I started visiting the therapy cats at the children’s hospital before I even got to the lobby. A little girl and her mother came up the elevator together and were so happy to see me. As soon as the owner called us in to the reception, we had a bunch of kids come and visit us.
When I first visited the lobby, there was a girl in a wheelchair. She had no legs below the knees. I’m not a lap cat, but the owner let me sit in the wheelchair with her for a few minutes. Then I sat on the couch and high-fived her. She was so happy!
After a few visits to the lobby, we headed to the operating room. Someone was playing guitar and singing in the pre-op break room. The owner and I peeked in and saw it was a woman and a little girl with a guitar on the operating table. She wasn’t playing because she had a broken arm, but she let me pet her with her good hand. She was cute and fun.
We also visited the rehabilitation centre, which was very busy. There were lots of patients undergoing physiotherapy, but most of them managed to take a few minutes off to talk to me. Even a teenage boy with an injured hand was happy to see me.
The rest of the appointment was spent in the exam room. The cast room was full, so I ended up seeing a lot of kids with casts. One little girl was lying on her back with her arm cast facing up, and she was very sweet. Her parents seemed very sweet and kind, too.
During my visit, I heard a little boy screaming in the background. It turned out he was my next patient. Apparently they had used some kind of noisy machine to remove his cast and he was very upset. He had mostly calmed down by the time I arrived and I think I helped him the rest of the way. He was with his grandparents, another lovely family to visit.
My final visitor was an older severely disabled boy in a wheelchair who had never pet a cat and was so honored that I could be his first.
When I was done with my appointment and was discharged, I took the elevator downstairs with the other patients I had seen that day, so it ended the same way it began.
