hey rwright, did anyone here say you don't have the right to voice your opinion and make jokes even i fwe don't like them? Nope, several people, myself included, just said we're sick of hearing mean cat jokes. I have the same privilege on this forum to say I'm sick of the jokes as you have to complain about political correctness running rampant, as long as it's in a civil manner and no personal attacks are involved. Just remember that. Oh, and I'm not judging anyone either, just calling out what I see.

I, like most bipedal, ground dwelling humans, have no problem with an off-color or offensive joke here and there, but it does bother me when it escalates beyond that. Further, the OP obviously has a cat, and whatever you want to say, it's OFFENSIVE to tell him REPEATEDLY to drown his cat; one joke is enough, IMHO.

The child abuse comment was misunderstood a bit--in my first post I was pointing out that psychologists have repeatedly found a link in individuals between violence towards animals as youth and violence toward people later in life(and yes, there was that little bit about pets being like children, so they should be treated accordingly).

Now that we've all gotten our words in, can we just let the bickering die and get back to productive contributions?

Since I haven't seen mention of it earlier in the thread, and forgive me if it already came up, here's another thought for hungryandbroke: Try putting slightly crumpled aluminum foil on any surfaces or objects you don't want the cat to touch. We broke our two cats of jumping up on the counters in this manner. For some reason (likely that it moves underfoot and makes unpleasant noises) the cats can't stand stepping on the foil. Just lay it across your workbench or on top of your plane, etc, and scrunch it up a little bit so that it makes crunchy noises when you touch it and doesn't completely contact the surface evenly.