All I did was maybe mention somewhere online that I had kittens. I didn’t ask anything or aggressively poke the internet in any way. But now my screen is drenched with kitten advice, frequently accompanied by an invitation to part with lucre for some product that is Just The Thing. And, if I’m honest, I click on it, too. And that is why I know so dang much about kitten behavior now.

For instance, if your one-pound kitten is systematically destroying your upholstered furniture, it is no longer recommended that you swat said kitten into next week. Even if that’s what your mama did to you and you turned out FINE! Just FINE! Swatting kittens is frowned upon, even though kittens are notoriously bouncy.

What they need is something vertical to scratch on that is not your upholstered furniture, or something horizontal if they’re that kind of kitten, or something that looks like a cave that they can roll around in and scratch at the same time, or a sisal basket. Really, buy them all, try them all.

And if your furniture is still starting to look like new dreadlocks, consider this: your kitten is wrecking your furniture out of sheer anxiety because their entire sleep cycle has been upended by a lack of opportunity to pounce on things in a murderous manner. Kittens need to (it says here) have at least five separate episodes of make-believe murdering every day, followed by a long, remorseless nap, a good stretch, and another bout of terror and mayhem. If they do not get this cycle five times a day, they feel twitchy and awful in the same way you do after too many nights in a row of thinking about the current administration. And the only thing that calms them down is destroying your sofa. So you need to play with your kitten a lot. A lot. Or, as I did, get it a matching kitten, and let them have at each other.

Also? If your kitten keeps knocking your tumbler of water over even though she has her own bowl of fresh water, consider this: Kittens do not like bowls of still water (it says here) and furthermore they do not like to get their whiskers mashed upwards by the edge of the bowl, and what the little princesses need is a shallow bowl with a constant trickle of water going in it and a reservoir that only needs replenishing once a month because you can buy filters for it every two weeks at five dollars a pop. It’ll come with an app that will monitor your cat’s hydration in real time and alert you to any anomalies. Which, if detected, can be brought under control with a radio anomaly collar (sold separately).

That’s a lot of information to take in. But it’s probably sound, because you don’t see many shredded sofas in the wild. Cats in the wild are surrounded by pounceable items and their sleep/murder cycles are in balance. Furthermore, they have access to either trickly water or still water that is agitated by prancing antelopes. They are neither bored nor depressed.

I believe it all. After all, people are no better. Most of us don’t build our own shelter or procure our own food or even cook. We don’t sing with each other or create anything of value or beauty and our daily activities are far removed from our animal needs. We move pixels around or fill out forms or spray innocent shoppers with perfume or deliver plastic cat toys wrapped in plastic or any of a number of useless activities and as a result we wander around incensed about imaginary slights or worried our pants are out of date or freaked out about our money or our mortality, and sure enough we get into all sorts of trouble and eat a bunch of crap and judge people we don’t even know and some of us even dump shredded sofas in the woods. Or drop bombs. We’re fundamentally disconnected from our natural world.

So we need to play with our kittens or everything will go to hell. But we should never make fun of them for chasing laser lights that aren’t real and vanish and reappear for no reason. We’re no better.

Right, Crypto-Boy?