NOW FOR SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT...
WHY DO CATS SIT ON WHATEVER WE ARE READING???????

I did some "research" on the ever knowing and wise internet and found this site that had me cracking up.. I was laughing so hard. Someone put this question out and some of the answers were hilarious
(and probably so true... if you live with a cat you'll know what I mean)

Here are some excerpts from: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=689123

QUESTION:

Why do cats sit on things we're reading? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Has any real, scientific research done on the subject? Specifically, do cats instinctively understand where people are paying attention to, like dogs instinctively understand when people point? Or, is it simply behavioral conditioning, as they learn that sitting on open books gets them attention? Or are books just that comfy?

ANSWERS:

• There have been studies that prove that cats are really bad at figuring out what pointing means, and that they aren't so hot at gaze-tracking either. (Dogs on the other hand are really quite good at it. Better than kids sometimes.) That said, it doesn't take a mental genius to put together the following two observations: 1) that your person is not paying attention to you. 2) your person is instead paying rapt attention to something that crinkles at regular intervals. Therefore, obvious solution is to put self on crinkly thing - you now are on top of a crinkly thing (good thing 1) AND your person is paying attention to the space you are in - therefore paying attention to you (good thing 2).
  
  
• I find that cats just really like paper and cardboard and will always try to sit or lay on it. I think it reminds them of leaves, which when they rustle means there's something to eat under there. So a little bit of the motivation is an instinct to sit and wait for prey to show up. Plus, they don't know we're reading. As far as they know, we're doing the equivalent to them staring at the wall at nothing.
  
  
• My cat just wants to be part of everything. Like when I get a package delivered and I'm trying to cut it open, she'll come over and stick her head right where the scissors are. One day I'm going to accidentally snip a whisker off and she'll have no one to blame but herself. I've noticed, though, that she doesn't care when we're reading books; it's only if we have a newspaper on the floor that she'll come and sit on it.
  
  
• Yep. Whenever I come home from the grocery store, I'll set the bags down on the kitchen floor; the cats are there in short order to inspect the new inventory. Also, my cats don't care for people food but that doesn't stop them from sniffing around my plate every damn time I sit down to eat. I guess they fancy themselves food inspectors too.
  
  
• The comic strip "Rhymes With Orange" addressed this issue. One cat said, "The newsprint takes me back to the box of my birth."
  
  
• That's how cats read.
  
  
• Seconding the "it's not floor, it's crinkly, and it gets attention" answers (see also: "if it fits, I sits"). It's especially funny to see my feline overlords trying to sit on a tiny square of paper and curling their tail around themselves so that none of their body parts are on the floor (which must be made of lava in their little kitty minds or something).
  
  
• And, as many in this thread have observed, to a cat, the best place to sit is on a thing that is on top of another thing.
  
  
• Yes, they have tiny light receptors in their anuses. And they're very near-sighted. And if they're sitting on something with texture, they use feline braille.
  
  
• I think our cat just likes to be the center of attention, so if we are looking at something, that's where she goes. A few weeks ago, my dad was helping my husband with something around the house. They were bending over a spot on the wall where they were taking a measurement, so the cat walked over and stood right in that exact spot.
  
  She doesn't usually hang around us at meal times because we eat at the countertop in our kitchen, and I think she just can't be bothered to jump up and look. But for Valentine's Day I made a nice dinner and wanted to eat in the dining room. So we are sitting down eating filet mignon, and suddenly she jumps on one of the chairs.
  
  This cat is normally fairly expressionless - she always seems to have the same look on her face all the time. But suddenly, when there was tasty food involved, she somehow got her eyes to look twice as big. So during the meal, we're sitting there looking at this.
  
  
• As I sit at my desk here in my office, our cat invariably jumps on the desk to my right, mashes her face against some ham radios, then walks over and lays on my hand whether I'm mousing or typing. She will fully sprawl over both hands on the keyboard and just look off into the distance like she's waiting for ship on horizon. She pays no attention to me, however she will accept scritches for up to 9 hours at a time.