I want to believe that everyone I love will remain young.

Of course my mother is still thirty-five. She is every bit as thirty-five as she was when she packed my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

Of course Angelo is still a youth. He is not a seventeen year old cat so much as a seventeen year old boy, with his baseball cap on sideways and no summer job lined up.

But then a stranger calls my parents “adorable” in an Applebee’s, and I realize they are “adorable” years old.

Then I look into Angelo’s eyes and see clouds as creamy as Alfredo sauce.

Time invites itself, unbidden, into our years. I react the way mature adults do. I run down the hallway.

I consult Mr. Mustache, who seems too young for facial hair. When a new kid joins his class, Suite D’s sweetest proves his youth.

Only a child would welcome strangers without requiring them to become less strange. Only a recent arrival to Earth would see kindred spirits where others see competition.

Mr. Mustache shares his cookies. Mr. Mustache offers his unguarded belly as a pillow, before he has even seen the back of your head. Mr. Mustache turns his back and does not expect to be pelted with pistachios or disappointment.

Then I look at Mr. Mustache’s paw pads, and I see the whorls of age. The body that holds his kitten-heart has walked longitudes. His kidneys are older than his prudence.

He has been hiding in plain sight on kindergarten graduation day for fifteen years. He has grown old, not wary.

I sprint, my legs feeling older than nine years, although I don’t remember turning ten. Surely, Patches will comfort me. She is every pastel of springtime, untanned by summer. Like many confused old kittens before me, I bury my face in her snow-patched quilt.

I implore her to stay, forever, as young as she is today.

She reminds me she is sixteen. She reminds me that sixteen, thirty-five, and eighty-eight can all be considered one’s “prime.” She reminds me that the same sun that crinkles my forehead is her role model.

She is the halcyon helios at the center of the Community Room. Her organs are older than her anthem. She welcomes cats, years, and dingbats dressed as Development Directors.

I am too childish and too senile to listen. I cover my ears when the years are recited. I want all my loves to remain young, and so to live forever.

I do not mind age, only its implications.

I run all the way to the final classroom in our circuit, sunny Suite J. I must consult Copycat. She is the size of a kitten. She is the highlight of my donor tours. “Guess her age!” I command. The punch line peeks out of the question, but donors dutifully get it wrong. “Six months!” “Five years!” “Ten years?”

“Possibly as old as nineteen!” I whoop, and Copycat shouts, and everyone laughs at the cat who has finally outsmarted aging.

But then someone comments that Copycat sounds like Bea Arthur, or that her pea-soup eyes “give away her age.” I turn protective, petulant. Copycat’s brassy voice and balmy eyes do not betray her. Copycat will give you compliments and arpeggios for free. But she will not bow the knee to the monarchy of time.

“She is a kitten,” I tell them, hiding the arctic fox in my arms. But you cannot hide a cat who was born to show the world how to show up.

Copycat was not born yesterday. Copycat does not care that she is no longer young.

My parents bow like Emmy winners when they are declared “adorable.” They raise their arms in victory, still holding hands. Seventy outshines thirty-five.

I am not afraid of numbers, not exactly.

I am greedy for insurance against grief. I am looking to refinance the house of love against loss.

If cats could live to eighty and parents to eight hundred, I would be satisfied.

For awhile.

But we cannot make memories without letting time make art with our bodies. We cannot cut ourselves off from age and remain braided together.

I want to believe that everyone I love will remain young. But my heart is strong enough to receive something better.

Perhaps I don’t want to believe that they will remain young. Perhaps I’m yearning for them to stay untouched by age, which is something else entirely.

It is the impish electricity that still powers Mr. Mustache’s “bienvenue” to every new suitemate.

It is the fresh poetry that propels Patches nose-to-nose with whoever is small and sad.

It is the cackle jangling like a jingle bell at the end of Copycat’s shouts.

It is the jagged pout that softens to a smile when you realize we are still together, today.

I am not yet young enough to accept all that age asks of me. But I have mentors who will share their soft coats and their favorite jams.

We do not have forever, unless you count today. It is enough.

Oh yes, one last thing. That Copycat of ours? In the second kittenhood they call old age, she has been adopted by one of the kindest, coolest, warmest, most wonderful volunteers who hath ever trod the earth.

The best is yet to come, kittens of all ages.

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