Patches is not yet one hundred eight years old.
Theodosia is actually pretty close, but if you tell her I said that, I will never live to reach forty-four years old.
I would like to reach forty-four years old. I would like to reach Patches years old, and then onward to Theodosia years old. I would like to do this, even though my face, my memory, and my 5K time may change.
(Two out of three, anyway. My race time is currently “one billion years.”)
I have never understood the strategies of “tantrum” and “despair” when it comes to age. We are going to get older. If we cannot stop it, we have permission to aggressively enjoy it.
In the right light, every uninvited freckle is a sprinkle of nutmeg. They aren’t age spots, they’re ocelot spots, and we are turning wilder.
If our hair goes pastel, we’ll look better than ever in neon.
But maybe I feel this way because I spend so much time with Patches and Theodosia.
Patches has been pastel since the day she came mewling into this world. She has never stepped anywhere that wasn’t “the right light,” even when the shadows came.
She lost her person when she was sixteen, but she has been accumulating persons ever since.
The list of Patches’ Personal Persons is longer than a menu at Cheesecake Factory. The criteria for being one of Patches’ Personal Persons are as follows:
1. Be a person
That’s it. That’s the list.
This is the part of the blog where a watercolor cat intervenes. It is important to Patches that I clarify: the world’s foremost “person enthusiast” defines persons broadly.
Patches has room on her blanket for human persons, feline persons, persons who will never bring her leftovers from Cheesecake Factory, and Congresspersons.
She hypothesizes she would also love skinks, wombats, and mollusks, so they have been granted provisional person status pending her acquaintance.
Naturally, Patches’ passion for persons has made her popular at Tabby’s Place. She is the sun of the Community Room solar system, warmth and light for neighbors of all ages. She will go nose-to-nose with anyone who needs to know that they are divine.
There are cats who love cats, and then there is Patches, the cat who loves the world back to its youth.
If you were to ask Patches the secret of aging well, her eyes would water. Secret? Patches does not believe in secrets. Patches believes in sharing everything wonderful with everyone she can locate.
Patches has never been able to locate her own birth certificate, or yours, so she assumes you are both still kittens.
Then there is Theodosia.
Theodosia has not met Patches, although Patches has Theodosia to thank for Atari. Being a feline person, Atari is one of Patches’ Favorite Persons.
Patches does not need to know that Atari crossed the full landscape of Tabby’s Place to acquire distance from Theodosia’s rage. (Patches would forgive Theodosia instantly. Patches carries a backup supply of Benefits of the Doubt at all times.)
Theodosia has not met Patches, and Theodosia would prefer to keep it that way.
The titanium queen with a tidbit of a tail is slightly more selective when it comes to her friends. Theodosia’s criteria are as follows:
1. Be a human person.
2. I said HUMAN.
Theodosia loves as wildly as Patches. Her half-inch reminder of a tail goes turbo in the presence of, say, you.
One of the smallest cats at Tabby’s Place sees an eighty-foot-tall intergalactic leopard in the mirror, and she sees the purpose of life in your eyes. Her stripes are a matching set of dignity and delight, and the only way to make her cross is to think you can make her happier than she makes you.
Theodosia is the stern grandmother who will make your favorite French toast and memorize the names of all your stuffed bears. She has a great deal to say, because she has lived through wars and pandemics and all the years before she met you.
She has limited patience with cats, because she sees them as mental larvae with the emotional depth of sea monkeys.
However, she has unlimited advice for aging well. 
If you think of all the heartwarming articles you’ve ever read about “How Verna Mae Van der Tunken lived to 108!”, they are basically all about Theodosia.
Her morning routine would include Psalms and bourbon. She decided at eighty that it was high time to learn to do a proper cartwheel.
She says things like, “Keep your hand on the throttle and your eye upon the rail.” She has a hundred thousand Twitch followers, slack-jawed at her Apex Legends prowess. She had her first poem published at a hundred. She is fluorescently fond of herself.
She is going to get older.
She can hardly wait.
With role models like Patches and Theodosia, neither can I.