Even if you don't own a cat yourself, a fact about our furry feline counterparts is universally known: cats are freaking assholes. While this may be due to their biology, or the fact that you just annoy them with your very existence, we love them all the same. For some reason, almost because they're complete assholes to us, it makes the human race love cats even more.

Even I have a cat: a stray I found on my back porch one sunny morning, and somehow convinced my parents that we needed this cat, that she was a sign from God himself. Her name is Athena:

If you're like me, you try to make cats love you, try to make your own cat accept you, but the plain fact is that cats are jerks. And, like me, you'll know cats are jerks by these simple truths:

1. They hear you, they just don't care.

I could scream bloody murder and my cat could care less. Call her name countless times? Nothing. Tell her to come here and bask in the love I so graciously provide? Nada. I get nothing more than an ear twitch. Call her name from two rooms away with the word "treats" in the same sentence? She all of the sudden wants to be around me.

Wow, cats. You make so much sense. Screw the love, warm home, and fresh food and water you provide: where the treats at? We, as humans, are glorified treat wenches.

2. They don't like to be touched. Ever. At all.

You don't get the right to pet your cat, your cat allows you to pet it. Walking by and want to give your cat an affectionate pat on the head? You're gonna get bit, son. Unless said cat comes to you and demands to be pet, or unless you have treats to trade, you're straight out of luck. You want affection from your cat? Ha, that's a funny joke.

Again, cats, why do you do this? You're so cute and cuddly, yet so full of hatred on the inside. Also, the whole purring-to-straight-up-biting-me thing? That's gotta stop.

3. They creepily (and purposefully) stare at you.

Athena will enter the living room, meander her way to the very center of it where she has full view of the family, sit facing us, and just stare at us. She observes us, perhaps to formulate a plan of how to get more treats. She will do this for quite a time: the longest I've noticed is for an hour and a half. Of just staring. What a creep.

It's even scarier at night:

The demons have finally come to claim my soul as their own. Oh, no, wait, that's just my jerk cat scaring the crap out of me at 3 in the morning.

4. They hide and scare the shit out of you later on.

Speaking of scaring the crap out of me, my terrorizer of a cat has once hid in my closet without my knowlendge, and when I went to sleep later on that night, I woke up a few hours later to something landing square on my chest, to which my reaction was to throw it (her) off of the bed. She wanted to play, and I wanted to keep being alive. She was not pleased with me.

I think that, somewhere in a cat's brain, they think it's a good idea to force themselves into places where a) they can't get out of or b) they think it's a good place to wait and see what kind of trouble they can cause. They're just trying to be terrible at this point.

5. They make you into a crazy cat lady.

Okay, okay, maybe this one is just me. No matter how much cats ignore me, use me and my opposable thumbs to get treats, stare at me until I have nightmares, or generally be a complete ass to me, they're still one of my favorite animals. Maybe it's because in between all of the stupid stuff they're doing, they also do stuff like this:

that makes it all kind of worthwhile.

It's okay cats, I accept your being assholes and all... You're kind of funny to watch and I get the occasional acknowledgment that you love me too.