After a few weeks of traveling out of town, I was happy to get back to work as a therapy cat. Both myself and the humans have been really busy. That was a huge contrast to when I first came back and it was an assisted living facility. Usually it’s a pretty low-key visit. (Except for the resident who makes a lot of noise from time to time. He has dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, so he can’t help it.)
The moment we entered on this visit, we found two of our regular customers sitting on the couch. One was a woman who couldn’t understand the language and had heavy hands, and the other was a woman who always had a frown on her face but loved looking at me.
After spending time with them (staff took photos for us!), we found a few more friends on another couch. One was a woman who had lived in the mansion for perhaps a year. The other was a woman who loved giving me high fives.
The other residents I saw included two very elderly women, both of whom were very happy to see me. I sat with them for a while. I then jumped down and brought the human back to the high-fiving woman and jumped onto the couch next to her. Yes, I’ll admit, she’s one of my favorites.
At one point, I was visiting with a Spanish-speaking woman and there was a man in a wheelchair a few feet away. With him was a very young man, probably in his early twenties, so he may have been the grandson of an older man. He asked my human lots of questions about what we did and how often we would visit. He thought it was amazing that my human took me to meet the residents. But my human said it was our pleasure. And so it is.
Many people say it’s a great human thing for them to take time out of their day to meet with me. But we don’t perceive it that way. My human considers himself lucky to have a cat like me. Someone who is open to meeting and befriending people. it’s not ours have What to do, it’s what we do obtain Things to do! Being on the therapy cat team is an honor because not everyone gets that opportunity.
