The current occupant of the household cat position is Louie, a barrel-chested, short-tailed, black-and-gray tabby cat with large, clear, deceptively thoughtful eyes. Uncle Louie and I have lived together for a little over two years, ever since I brought him home from the animal refuge on the bus, in a borrowed carrier, while he cried like a little baby about how unjust the world was and how confusing things were.

Like most cats, he is a person of simple wants and needs. He wants twice as much food as I give him, for instance, and has an accurate clock somewhere in his brain that tells him when to be hungry. Unfortunately, the clock is two hours ahead of the actual household schedule, so Louie spends a lot of time being exasperated with me.

A couple of months ago, after the vet informed me that despite all my efforts Louie had gained another pound, I started using an automatic feeder. Uncle Louie is not the sharpest tool in the drawer, so it took him a good month to connect the sound of the bell and the quiet opening of the hatch with the idea that he could eat, without having to come and get me, either before or after he ate. (Today, he finally let me sleep in, which means I will have to go back to setting my own alarm.)

Other things he requires are lap time, respectful head-scratching, and small stuffed animals to bring upstairs to me at night, while wailing like a haunt, so that if I am dropping off to sleep I have to wake up enough to take the toy from him and stuff it under my pillow (otherwise he bats it around on the bed at two in the morning.)

A requirement is also official play time, a couple of times a day. Play has very precise rules. He has no patience for laser pointers. They bore him. No, he requires a specific toy, and with a specific sequence.

First, he meows on the rug, or even goes and sits under the hook where I keep his wand toy, until I get a clue. Then, after I take down the wand with its string and its pathetic, worn-out catnip toy in the form of a mallard duck that once had catnip stuffing, he must not play immediately. Instead, he has to sharpen his claws on the rug, at length, and with determination.

After that warm-up, he is ready.

I flip the toy around, and Louie chases it, his great big chest heaving, his stubby legs pounding like thunder, his short tail lashing. Because he weighs about fourteen pounds and the throw rug is small, he shifts the throw around on the floor whenever he changes direction. If I did that, it would result in my breaking a hip, but Louie is low to the ground.

He does several mid-air flips. His flips are a majestic and improbable performance that he will enact several times in the thirty seconds or so of chasing the toy. It really is a strange sight to see him rising, curving, and tumbling in mid-air. Think whale, or possibly salmon. Something heavy, and impossible.

The moment he manages to seize the toy in his teeth, though, we switch to the important part of play time, where he stands, sides pumping in and out, staring at nothingness, head down, mallard toy dangling from his fangs, and he thinks. What he is thinking I am not sure, but it takes a long, long time, and it is dark and deep.

Then he takes a step, and then another, and while I am still holding the stick in my hand, so that I have to follow him, he walks slowly around the first floor, from living room to kitchen and back again, expression fixed. Whatever he’s doing, it’s intense hard work, sometimes five or six minutes of slow walking, dragging me behind him. Sometimes his ears flick back as he remembers I’m there, but mostly he’s just busy.

I have experimented with dropping the stick and letting him parade around without me, but it doesn’t seem to be as satisfying and he gets spooked when it clatters. I refuse to let him drag me under a chair or through his cat tree, and he has stopped trying to do that. If I yank on the toy with my stick to try to take it out of his mouth, he clenches harder.

And then, eventually, he stops, drops the mouse, and waits.

I take it back to the living room and start flipping it around, and we repeat the whole routine.

He lets me know when he’s done by walking away and doing something else, just as if he had not just been an ominous, majestic, terrifying big cat hauling a dead gazelle through the forest or whatever ancestral scenario had been glowing in his tiny brain.

He is the King. He is a Monster. He is my fearsome, endlessly patient, disapproving Uncle Louie, consenting to live with me despite my shortcomings. I try to remember that when he and I disagree on something, and I try not to take his opinions too personally, but it’s not easy.

Sometimes I think we have pets simply for the inconvenience of it all. They keep us from getting complacent about our place in the universe.