1) No matter how much you, as a child, may like helium balloons- cats DO NOT like having them tied to their tails. I found this out the hard way... so did my cat. I tied a helium balloon to my cats tail one day while it was sunning itself,,, its tail rose up and the cat jerked it back down.... it rose up again and the cat stood up and jerked it down again... then its tail rose up again and, well... the cat exploded. The cat started screaming and took off at relativistic speed, running under tables and chairs with the menacing balloon chasing it, never more than 2 feet behind....

We found the cat about an hour later in the back of my parents closet- in the dark... all we saw were two wide terrified eyes and a balloon bobbing above them as the tail kept jerking it down.

2) If two cats are fighting, intent on killing eachother- there are two things you should not do:

a) do not pick one of them up and hold it high thinking that will end the fight... what happens is the cat you are holding is scared (quite literally pissless) and the other cat thinks 'Oh boy, he's holding my enemy for me!!!' and attempts to climb up your body.

b) If you do this despite the warning above, then wear full body stain resistant kevlar armor- A pair of boxers is not- I REPEAT 'NOT' sufficient protection.

3) If you are in possession of 6 ounces of high grade primo cat nip and you have a cat, keep it in a vault. I recieved a shipment of a huge baggie of killer cat-nip weed... I gave my cat a pinch to play with... she loved it... I had to go to classes and then work the next 24 hours so I put the baggie in my dresser drawer...

The cat crawled into my dresser and retrieved the full baggie and dragged it onto my bed, when I came home dead tired I saw my bed covered in catnip- I lifted the sheet to find the most completly stoned cat you can imagine underneath- nose buried in a pile of catnip... Paws twitching...

Thank god I was too tired to kill the cat...

4) If you own a cat and a large dog, and you punish the dog whenever it snaps at the cat for eating its food or attacking his tail- you end up with a cat that has a God-complex and a very upset dog...

We had a large dog that liked to sleep behind the sofa after a long hard day of doing dog things- The cat would perch on the back of the sofa and wait til he was asleep and then leap down and attack... the poor dog would just move away... he could have easily dispatched the cat with one quick snap of his jaws... but he never did, because he knew he was a 'human' and had to live by certain rules...

Dogs beat cats any day....