As I do every evening after I feed him and give him his treat, last night I was playing with Uncle Louie to give him some exercise and excitement. I have a long plastic wand with a sort of disheveled acid-green pompom at the end of it, that I can whip around while he does 180° turns and flips on the rug, chasing it.

I always have something in my spare hand to read while I flail it around, because usually, after he catches the pompom, he lowers his head and starts dragging it determinedly from one part of the house together, and all I can do is follow. Often, he also stops in place, and starts hunching and compressing his hindquarters. In other words, he is confusing the prey drive with the mating drive, and he is gonna screw that pompom if it kills him. Yes, he is neutered. It makes no difference to Louie. He is a cat, not a fluffy toy, and he has instincts.

Eventually he drops it, and we repeat the process until he loses interest and sits down to lick his groin. Louie is not being romantic, he’s being a cat.

There is a particular genre of social media that displays, say, a photo or video of a bobcat or a tawny frogmouth owl, and someone else comments, “If not fren why fren-shaped?” or some such affectionate drivel. People get mauled all the time because they treat large savage animals like cat toys themselves, shoving, for instance, moose into a better position so they can take a photograph, or reaching in through a fence to pat a tiger.

The videos that annoy me the most are the ones where someone has taken a couple of Border collies or Australian shepherds (brilliant, driven individuals) and taught them to fling one foreleg over one another’s shoulders in a parody of human friendship. It obviously took a lot of training, because dogs don’t cuddle like humans naturally and their shoulders aren’t built for the gesture. There they are, those dogs, staring fixedly at the camera, looking vastly uncomfortable, and clearly waiting until they are released from the strictures of command. Yes, dogs love each other, and even us, because they are pack animals. They are sweet and funny, But they are not human beings and we don’t have to force them into the frame of cuteness.

I think I can best explain my sensations by saying that I have an acquaintance who sometimes asks me how things are going, and when I answer by telling her what’s going on with my grandson, she says, “Cute.” I know when she says that, she isn’t all that interested. She doesn’t think it’s important. It’s cute. Enough said. Now to the real conversation.

I let Uncle Louis hump his cat toy while I hold onto the stick and follow him around, reading on my phone, because either both of us are cute or neither of us is. I respect Uncle Louie deeply, even if he doesn’t respect me much. Also, he is round and fluffy and makes a little burbling sound as he stares in my eyes in the morning. But I always try to remember that he is just as alien to me as any other animal is, including human beings.