AMAZING FELINES
The Well-Travelled Cat
The story behind the story.
According to various surveys, the average domestic cat seldom travels over 100m from its home. This is the story of a cat who covered roughly 42,234 km, or 26,242 miles, with his beloved mamma, from South Africa to New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and Canada. This is his account of the highs and lows, impressions and opinions of life, travel, people, aging… and dogs.
The Well-Travelled Cat is a memoir narrated by an 18-year old metrosexual feline who led the most extraordinary life. Brutally honest with touches of sarcasm, he tells the story of his life, his travels, and the humans that he encountered. Many consider cats to be Zen Masters and excellent teachers, and Jaime was no exception. He taught his mamma patience, unconditional love, the importance of being in the moment, and deep commitment as they travelled the world together for almost nineteen years.
This is the “book jacket” for Jaime’s story released in September 2021.
Whilst I have mentioned my darling little kitty in numerous articles and posts, I have yet to talk about how his story came to be immortalized in a memoir.
For Jaime’s entire life, I was teased about how close I was to him. I often heard:
In my next life, I want to come back as one of your cats.
I would race home after a day of meetings in another city to make sure that Jaime wasn’t alone for even one night, turning an average work day into an extra long one. I was scoffed at for not taking a complimentary night in a hotel on the work’s dime, preferring to get home to him.
“Come on,” one colleague would say, trying hard not to roll his eyes as he looked at me incredulously. “He can be alone for one night.”
Well, I didn’t think so and wasn’t at all concerned that others saw me as ridiculous. Jaime was my priority and I adored him. Why would I leave him for the night and upset him when I didn’t have to?
My relationship with that beautiful boy could be summed up in the words a colleague once said to me when recounting what she told others about us:
“You’d think she’s crazy to spend all that money taking Jaime around the world with her until you see them together, then you understand.”
You see, Jaime picked me.
He followed me around a room full of kittens in the local SPCA in Cape Town, South Africa, finally settling under my left leg as I squatted down to pet his soon-to-be brother, Joey, a ginger kitty I had already picked out.
A friend had noticed the little black and white bundle of fur that had been tailing me, I had not.
“You have to take him” she said, “he’s been following you the whole time; he’s chosen you”.
“Are you serious? I didn’t even notice him. He’s been following me this whole time?” I questioned.
“Yes, everywhere you’ve gone, he’s been a few steps behind you, and look at him now, he’s nestled underneath your leg.”
I looked down and sure enough, there he was. I stroked his fur as he looked up at me hopefully. I picked him up, looked into his green eyes, and kissed the top of his head — it was in that moment that we both knew we were for each other — an immediate connection.
“Okay, you’re right,” I said to my friend, “I have to take him.”
Jaime had quite the personality on him; part asshole, part angel, and I loved every ounce of it. He was definitely a character and anyone who watched him for more than a day experienced both aspects of his unique disposition.
Back to the reason his story became public.
I said it in passing, the idea that had been percolating in my mind for some time.
“I’ll have to write his story one day, from his perspective. Can you imagine how he’d look at things? The stories that boy could tell!”
I said it to the same friend who had noticed our connection. She looked at me as if Einstein had just uttered his latest epiphany.
“Oh my God! You HAVE to write that. Now! You have to write it now,” she exclaimed, demanding her copy first in almost the same breath.
After that slip of the proverbial tongue, she wouldn’t let it go. Like a dog with a bone, she asked me continuously whether I had started his book yet. To which I kept a standard reply of, “Soon.”
Many years later, and after a failed attempt at moving to the USA, I found myself in Canada with my darling, sweet boy. He was nearing the end of his incredible life and we both knew it.
I knew no one in my new city and had very little else to do bar my job of teaching English online. I didn’t have a car in a city where you needed one, so road trips were also out of the realm of possibility despite wanting desperately to investigate my surroundings.
More importantly, Jaime was in the last few months of his life and I didn’t want to leave him alone for very long, so I wrote.
And I wrote and I wrote.
His story, his words, they poured out of me. It was as if I was channelling him. I knew him inside and out my fingers couldn’t move across the keyboard quickly enough.
I wrote in my apartment, my laptop perched on my lap as I allowed the love and pain to seep from my body, looking over at the sleeping angel next to me as I laid my hand on his small and frail frame between sessions.
Jaime died before I finished the first draft of his book.
After a few weeks of mourning my loss, I found the courage to pick up the pages again. I thought it would be too painful to continue his story having just lost him, but it felt more like a celebration of his life than an agonizing remembrance.
There were parts that I struggled immensely to write and others that had me smiling and laughing as I recalled them.
The final chapter of the book, which consisted of two pages, was the hardest to write. It is the only chapter told from my perspective and recounts the last day of his beautiful and inspiring life.
At eighteen a parent usually sends their child off into the big bad world, sometimes to college, sometimes to a job, sometimes to find themselves in travel.
At eighteen years, three-hundred and twenty-one days, I sent mine to his next soul adventure.
Forty-five days shy of nineteen years is all I had with him, and I’d take nineteen more.
For less than a cup of coffee, you can lose yourself in Jaime’s story. Click here to purchase your copy of The Well-Travelled Cat.
For a little more Jaime and other animals, please click below.
