Yesterday I took Quark in for his annual checkup, anticipating that all he’d need are shots to make sure he doesn’t get rabies and give me some awesomely radical cat brain disease. When the vet pried him out of the confines of the loathed carrier, he took one look at him and said, “Hey, your cat needs to lose weight.”

Yes, yes, I know, I explained, but then the vet put him on the scaled and clocked him at 15.7 lbs. “Wow, that’s quite a jump up from last year.” (He was, might I add, too fat last year as well). The vet proceeded to explain that since my cat is getting up in age, he is at risk of developing diabetes. Unhappy images popped in my head of chasing my cat around the apartment with a needle full of cat insulin - at least since he’s tubby, he’s slower and easier to catch, right?

The vet then listened to his heartbeat and discovered that Quark has a (slight, low-grade) heart murmur (!). Apparently they will have to keep tabs on him and make sure it doesn’t get stronger, or more erratic, or whatever the hell heart murmurs do. It could be a congenital condition that has existed for awhile and has just now presented itself - but, I have my suspicions that it might have to do with the unhappy fact that my cat is a lard-ass. A cute, round and wonderfully affectionate lardass, but a lardass nevertheless. A dead cat is never cute.

So I am embarking on a mission to make Quark shed some kitty flub. The primary potential pitfall in this plan (pah) is that, living in what is basically a studio apartment, I have no door on my bedroom. Hence, no way to shut out a hungry headbutting cat in the middle of the night when he decides he wants food and I want sleep. Yes, the little turd knows exactly when I am at my weakest, and though he can’t quite figure out how to not get his head stuck in a doorway, has somehow managed to calculate when I am deep in the throes of a sleep cycle, and act accordingly.

One of us will make it out of this alive. Barely.