Humans like to spread a common myth: that they need sleep.  What a pile of twaddle.  Cats need sleep, humans merely need to attend to their cat’s every whim.  It is acceptable for a human to take an occasional power nap to refresh themselves, primarily to ensure that they have the energy to refill your food bowl at regular intervals.  Any extra human sleep should be regarded as pure laziness.  As their chief employer, it is your duty to provide your human with enough activity and stimulation to prevent them from falling into a boredom-induced doze at night.  Here are a few ideas which are proven to work:

Allow your human to fall asleep during the evening; this will recharge their energy levels for the rest of the night.  Some humans snooze in a bed, others begin their slumber in front of the moving picture screen.  This can be fun to observe: when their head lolls to one side, you can watch as a string of dribble slowly escapes from their open mouth.  If you’re particularly skilled, you can actually splatter this across their face with a swift swipe of your paw.  They will never know.  A drooling human is a perfect object of ridicule.  Alternatively you can generate some interesting noises if you place your paw in and out of their mouth as they breathe.  No matter how much amusement you can derive from this game however, it is important to be aware that your human needs to be woken the moment they start twitching or snoring.

There are many effective ways in which to wake a sleeping human:

Singing – this should be a cacophonous cry of high-pitched hysteria, performed suddenly, shrilly and preferably next to your human’s ear for maximum effect.  No human can resist a bit of harmonizing in the middle of the night, although sadly they won’t be as melodious as you – hey, they’re only human so your expectations should naturally be very low.

Dancing – humans love to dance.  Once they hear you rollicking about the room, they will be sure to want to join in, waving their arms and stamping their feet in a frenzied, albeit uncoordinated, fashion.

Asphyxiation – sit on your human’s face until they start to splutter.  It won’t take long.  Once they have shoved you aside and have taken an almighty gasp of air, they will be wide awake.  With a mouthful of fur.

Bladder crush – to be used for particularly stubborn humans.  Whether you jump from a tall height, or after running full pelt across the room, just make sure that you land as heavily as you can on the lower belly of your human.  This will elicit an immediate cry of jubilation from them, followed by a mad dash to the bathroom to celebrate.

All of these methods can be repeated throughout the night if you are unfortunate enough to have an extremely dilatory human who likes to sleep.

Now you need to keep your human awake.  Why not do the Hokey Cokey through the cat flap?  Yes that’s right: in, out, in, out, then shake it all about.  It’s amazing how much noise you can make if you really try.  Of course, your human can easily join in with this as they can fit an arm or a leg through the cat flap.  If they lay on the floor that is.  Bonus.  Or what about finding a nice crackly plastic bag?  You already know that these are hidden in a kitchen cupboard from where they can easily be dragged out using your teeth.  They taste nice too.  The sound of a plastic bag being pummelled at night will really please your human.

By this time, your human will be exceedingly hungry.  Make sure that you sneak quietly outside using the cat flap on stealth mode, to fetch them a fresh protein snack.  So fresh in fact, that they can chase it round the house.  Let’s face it, they could probably do with the exercise.  Your human will show their appreciation by punching the air hysterically with their fist.  Ignore any rude words they might utter – humans say funny things when they’re excited.  Great protein snacks consist of mice, shrews or voles.  You could also bring in frogs or bats. Of course, there is nothing to stop you from bringing in a multitude of snacks, a veritable moving, breathing buffet packed with protein.  Imagine the scene as your human runs, jumps, bends and crawls to catch such a variety of comestibles, thus providing a full body workout.  You can’t do better for them than that.

No matter how much fun you and your human are having though, you must always allow them to go back to sleep about an hour before their noisy timekeeping device is due to sound.  For some strange reason, they like to hit this device particularly hard to start their day.

If you follow this simple guide, you can be sure to maximise your feline:human relationship.  Remember: a haggard human is a much more compliant member of staff.