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No, this post is not about our chairs, tables, couches, beds, bureaus, desks, and so forth about which hands seem eternally confused. We demand furniture; hands provide the furniture (often ugly, as most hands have incredibly bad taste when it comes to home furnishings). And that should be the end of that. But no. As is all too common, hands misinterpret our generosity. Just because we allow hands to use the furniture they’ve provided for us when we’re not using it, does not mean that the furniture suddenly becomes hands property, and that hands can begin trying to enforce a No Clawing Zone. Claw maintenance is a vital part of the Grooming Limb (see Entry 6), and having a number of surfaces and sizes is crucial, which is why we demand such a wide variety of furniture. Humans have no use for a desk, for example, but when made of wood, desks allow for a very satisfying claw workout. Yes, the pieces of furniture hands acquire that are specifically designated as clawing sites are . . . well, they’re, sometimes, barely adequate, and the ghettoization of this vital activity troubles us greatly. Every human knows what the introduction of a scratching post means: namely, that the hands are getting restless and are pretending that they’re in charge of the furniture again and therefore need to protect it from its true owners. It’s quite frustrating to be given a houseful of furniture to claw and then be expected to limit ourselves to a pathetic pole wrapped in rope, but fashioning hands to act appropriately in this regard has been, so far, frustratingly futile. You know, in addition to being exemplary killers (see Entry 7), hands are also world-class thieves, appropriating human property in the most brazen ways possible. Most distressing.

[We began by saying this wasn’t a post about our furniture, but somehow it morphed into one. We’ll save the original subject of this post for the next one.]

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