How to Hamper Your Human

HAMPERING:
If one of your humans is engaged in some activity and the other is idle, stay with the busy one. This is called "helping," otherwise known as "hampering." Following are the rules for "hampering:"

1) When supervising cooking, sit just behind the left heel of the cook. You cannot be seen and thereby stand a better chance of being stepped on and then picked up and comforted.

2) For book readers, get in close under the chin, between eyes and book, unless you can lie across the book itself.

3) For paperwork, lie on the paper in the most appropriate manner so as to obscure as much of the work as possible. Or pretend to doze, but occasionally reach out and slap the pencil or pen.

4) For people paying bills or working on income taxes or Christmas cards, keep in mind the aim: to hamper! First, sit on the paper being worked on. When dislodged, watch sadly from the side of the table. When activity proceeds nicely, roll around on the papers, scattering them to the best of your ability. When being removed for the second time, make all four legs flail around wildly in order to push pens, pencils, and erasers off the table.

5) When a human is holding the newspaper in front of him/her, be sure to jump on the back of the paper. Humans love surprises.

6) When a human is working at the computer, jump up on the desk, walk across the keyboard, bat at the mouse pointer on the screen and then lay in the human's lap across arms if possible to hamper typing in progress.