Mother's Day Musings: Lesson Learned from a Cantankerous Cat
- May 10
- 5 min read
On this Mother's Day, 2026, I'm reflecting on motherhood and the lesson I learned about its true essence, several years after I had already become a mother myself.
When my children were young, we had a blue-eyed, fair-haired cat the kids called "Kitten." I called her the Hell Bitch. She was surly to everyone who tried to be friendly with her except my middle child, Adrienne, whom she adored, and to whom I gladly bequeathed said Hell Bitch when she married and left home. Kitten was still a kitten, though, an indoor cat, not remotely interested in exploring the out of doors, when we departed on a family vacation and left her in the care of a relative. The day we returned though, I realized our pet sitter must have inadvertently let her out. Because approaching our driveway I spied Kitten on the roof, sunburned and mad as hell, hissing and spitting and yowling...and also pregnant.
When her three babies arrived, we all watched in fascination as she licked them clean and herded those tiny blind, mewling creatures into a huddled, wiggling heap on a soft, dry towel we had provided; then circled the heap a few times, sniffing them hesitantly; then flopped down forming a letter C around them, and waited patiently for them to figure out from whence their food source emanated. She was fiercely protective of them, not allowing the other pets to come near and giving us the stink eye when we picked them up to cuddle them. Her entire self-centered, aloof personality changed as she devoted herself, body and soul, to being a mom. She frequently moved them to remote corners, I'm assuming to protect them from the predators lurking in our house. My husband once made the mistake of leaving a drawer open, and we discovered the lot of them buried snugly in his underwear. She carried those babies around by the scruff of their necks until they were almost as big as she, and finally, when two of them had been adopted and the third was big enough to take care of himself, she breathed a sigh of relief and returned to focusing on being a sullen, narcissistic banshee, devoid of
affection for anyone but Adrienne.
What I learned from that experience is what everyone who has grown up around animals and/or reads National Geographic, knows about mothers---that nurturing and protecting our children, the minute we first lay eyes on them, is not taught. It's instinctive for most females, even if that tiny child is not our biological child. Though our mothering skills are ongoing and often reflective of our own mothers' child-rearing techniques, God created us with a built-in mechanism that kicks in at first sight of this tiny creature, engendering a type of all-encompassing love we have never felt before, and resulting in a conviction that we would jump in front of a moving train to protect this tiny, helpless being from harm... for the rest of our lives.
Sure, not all moms automatically feel that unique "mother love," for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they are ill, mentally unbalanced, or addicted. Or perhaps there is no real explanation for their failure to bond. But those mothers are rare amongst the entire mother population, thankfully, and usually there are other mothers who step in willingly to nurture this unfortunate child as they would their own.
Today, Mother's Day, I was looking at the photos of the mothers who have had a part of my life, the ones who influenced my own perceptions of what being a mother entailed. They came from various walks of life and belief systems and were each unique in their own way, but they all shared one characteristic. They loved their children with an unconditional love that knew no bounds and raised their children to the best of their ability. Even if those children didn't deserve it...and some definitely didn't. That's why I am perplexed by the seemingly common practice today, especially among younger generations, of going "no contact" with parents (primarily mothers) whom they deem to be "toxic." My age influences my prejudice, no doubt, but digging deeper into these relationships, barring actual abuse and neglect, I find that these children just disagree with their parent philosophically, or they dislike certain personality traits their parent exhibits, or they feel that the parent doesn't respect their "boundaries." But,the real problem, in most instances, is that the parent is not toxic, but human, with human flaws; and the unwillingness or inability of the child and/or parent to communicate their feelings effectively and the other party to listen, leads to an extremely painful separation that is neither satisfying nor healthy for the parent OR the child.
It's a very sad trend. Because, in most cases, that unique mother's love that most of us mothers possess is still an integral part of us, and the voluntary absence of that child we carried in our own bodies and loved so intensely from the moment they came into the world, cuts a piece out of our hearts that will leave a scar for a lifetime. And I can't begin to fathom the grief of a mother who loses a child to death. I still remember, when my dad and I visited my paternal Grandma Tingley, after she had suffered a massive stroke, she didn't recognize us, but repeatedly asked us to help her look for her baby at the foot of the bed. She had once awakened, many decades before, to find that her infant boy, whom she had fallen asleep with while nursing, had died. Her pain at his death and that of another baby from respiratory illness, even though she had eight other healthy children, left an imprint on her soul that she bore till her death a few days later. I like to think those babies were the first to greet her in Heaven.
So, I'll be forever grateful for that cantankerous feline who hated my guts, for teaching me a lesson about nature and nurture that has stayed with me through three children, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. There is no love quite like a mother's love, nor will there ever be an equivalent.
Happy Mother's Day to all my friends and family.
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