Oswald: Friend or Fiend?

I think this should go out to a vote.  (See above, Oswald's myspace picture.)

The Man and I bought a cat last October, ostensibly to keep him company while he was living by himself in DC before we got married, mostly because I wanted a cat and the Man spoils me ridiculously.  Unfortunately, we couldn't take Os with us to Texas after we got married so he spent 4 months in Lebanon with my oldest sister and her husband, wrecking havoc and generally rampaging.  They say they loved him. They also say that they will now never own pets. So Oswald came back into our ownership around the middle of May and, since then, has been going back and forth from my black list to my favourites list.

Here's the situation (you can judge for yourself). 

He's adorable, extremely personable, and highly amusing. However, he's destructive as all get out, overly opinionated, and occasionally violent.  I love: that he comes to cuddle with me in the mornings, that he likes to be petted in the middle of the night when I go to the bathroom, that he chases his tail...and bites it, that his mouth opens up a good two inches like that snake that can unhinge its jaw.  Plus, he's just so darn cute.  However, I highly dislike Oswald's propensity to: chew through important wires (like my laptop charger...which cost 80 bucks to replace), climb on my newly sanitized kitchen counters, meow and throw himself at our bedroom door if we don't get up early enough in the morning, beg for food when we're eating dinner (sounds cute; gets old fast), chew on the blinds, and bite when you don't pet him exactly where he wants to be petted.

Can you understand my dilemma? I'm past the point of wanting to drown him in the nearby Potomac (I was so close the weekend where he chewed through 6 major cords in the space of 24 hours), but I'm still not completely sure where my opinion of him lies.  So what do you think? Friend or foe? Let's take a vote.