Aimee Means Loved, What My Cat Taught Me About Mothering

I can’t say it was love at first sight because my husband Wes and I adopted our semi-feral cat, Aimee, from a Cape Cod animal shelter in April, sight unseen. She was just a trembling terrycloth towel. 

The shelter staff warned us, while Aimee shivered, that she had come from a hoarding house in Florida, and she might never overcome her fear of people and become the family-friendly feline we were hoping for. 

“That’s okay,” I said, lowering my expectations with the understanding that I’d have to learn to love her unconditionally as-is, but secretly hoping that her skittish behavior might lessen over time as we earned her trust and allayed her fears. 

Because I am an adoptee, I vowed to love her regardless of whether she loved me.

Besides, Aimee meant ‘loved’ in French, and I was determined to love her on her own terms. 

Confined to the bathroom for the first two months she lived with us, Aimee was a pair of flashing yellow eyes. She hid inside the vanity and on the bathtub between the shower curtains, where I first heard her purring at me as I set down her food bowls. I whispered, narrating my every move to her, and I bribed her with special treats to explore her kitty condo. 

As Aimee crossed the threshold from confinement to the bathroom to exploring our tiny home, I confess I deployed canned tuna to entice her to eat in the kitchen. Her trust in me grew as she paraded around my ankles and herded me from the kitchen to the living room like a border collie. 

But Aimee still refused to let me pet her, preferring instead to smash her head into all the corners and edges she could find on her level. So as not to disturb Aimee’s hard-earned trust, I, in turn, tried to wait for an invitation to touch her. 

Eventually, she jumped up onto the back of my loveseat, and I spread a fuzzy blanket on her new perch. “May I sit beside you on the loveseat, Aimee?” I asked, “I promise to respect your safe space.” With her ember and ash tortoise-shell coat of fur, it was very hard not to pet her. There were times she was too irresistible not to touch, for like, say, a nose boop, even.

After another month passed, Aimee accidentally permitted me to touch the top of her head when she was head-butting the kitchen trashcan and closed her eyes in pleasure as I rubbed between her eyes and ears. For five seconds, we both forgot our fear of one another, and in that moment, Aimee almost became my tame, domesticated cat. However, she retreated in fear when she opened her eyes and saw me petting her, and I withdrew my hand to avoid being swiped by her sharp claws.

By the end of June, Aimee approached me with her rumbling, electric-knife purr and rammed her head into my hand. At last, an invitation for me to pet her!

One time I dozed off on the loveseat and awoke to Aimee gently combing a tendril of my hair with her claw. Within a week Aimee exposed her furry white belly to me while in her safe spot on the loveseat, an act of submission and trust. “You are such a lovebug, Aimee,” I cooed as I gently massaged the extra-soft fur on her underside. Upside-down, she kneaded the air with her paws as she purred.

Now that Aimee and I have completely bonded, here are some of the lessons she has imparted to me: We all deserve to be loved on our own terms, with a healthy dose of respect, and trust must be earned slowly over time. 

Most importantly, I learned love is largely intuitive and is about keeping your heart open to deep listening. Here is how I learned this truth. This October, six months after her adoption, Aimee jumped up on our bed and presently enjoys snuggling with me and my husband all night …

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Recently, in my dreams, I heard my daughter calling for me. The cries were so real and plaintive that I bolted upright and jumped out of bed. Knowing that my daughter would not be here with me, I intuitively searched for Aimee instead. 

Had I heard Melissa crying, ‘Mom?’ Or was it Aimee meowing?

I texted Mel that night, explaining I had awoken from a dream to her sobs. 

The next morning, Mel confided in me that she was okay now, but she’d been a little sad that night. “It’s almost like you sensed it somehow,” she replied. 

“I wonder why you were sad,” I texted back. Melissa shared her sadness with me, entrusting me with her feelings and story.

In the afternoon light, I read Aimee's medical records from the Humane Society in Florida, in which the vet noted “her soft postpartum belly.” 

Finally, I understood how Aimee and I are so deeply connected: We are both mothers haunted by our missing babies and both in need of our own mothering.

When we first adopted Aimee, I was hoping for companionship, but Aimee became so much more to me than a companion cat. She was a kitten and a mother. An empath who opened my heart to the part of love that knows deep listening, and guides with intuition. Aimee has led me back to myself and made me aware again of my deep connection with my daughter. And yet, as much as she has mothered me, I feel that I am also Aimee’s mother.