“I don’t look 40. Even my aunty said – in your late 30s”

As she proclaimed her truth, the whiskers emerged on the silhouette of her round cheeks.

My wife is a cat.

It didn’t happen overnight.

Just five years ago, she was a lizard with a pointed jaw, her eyes enchanting any interaction with her husky voice, inevitably leading to the source of the magic - her pouty lips.

I was enchanted a decade ago. Strangely, the lack of facial puff made me feel that I was hanging out with a person who was not mature for her age.

But in her late 30s, the sharp edges of her jaws lay hidden in slight layers of blub that added the characteristic maturity – a sensuous growing up to womanhood that I find irresistible.

I had become a cat a decade ago, the puffiness added by regular homage to whiskey. The puffiness didn’t stop at my face. It vibrated into my belly and eventually to my liver. I would have tested the puffiness of my internal organs if it were not for my role as a father to two little boys. I stopped and reverted to a mild cat with manageable puffiness, jawline invisible to the ravages of the 40s.

We all live through four animal phases.

Lizard, Cat, Dog, and finally Bulldog.

The transition from Lizard to Cat arrives somewhere in the early 30s for men and definitely mid-30s for women.

The dog phase is ambivalent to our real age. It is outright at the mercy of genes, the hard times of life, and the harshness of the air we get slapped around.

We pretend to be cats, hanging on desperately to the lizard phase, mildly pressing the facial muscles to an imagined ‘before’ photo that has slowly dissipated from our memory.

The lifestyle influencers sell snake oil to apply to our faces. I saw my wife religiously apply them for the shine of the youth that is slowly disappearing from our faces.

The shine is what makes us the skink-lizard, slipping away from one partner to another, hoping to experience life through the loins of endless escapades. Eventually, time puts a halt to the escapades and bolts us down to our litter box, scrolling through the lives of other skink-lizards, slipping through time’s eventual win.

Then, the dog phase arrives unannounced when our children are five years away from the lizard phase.

I noticed my metamorphosis to the dog phase when I turned 40. Two slight lines started appearing at the edge of my mouth. Not too visible for the unobservant, but for the 40th edit of my video, where I proclaimed my wisdom of writing, I could see the transition.

How long before I fully turn into a dog with the insular muscles melting away, pushing the contours of my face to a wide imagination of the time.

Like pollock paintings, I should expect the splattering of my cat face to folds and lines around my eyes, mouth, and forehead to a semblance of pruney fingers soaked in a chlorine-filled swimming pool.

I check them every morning after brushing my teeth. The slight residue of the skink-lizard shine is visible. Maybe I am imagining it. But the cat face is still intact, one whisker pressing out of my upper right cheek.

I see a white hair on my chest. Maybe this is a sign that my dog phase has begun.

The coiling of my tail to the whims of my wife and children has begun, waiting endlessly for them to return to my kennel.

I am excited, tails wagging to their absurd world, agreeing to the emotional rollercoaster they are through.

I don’t understand, but I wag my tail, looking at their eyes, to see if they notice me.

They do pet me with their affectionate words and full plate meals.

I chew them slowly, hoping to spend more time with them, before I settle into my kennel to an imaginary world of words and bytes.

The fight between the inner and outer muscles of my face has begun.

I push the falling cheeks up when I am reminded of the eventual descent to the bulldog phase.

Bulldogs are lucky.

They never arrive until you are in your late 70s.

At least you have the wonderful world to thank, even if no one is charmed by your droopy face. There is wisdom written on your face. That is what the world says.

The world wants to press your cheeks and see if the droop is real.

But no one dares. They see you for the former lizard, former cat, and fearfully – a former Rottweiler, unwilling to compromise to the passage of time, holding onto the image of the past, a past no one has any memory of. Your old Rottweiler friends have passed on.

You are now in the end phase – a Bulldog, lazily roaming around the sofa, affectionate with grandchildren, stubborn, and untrainable.

Bulldogs have seen the world – the fight of the animals.

Still, we put on our animal face, ready to fight against time. 

A fight we have never won.