It seems as if there’s always some kind of feline holiday crouched around the corner, wriggling its bottom, ready to pounce. National Cat Day, National Feral Cat Day, National Hairball Awareness Day, Happy Mew Year — even the dog days of August are filled with feline jubilees.

A celebration on Tuesday stands out from the pride, however, because it promises to deliver our cats what they most deserve, which is not a Meowjito. It’s Respect Your Cat Day, an opportunity to pay homage to that mysterious silken life form beside you, which can hear the height of sounds and has beaten the evolutionary odds to occupy your lap.

Sadly, as cat lovers we don’t always fully grasp the formidable feline qualities we should be honoring. Respect Your Cat Day’s literature (mostly a news release put out by the folks at a website called National Today, who claim the source of the holiday dates back to an 1384 edict by Richard II of England forbidding the consumption of cats) highlights some impressive statistics about our “feline besties,” including the revelation from a survey that “64 percent of Americans” allegedly prefer their cat’s company to their significant other’s. (No comment, dear.)

But when it comes to how, exactly, people go about respecting their cats, the survey’s findings seem a little misguided, if not downright disrespectful:

Give your cat verbal compliments? Please. Cats emphatically do not understand English and studiously disregard their owner’s calls. With their supersensitive hearing, some may dislike the volume of the human voice, especially in confined quarters. When speaking in the feline presence, you might even consider consulting a decibel meter to ensure your jibber-jabber does not irritate their ears. If you flatter your cat, do so in a reverent whisper.