This week, we will be receiving a surprise visit from a therapy cat at a large hospital! My human had jury duty so I had to call every night to see if I needed to report. I found out that she didn’t need to report on the days I normally go to a large hospital, so she scheduled me in as soon as I hung up.
Today we had another therapy team, a dog team. However, Ronan (the dog) was not particularly cat friendly so we ended up visiting our area separately. If the dog team is distracted by cats or doesn’t like cats, this is how we proceed with things. We teamed up with some cat-friendly dogs and it was so much fun! I’m actually better at friendly dogs than cats (except for peach kittens, of course).
Most of the pediatric patients were isolated, so I only saw two children. The first child was a Spanish-speaking boy whose father knew fewer words in English than the Spanish we humans know. The boy’s mother was also there, but she was asleep. Once I got settled into the boy’s bed, he didn’t stop petting me throughout the visit. Usually children watch some kind of movie or anime on TV. By an interesting coincidence, the manga shown on the boy’s TV was super kitty on Disney Channel.
The second kid I visited didn’t have as much fun. It was a giggling little girl, more interested in her phone than me. Her family was there, including her baby brother, who paid little attention to me, but was more interested in playing video games.
Next we went to the delivery room. All the nurses there were very excited to see me. And they really liked my Santa costume. I saw several patients there. One was a Spanish speaking woman who was happy to pet me, but only wanted to see me for a few minutes. The other woman was very happy to meet me and we visited while her partner took photos. My human enjoyed chatting with her.
Then I went into behavioral medicine. The two women we met were kind, but they were having a rough time at the hospital. Therefore, we did not visit there for a long time as usual. We took our time and went back to reception to sign out. That’s what I do when I finish early. There are always people in the hallways and waiting rooms who are happy to see the kittens.
