The bad news: cat's are definitely higher than us on command chain.
The good news: we humans, are definitely more trainable.
It's no wonder cat's are so good at managing people - they are just very efficient! It takes us tons of words, to express a simple command, while cats are very succinct.
For example, we would say:"Would you please kindly drop everything you do right this second and come and scratch my belly, just because I so fancy. And besides, it went unscratched and unattended for the whole 5 minutes, so it is about time I plead to social service for emotionally neglected cats!". It is kinda longish, isn't it?
And the cat? Le chat, if you will? Just goes: "Meeeeow!" and it's all pretty clear. It just takes a couple of attempts to get the human to know this request and to teach her to distinguish it from victorious hunting yell, when chasing oversized pigeons(they are on the other side of the window anyway:)