Cats Adore, Manipulate Women (opens in new tab)

> has trained me to throw rubber dice down the hall on demand so she can chase them.

That's just the first step in the process. Next step is for her to throw rubber dice down the hall and train you to chase them ;-)

My friend's cat managed to open an apartment style fridge, correctly identify a package of hot dog weiners, tear the package open and eat all 12 weiners. After that he didn't come out from under the bed for three days.

When I was in high school we had a cat that was, shall we say, not small. My cousin was staying the night (taking my bedroom) saw the cat laying on her mat. She said "Wow, your cat is really fat". Claws and teeth suddenly displayed with much hissing. it was quite a fast reaction. I grabbed the cat before any harm could be done.

That night as I sat on the couch reading, the cat walked past with that "I am going to do some damage" crouch. Walked into my room (where she never really went at night), and proceeded to "play" on top my cousin. Retrieved cat was still pretty ticked.

Yes, yes they will. And an "affront" includes leaving the house for longer than the time to the next feeding :)

Probably not much at all. Toxoplasmosis wouldn't explain a sex-biased result. Additionally there's no good evidence that the parasite affects human cognition.

Something much more simple is likely going on. In all likelihood cats are more like brood parasites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_parasite).

They're about the same size as a human infant, have faces with juvenile features (i.e. are "cute") and mine wakes me up at 2 hour intervals at night asking for food.

Basically they're furry babies.

Funny, but this point is actually quite interesting since it's an example of inter-species reciprocity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(evolution)