The first thing you have to understand about cats, is that it is their duty to get into mischief. Cats will do their duty in many ways every day. Unrolling toilet paper, turning over trash cans, scratching their litter as far out of their litter boxes as they can are only a few things that they do to carry out their mission in life. They expect to be rewarded for these things. They do not understand when humans get angry with them for these kinds of activities.

If you want to live with a cat, you must become accustomed to these things. I once had a cat whose job it was to get up on my kitchen table, swat the lid off my porcelain sugar bowl and scatter the sugar all over the table. It was a mess to clean up, so I got a Tupperware sugar bowl that had a seal she could not swat off. Being very dutiful, she would simply swat the new sugar bowl off the table and onto the floor. I suppose she thought her job was taking care of my sugar because I had named her Sugar.