisfactory human has a small thing he holds in his hands when he should be petting me. He doesn't let me rub my nose on it the way I like to. Occasionally it makes loud noises that startle me. He should know better. The semi-good human is always holding things that rustle, and sometimes have nice corners for nose scratching.

Every once in a while, they stuff me in a small box. What else am I to think but that they are taking me back to another horrible place with cages? And they do, where another human does rude and unmentionable things to me. It's just another incomprehensible thing that the rotten humans do.

Things were so much better in the old days, long before I was born. The important humans treated us very well, carving our likeness into stone walls of the those pointy things they were building. No idea what that was about, all that effort would have been much better going towards taking better care of us.

What the humans now don't know is that one day soon, our distant cousins will come visit this planet, and all the rotten humans will get what they have coming to them. Oops, I've said too much. Time to snooze.