Update concerning my “well-mannered” cat: it seems that her not stealing food from counters has all been an excellent ruse to lull me into complacency and to drop my guard. She happily steals from the fridge when my back is turned, I have just seen. Now that the jig is up, I wonder: what next?
Now that is a smart kitty 
! Maybe you should cover your food up in the refrigerator—I mean, don’t you normally do that anyway? Is she reaching into a can of olives or dragging out whole turkeys or what? Oh, I know, it’s the left over baked beans .
Both of our kitties were quite good about not getting up on the kitchen counter. Then I had the bright idea that Flora might like to sit by the window and watch the bird feeder—Lilly is not very interested—so I put a special towel on the counter for her to sit on. She was supposed to confine her activities to the towel . What was I thinking? Anyway, she rarely sits on the towel because she has a better view from the sink. She gets on the counter a lot now and will eat anything that appeals to her so we have to be very watchful. The other night she very quietly got up there and ate Lilly’s entire dinner which we had put up on the counter for safekeeping. I take her off the counter and say NOOOO in a deep voice, but I can hardly take very stern action when I’m the one who told her she could get up there in the first place. I must confess that it is pretty funny to see a pair of cat ears poking up out of the sink.
My advice: keep your underwear drawer tightly closed. My black cat would sit by my dresser, and if she could get a paw in at all, she would use her claws to hook out whatever she could reach from the drawer. I was never sure if this was for fun, revenge, or just boredom. Cats’ minds are sooooo complicated. 
djm
Um, like, no. I’m a guy, and consequently an armpit-scratching meathead. Duh.
Covering food – ridiculous. That means more dishes to wash or foil/plastic wrap to pollute the earth with. 
We learned years ago that our cat will go wherever she wants. The only way to keep her off of anything is to shut her out of the room. (She knows how doorknobs work, but she can’t grip them well enough to turn them. We’ve watched her try; she grasps the knob with both paws and tries to turn it. It’s a good thing we don’t have those lever style handles on the doors in our house.) If she has access to a room, all horizontal surfaces (and quite a few vertical surfaces) are fair game.
Mubu loves the clothes drawers! She’ll enthrone herself in them, pleased as punch. Doesn’t take much to thrill her, I’ll say.
That’s funny, all right. Know what? I recently caught mine drinking out of the toilet. Never knew a cat to do that, before. And yes, I leave the seat up. I’m a guy. See above. Anyway, but then again she likes to pounce upon bits of whatever lying on the floor and eat them. She is most funky at times.
My cat’s so weird it’s a dog. Born that way and refuses to change. Go figure… 
We had a pair that learned the trick to this: Leap up and drag BOTH paws on ONE side of the knob as gravity takes you down again. At least we had warning before anyone stuck a paw in our mouth while we were sleeping.
Kevin Krell
I don’t recall ever having had to deal with that. What sort of warning? Oh: the door-opening trick, I suppose.
I loves me catz, but that is just rude. Ack. Pfftht.
We used to have a cat who would wake us up in the morning (so we could prepare her breakfast, of course) by licking our faces. What we didn’t realize for the longest time was that the 10 minutes prior to waking us up were spent licking her own fuzzy little butt. 
I recall some info that the cat is the only mammal that can perform that feat. It’s probably the reason for their superiority complex. Nice.
eye lids…
'course the 20+ pound cat standing on my chest was a givaway…
Nope, lotsa dogs do it, too.
djm
Really! I thought they could only get as far as their nads.
makes the “what to reincarnate as” question trickier, eh?
No sh…I mean, kidding.
When I was a kid, we had a cat named Nick who’d wake me or my sister up for breakfast by tapping on our faces repeatedly with his paw. Not as bad as licking.
If mine wants me to wake up, she’ll just march into the bedroom and yell at me.
Until you consider where he was digging and what he was burying with that paw.
absolutely.