Your cats are not "manipulating" you they are communicating with you. They do not understand why you're limiting their food supply or keeping them indoors or preventing them from ruining your furniture or whatever.
When they meyowl pathetically for more food, it's not because they're trying to "trick" you into feeding them again. They just want to be fed, and they're smart enough to notice the correlation between certain sounds they make and the responses they get from you.
They've figured out that if they want to communicate to you that they want more food, if they make those pathetic sounds, you're more likely to behave as if you've understood what they're trying to communicate.
When your cat waits for you to look away then yoinks food off of your plate, it's not because they love crime. It's because they're social colony creatures who instinctively share food with each other and they don't understand why you're not sharing the best foods with them.
Your cats are very intelligent, social creatures who see you as their Very Strange sibling.
They've learned how to make intricate sounds just to communicate with their humans. When the sounds they make elicit the responses they want, they learn that those sounds are the most effective way to communicate their desires.
Not because they're scheming about how to control you, but because they don't know how to communicate with you any other way.
