My current cat is Uncle Louie, a ten-year-old black-and-gray tabby, with big clear candid eyes marked with black eyeliner all the way around, exuberant whiskers, and a dark rose-colored nose. He is also roughly the shape of a basketball when he’s sitting, and the shape of a buffalo when he’s standing up.

At my last vet visit, a humorless vet lectured me at length about the stress overweight puts on cat bodies and prescribed a glutinous “metabolic” diet that costs twice as much as normal canned food. The vet before that (I go to a practice, and can’t pick my doctors) suggested an automatic feeder.

I preferred my old veterinarian, who owned an overweight cat herself and understood the problems involved with putting a cat on a diet, but she left the practice.

Cats, tiny predators and obligate carnivores, are made mostly out of loose hair, claws, terror, and willpower, with the willpower being the most prominent characteristic, especially when it comes to food. We owned a cat, Comma, who had an even more ferocious appetite than Louie does, and when she started throwing up after eating, we just figured her eyes were bigger than her belly, as the grandmotherly saying goes. It turned out instead that she had been nurturing a benign tumor the size of a grapefruit, and had to have surgery. Afterwards she went back to gobbling, but without the vomit, and gained the weight back without the tumor. The point being that even when she physically couldn’t eat, Comma didn’t waste away. No, she ate anyway.

The cat previous to Uncle Louie was Sugar, who never weighed more than six and a half pounds the whole time she was with us and who ate much more judiciously, but she was determined too. We got her out of the back yard; she had been begging food from everyone in an eight-block radius in order to stay alive, but after she moved in with us and the nourishment was guaranteed, she stayed dainty.

Louie serves a function. He provides a sardonic counterpoint to my complacency, because on the whole. he disapproves of me. That’s why he’s an uncle. My great-uncle explicitly disinherited me because I was bad (I was). My mother’s brother disapproved of my writing, my politics, and my behavior. (The other uncles weren’t quite sure who I was, mind you). I had not done anything particularly egregious, they just looked down their noses, and that’s what Uncle Louie does.

If I only behaved myself, he would be happy. Making him happy would involve several regular meals a day, very (very) brief periods of playing (he exerts himself for approximately two minutes and then is done), and lots of me sitting down so he can sit on me. He likes petting, but only for a while, and not too hard. He regulates the petting with a gentle bite that does not hurt. He nags by patting me with his paw, and if I ignore him, by picking at me with his blunt claws. Mostly, he wants me to sit down or lie down, so he can come wash himself and then take a nap on top of me.

It is unfortunate that I do not know my place, and insist on walking around or even leaving the house.

It is also extremely unfortunate that I do not feed him six times a day. Sometimes, if I leave his empty plate out on the floor, he goes out to the kitchen and licks it pointedly until he has scooted it against the wall, or he eats dust off the floor. Sometimes he lands on my lap with his little fluffy hooves and lashes his tail. I spend a lot of time saying, “No, Louie. Not gonna happen, Louie.” He opens his mouth and says, “Food,” in his little baby voice. “No, Louie,” I say with increasing impatience, and we repeat the interaction.

I tried an automatic feeder, but he didn’t like it because it was too high and too narrow, and he had to eat with his head hung over the dish and his whiskers tickling the sides.

Uncle Louie may be my last cat, because I am increasingly tired of scraping the litter and not being able to go away without making arrangements, and also because I am growing older and don’t need the responsibility.

Of course, I said the same about Sugar before him. I held strong for some months.

However, Louie ably takes the place of my late husband, which is to say he’s someone to talk to, feed, take care of, and argue with. And when I come into the house, I can say, “Hey, Louie,” and he comes chirping down the stairs, his belly wagging. There’s a lot to be said for that. It’s nice to have someone who is glad to see you, no matter what the reason is.