WATCH: Missing Long Island Cat Rings Owner's Doorbell, Seems To Meow 'Mom'

MASTIC BEACH, NY — Animal lover Stefanie Whitley has always had a penchant for picking up strays and getting them back on their four paws.

The Mastic Beach mom has helped animals all her life, and she can't recall a time when she didn't have at least one or two felines who came upon permanent homes as a part of her family. When a friend at a local veterinary practice told her about a litter of kittens — one was actually a squirrel kit saved by a firefighter from a dumpster — Whitley's interest was piqued.

The newborns were about the same color. While a staffer took on the baby squirrel, a gray kitten with a charcoal nose named Lilly, similar to her surrogate littermate, stole Whitley's heart at just 4 weeks old.

Whitley took her home, hand-raised her, and bottle-fed her until she was strong enough to eat without prompting. They formed a life-long bond.

"I just fell in love with her," Whitley gushed.

She knew Lilly was special. Even her name.

As Whitley was trying to devise a name for her tiny friend, one kept coming to her, and that was "Lilly." It stuck.

Later she told her friend at the vet's office and the woman got chills from her admission. A dog that had been put to sleep the same day had the same name.

"Oh, my gosh; it's crazy," she said. "It's a sign."

Like Whitley, Lilly has had a penchant of her own.

One of them was part of her persona as a cat who owned humans, but was also able to leave her castle and explore the fiefdom — going outside to exercise her territorial rights on her block. She was the boss of Vernon Avenue in Mastic for years, and had no problem vanquishing rivals who overstepped their claws in her prowls.

Whitley described Lilly as behaving less like that of an unattached, carefree cat, but instead, "honestly like a dog."

"She responds to her name," Whitely said, adding that if she went for a walk around the neighborhood, the cat would follow her, as if on patrol.

Lilly was a dual inside and outside cat, truly.

When Whitley's family, including her five children and her fiancé, recently moved to Mastic Beach, Lilly's desire to gallivant in the flora and fauna did not wane. The family gave her some time to acclimate, so she could get used to her new neighborhood.

But when she went out again, Lilly didn't come back. Whitley feared the worst and had visions of seeing Lilly dead on the street.

Before moving, the family had lost two cats that were run over by cars in their old neighborhood.

But about two weeks after the wayward feline had all but vanished, she turned up again in the most unusual way.

It was around 10 p.m. when the family was going through funny home videos on YouTube while Whitley was in the kitchen washing dishes when they all received an alert.

"We all looked at each other, like, 'Who's at our house at this time of night?'," she said.

Lilly was letting her mom know she was at the front door and wanted back inside pronto.

Alerts showed up on the family's television set and an Alexa device in the kitchen with Lilly's mug outside.

Lilly peered straight at them through their devices.

She appeared to have rung the doorbell, meowing what, if anyone with a very finely-tuned cat mama ear, sounds very much like, "Mom, mom."

There was a mixture of emotions: crying, laughing, and a lot of questions.

"Oh my God," Whitley can be heard exclaiming in the background.

Whitley said she can't be sure, but her Lilly looked like she might have been running from something, telling Patch, "she looked like she was, like, 'Let me in."

Lilly appeared in the camera frame, and looks to have pushed it, meowing softly, but urgently, what sounds like, "Mom, mom."

When Whitley posted the return video on Ring's Neighborhood App to show there was a successful return of a missing pet, it had nearly 2,000 views.

"Everybody was responding, 'Oh my gosh, she is saying, 'Mom,''' Whitley said. "She's totally saying, 'Mom.' I don't know if you have seen the video, if you listen, she goes, 'Mom, mom.'"

Viewers of the app also loved the interaction.

Lilly's humans, of course, ran to greet their wayward feline at her beck and call — vassals to the land, of course.

"I didn't feel like she was coming home," Whitley said. "And, honestly, I feel like if she had not been detected on the Ring camera, we would have not known she was there."

It's not the first time that Lilly has had a brush with an uncertain future.

The cat had become pregnant and when she went into labor, she was in distress and unable to give birth. But, what had happened was that in a very rare occurrence, the young mother had conceived only one kitten. She needed help, but her offspring could not be saved in time.

The vet clinic told her that Lilly would not remember the experience of being pregnant and then not giving birth.

But she did.

After Lilly's c-section, she would continually look for her offspring.

"It was heartbreaking," Whitley said.

Lilly was spayed during the procedure, but her wanderlust persisted up until now.

Since her recent jaunt out, there's been no desire to leave her human family and explore her new fiefdom again.

Whitley says her feline charge is always welcome to go back outside.

But she did note that cats are territorial. She believes Lilly had been searching out her new territory and might have met up with others who did not accept her arrival.

"I don't know if they were mean to her," she said. "They are not accepting. She came home. She ran in and does not want to go."