You probably thought you'd never live to see the day, but time is finally up for The Now and Forever Musical. Next month - on September 10 - Cats turns into memories, exiting the Winter Garden Theatre on its 7,485th performance, more than any show in Broadway history.

And you'd better believe that Gillian Lynne, its choreographer and chief caretaker, will be in attendance to witness its passage into theatrical history. "How strange, how sad it'll be to walk down Broadway and not see those enormous cat eyes," she sighs wistfully.

Lynne is the lone female among the creators who delivered Cats and, arguably, its most unsung contributor. She, after all, set this whole feline phenomenon into musical motion and returned once a year for the next 17 years to keep it spruced up and free of fur balls. There was no Tony Award for this or, just as incredibly, for John Napier's eyepopping set (an outsized rubbish heap that the Cats cast cozily inhabited) - but the show was honored in virtually every other category: composer (Andrew Lloyd Webber), director (Trevor Nunn), producers (Cameron Mackintosh, David Geffen, The Really Useful Company, Inc. and The Shubert Organization), acting (Betty Buckley), costume designer (Napier), lighting designer (David Hersey), even its late "lyricist" (T.S. Eliot, whose Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was posthumously appropriated for the occasion).

This slighting of Lynne doesn't still her litter or lessen their lineage, obviously. "At least 600" is her best guess of the number of cat dancers she has handled in different casts all over the world. "I cannot tell you how lovely that is for me. Everywhere I go in the world there's a group of people who've done Cats. We're like a family. That makes me proud."

Gillian Lynne was no stranger to Broadway when Cats crawled into the Winter Garden on October 7, 1982. She originally arrived here a David Merrick discovery of 1965 - to repeat the choreography she did in London for The Roar of the Greasepaint- The Smell of the Crowd - but their paths had crossed a year before.

"Here's why I always loved David Merrick: David Merrick got on a plane and flew to Edinburgh and came to the little theatre under a church where my show was. It was called Collages, and it was the Contact of its day - a jazz dance-classical dance all rolled into one, with words and a score by Dudley Moore. After the show he asked to see me and said, 'I'll have you on Broadway within a year.' I thought it was a load of nonsense."

But, with typical determination, Merrick made it happen, circuitously paving the way from Edinburgh to Broadway: "He told Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse they should use me to stage Roar of the Greasepaint in London. They knew me only as a performer." [Lynne was a ballerina at Sadler's Wells for seven years before stepping off into more mainstream theatrical roles-like Gwen Verdon's in the London Can-Can.] Merrick prevailed, of course. He also brought to Broadway Pickwick - with the proviso that Lynne rechoreograph it - and he used her again to choreograph How Now, Dow Jones.

For the next 23 years Lynne toiled in London's West End, choreographing and assistant-directing "around eight" shows with Trevor Nunn, her Cats cohort. When the call to Cats came, it couldn't have been more inconvenient for her. She was deep into Oklahoma! in Bristol, having put her own honeymoon with actor-singer Peter Land on hold to do some choreographic nips and tucks for producer Cameron Mackintosh.

It was Mackintosh who made the life-altering call. "I wanted to go back to London quickly to see Peter, but Cameron said, 'No, no, you're not going to do that. You're going to Newbury. Andrew Lloyd Webber will meet you there, and you're going to talk to him.' And I said, 'I'm not. I'm going back to London' I was quite scrappy about it-and he said, 'Listen, Gillian, just listen to me very carefully. There is this T.S. Eliot book being brought around to you at the stage door. I want you to read it on the train, go to Newbury and meet Andrew.' Course, that's what I did. Andrew met me at the station, drove to Sydmonton, his beautiful country house, gave me a glass of wine and played me the score. We both got so excited we just threw ideas out at each other. We talked at the same time, so I don't think either of us heard what the other said. To this day I don't know how I got it, but he went right to the phone and told Cameron, 'I want Gillie to do it."'

Chris Walker, who would become the first musical director of Cats, made a crucial contribution, too. His wedding gift to the newlyweds couldn't have been more apt: a couple of cats, named "Rhett" and "Scarlett," whose movements made their way into her choreography. Another influence: studying in Paris with the great mime teacher, Jacques Le Coo. "It stretched not only my physical facility but my imaginative facility," she says.

When Cats closes, Gillian Lynne will be left with more than, er, "Memory"s. She still has The Phantom of the Opera on the boards - "thank God for that or I'd have withdrawal symptoms"- and, if ever Cats can be topped, it will probably be by Phantom. To have provided the musical steps for two such long-distance runners is something to purr about.