My cat wakes me up at 2:40am every day for food -
At which time I get out of bed, trudge downstairs, and prepare the food.
Mind control? It’s already here. Fnord.
For where we live in Kentucky now, cats are a way to keep critters down. People have lots, and when they get run over by cars (happens a lot), they just make more. Our neighbor has five or six cats, none of which ever see the inside of the house. We accidentally ran one down a couple months ago. We apologized and felt really bad, but they said “no big deal”. They treated it as if we had run down one of their chickens.
Cat’s don’t make people crazy around here, but they do keep the field mice down.