I am going to a large hospital for a therapy cat visit this week. The first place I visited was the cancer center. I always try to go there first, as they often finish early. Before going to the infusion room, I stopped by the reception desk. They loved seeing the therapy pets and I loved being petted by them.
The last few times I went to the infusion room, no patients came to see me, but this time they did. She wasn’t talkative at all, so my human let me sit with her and do therapy cat work. I got as comfortable as possible and purred a lot for the patient. While I was doing this, the woman started caressing me almost unconsciously. She seemed to be dozing off many times, smiling slightly from time to time. Usually my humans finish the session in 5-10 minutes, but this time I felt the female needed the kitten energy, so she let me go longer.
Afterwards, I went to the pediatric department, where I examined two patients. The first, a girl, had to be fitted with an extremely uncomfortable oxygen device. She didn’t like having two pointy little cones stuck in her nose and it was giving her mother a hard time. Meanwhile, I sat on the bed and waited for her to pet me…which she did. She had a cat at home and really missed her cat.
The other girl we met was an older teenage girl who was very happy to meet me. She was in a large room with several family members around her. I ended up spending some time in bed with her and within minutes one of her alarm clocks started going off. She was so excited that I was there that I could tell her heart rate jumped. A nurse came in and turned off the alarm as it was clear she did not have any health problems. Interesting things about alarms. When it rang, my human almost jumped out of her skin…but I didn’t. It comes down to my therapy cat training.
The last patient I saw was in a behavioral medicine clinic. Last time, we had a meeting at my usual visiting time. This time, there was only one patient who wanted to come see me. The other animals didn’t respond to therapy pet visits, but the staff told me this happens sometimes with my humans. However, the man we visited with, a 20-something with dyed hair, really enjoyed my visit. He had a paw print tattooed on the inside of his forearm and was clearly an animal lover. My human gave me a leg shake. She also took an Instamatic photo of him posing with me, and it really worked! He was a kind and handsome man.
Although the number of patients I saw at this hospital was quite small, all of them were of high quality. I was so happy to be there for them.
