My mom loved the musical “Cats” when I was little. I saw it on Broadway with her in the ’80s, and her cassette tape collection of its songs were road trip staples throughout my childhood. To this day, just thinking about Grizzabella the Glamour Cat makes me tear up.

Our director of operations is a former self-professed “theater kid,” and in talking to him about “Cats,” I realized that it is a core impetus for my career in animal welfare. The idea of an elderly pet not having a home is deeply moving to me. Picturing Grizzabella wailing “Memory,” singing about how easy it is to leave her alone with her memories of her days in the sun and how beautiful she was then starts me crying every time.

I have always been a sucker for older pets. I cannot resist a gray muzzle or cloudy eyes, and my heart skips a beat for stiff joints. My current office cat is Beany, a 9-year-old cat with arthritis in her hips and knees. She is very vocal, chatting and meowing steadily, and she asks for attention with persistent head bumps against whatever part of you is closest. Until she’s done. She offers no hints that she does not want any more attention; the first clue she gives is a swat or a nip.

I was struggling with what to do about this behavior. How do we introduce a stiff, arthritic cat who has that sort of spicy demeanor to adopters without them getting hurt? Eventually, it hit me; when young cats do this, we play with them, assuming they have excess energy that needs an outlet. So, I went and got her a pile of interactive toys. She already had some passive toys like tinkle balls, but I grabbed a wand toy and a little self-powered toy that spun a butterfly around randomly. Beany LOVED that butterfly!

She chirped to it, rolled around on it, batted at it and eventually curled up around it to sleep.

Beany is young for the extent of her joint issues, and inside that body is the spirit of a cat just reaching middle age, still full of vigor and the need to play. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that I needed to figure out the best way to meet that need for her. I took this lesson home with me that night and spent some time playing not just with my 3-year-old cats but my 16-year-old cats, too. My older cats play differently — there are fewer leaps and twirls, and they don’t go for as long as the younger pair, but they enjoyed themselves and benefitted from that time.

How we enrich the lives of our older pets may be different than when they were young, but remembering that they still need and deserve that stimulation is important. Our dogs may not walk as far, or as quickly, but they still deserve the change of environment of a walk. Senior cats may have left their acrobatic days behind them, but most still enjoy play and new and different smells. Something as simple as rotating toys — putting them away for a couple months and then bringing them back out — can give a sense of novelty to a dull routine.

Older pets do spend more time sleeping in sunbeams, but like Grizzabella, they can smile at the old days, while still enjoying their lives now.

Jess Townsend is executive director of Midcoast Humane.

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