A: a cat

Nine lives or not, your cat could help you live longer. People who have owned a feline are 40% less likely to die of a heart attack, perhaps due to the pets’ anxiety-easing powers, a study from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis shows. But get this, another study says household felines are able to manipulate you at whim with an urgent sounding, high pitched meow, which is actually a purr mixed with a high pitched cry. While some owners think cats purr when they’re happy, some cats make the purr cry when they want to be fed and people find the mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore. “The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response,” explains Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. “Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is more likely to get them ejected from the bedroom. “We think cats learn to dramatically exaggerate this purr cry when it proves effective in generating a response from humans.” In other words, cats know people like the back of their paws.