Gator is open to a world of perspectives.

Gator understands that people of goodwill can disagree on many matters.

Gator also believes in telling people when they are wrong.

If you are of the opinion that there is such a thing as “too late,” Gator regrets to inform you: you are wrong.

That is not quite right. Gator does not regret this at all. Gator’s lifetime total number of regrets is zero.

Gator is gruntled to tell you that you are wrong. Gator is pleased to point out your wrongness. Gator thinks someone should write you a Wrong Song and yell your name in the chorus.

This is important. Gator can’t have one of his best friends going around saying that it is, was, or ever could be “too late.”

The stakes are high, Friend of Gator. This is not an innocent mistake. It’s not like you misidentified salad as “food,” when every cat knows salad is invalid. It’s not like you indicated that cats other than Gator are real cats, when everyone knows that non-Gator cats are on the level of mollusks and muskrats. These errors can be understood.

But if you go around saying the words “too late,” somebody might get hurt.

Who? Well, not Gator. Gator knows he is sixteen years old. Gator knows he is expected to loll in his armchair and desist dreaming new dreams. He has heard all the claptrap about old cats being “less adoptable.”

He has also heard that salad is “food.” People say a lot of things.

Meanwhile, Gator is just getting started.

If there is anything he has not yet accomplished, that’s because it was too early. “Too late” may grind his gears, but “too early” is a philosophy Gator can appreciate.

The only reason Gator has not amassed eleven gold medals is that it is a little too early. (The International Olympic Committee is still discussing whether to include “sarcasm” in the next Winter Games.)

The only reason Gator still bites people is that it is too early to stop biting people.

(The only reason Gator and Matthew McConaughey have not been spotted in the same room at the same time is because they are the same person, but that goes without saying.)

And the only reason Gator never before embarked on Gator’s Great Adventure is that it was just too early.

“Too late”? Who talks like that? Gator knows you’re better than that.

Sixteen is not too old to experience Tabby’s Place from the outside. Sixteen is not too old to stomp through grass and inform the sky that everything is alright, alright, alright.

Sixteen is certainly not too old to start walking on a harness. While we’re at it, a harness is not a means of “controlling” a cat. A harness is a means of towing a human like a tugboat.

Gator is not too old to have a real boat, which is to say a diamond-encrusted yacht with an entire deck devoted to frankfurters. But in the meantime, humans on a string will suffice.

As long as they don’t use the two worst words in all the world, and no, Gator doesn’t mean “liverwurst shortage.”

“Too late.”

Those are fighting words, you know. Gator happens to be a fighting cat, which is how he acquired a private suite and the title of Heavyweight Championship of the World. Fisticuffs are fun, but flapping your mouth about “too late” is downright dangerous.

Say “too late,” and someone out there may think eighty is an unrealistic age for archery lessons. Someone may fear their hands are too wrinkled to take up a paintbrush, or a telescope, or a contrabassoon.

Someone may even assume their ship has sailed, when Gator knows ships come sloshing in as regularly as wet food.

So lift your head and watch your words, Friend of Gator. You have not yet taken your finest walk. There are victories you cannot fathom.

If a cat resembling a twenty-pound circus peanut can have a new adventure, so can you.

Maybe you can even share a Grammy for writing that Wrong Song together.

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