Call me crazy, cat crazy, but you haven’t lived until you’ve befriended a cat. No, not owned one or played with one, but genuinely befriended it. ”How will I know if we’re friends?” You may naively ask. The answer? You won’t, and you never will. Fool. A cat will never tell you if it likes you, or if it’s just messing with your tiny mind. It may be looking at you while not thinking anything about you at all, the ultimate snub. Either way, you’re achieving some kind of mystical link between humankind and catkind.

Up there, above this, you will see a picture of a cat. His name is Rumbles. Fluffy, isn’t he? Rumbles likes to give signs that make us believe we’ve befriended him, but don’t be tricked. Purring and face rubbing are merely cat irony. He’s having a right little chuckle to himself. Look at his face. What is he thinking? Impossible to say. He could be happy, angry, mindlessly thinking nothing or downloading my thoughts to beam back to his home planet.

Although you will never know if you have succeeded in your mission to befriend a cat, the virtuous circle of trying will make your life complete. I therefore highly recommend to all people on earth to try, try and keep trying. At the very least it might make them go easy on us come judgement day.

10 Top Tips for Befriending a Cat

1. Acknowledge the fact that the cat is smarter than you.
2. Give the cat an amazing name like Mr Fluff Wuff while also holding reserve nicknames for stomach turningly pathetic attempts to befriend it. We’ve chosen the nauseating “Pookie-pooks” to show how low we will go to befriend Rumbles.
3. Cats love celebrity. Photograph the cat doing ridiculous things and upload to the internet to boost its celeb status (e.g. figure 1.0 above of Rumbles).
4. Look into adopting a cat because there are millions without homes *ultimate sad face*. There are lots of organisations to help you adopt, but you could do worse than start with RSCPA’s adoption site, Cats Protection, Cattersea (Battersea Cats & Dogs home), the Blue Cross and many others in your local area. Saving a cat is a good step to befriendship.
5. Understand that the cat is almost guaranteed to be a genetically enhanced alien designed specifically to appear to you as the cutest thing on earth. If you don’t believe in aliens, you could adopt Darwin’s theory of evolution and accept the fact that the cat has evolved into the cutest thing on earth through natural selection over many millenia. Either way, you must know that the cat is finely tuned to getting its own way by being the cutest thing on earth. You can try to resist and you will fail.
6. Do not show weakness.
7. Spay or neuter the cat after six months, our world is already overrun by these critters. Chip the cat too, they have a tendency to torment other humans by fooling them with their befriending tactics. Make sure your cat doesn’t get away.
8. Snuggle the cat.
9. Talk to the cat. You may wrongly assume that cats don’t know what you’re saying, but they in fact understand language and thoughts all too well.
10. When a cat goes “brrrrreee-yup” you may be onto a winner. While not yet proven, there is some evidence to show that this trilling noise is the only hint at breaking down the steel barrier.