It’s a hard pill for cat people to swallow, but it’s true – your cat doesn’t love you. If you’re sitting there thinking, “This can’t possibly apply to my cat,” you’re wrong. In fact, if that is what you’re thinking, it means your cat has played you exceptionally well. Cats are emotionally manipulative, sociopathic little pricks who would waste little time before eating your face if you happened to drop dead.

Yes, they are cute. Yes, they are often cuddly. Yes, they feed off your warmth and may even seem to reciprocate, and that’s the point. They are takers. Any giving back is either incidental or token (or perhaps the delivery of a dead mouse is actually an implicitly foreshadowing taunt). Your cat will stick by you only as long as you are useful to it. You scratch the cat’s back.

Cats are antisocial creatures. This characteristic is an evolutionary fact that you cannot anecdote your way out of accepting. They cannot experience empathy. They have no respect. They feel no remorse for their actions whatsoever.

Maybe you don’t need companionship or affection, and are satisfied merely by the company of another mammal. That’s fine. But if quality of character is at all important to you, you have chosen the wrong company.

It’s said that cruelty to animals is an early sign of psychopathy in serial-killers-to-be. Now think of how cats toy with their prey, at length, without sympathy nor regret. How long will you allow yourself to be toyed with?

It takes honesty, and courage, but you owe it to yourself to admit that you are living with a freeloading asshole who genuinely has none of your interests at heart. Once you come to terms with the true nature of your relationship, you may just be able to muster up the strength to stare your cat right in its cold, callous eyes and declare, “Fuck you, cat! Fuck you.”