It was nice to be back doing therapy cat work after a few weeks of out of town trips! My human and I have been really busy. That was a big contrast to my first visit back, which was at the assisted living facility. It’s usually a pretty low key visit. (With the exception of the occasional resident making a ruckus — since they suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s, they can’t help it.)
The moment we walked in on this visit, we found two of my regulars sitting on a sofa. One was the nonverbal woman with heavy hands, and the other was a lady who always has a frown on her face, but who loves seeing me.
After spending time with them (a staff member took photos!), I found a couple more of my pals on another sofa. One was a lady who has been at the residence for probably a year now. The other one was the woman who loves to have me give her high fives.
A couple of the other residents I saw included two ladies who were very elderly, and they were both delighted to see me! I sat with them for a while. Then I jumped down and led my human back to the high five lady and jumped on the sofa next to her. Yes, I will admit, she is one of my favorites.
At one point, I was visiting with a Spanish speaking lady, and a few feet away was a man in a wheelchair. With him was a very young man, probably in his early 20s, so he was could have been the older man’s grandson. He asked my human a lot of questions about what we did and how often we visit. He thought it was awesome that my human brought me to see the residents. But my human said it is our pleasure. And it is.
A lot of people remark about how nice it is of my human to take time out of her day to do visits with me. But that’s not how we perceive it. My human considers herself lucky to have a cat like me. One that is open to meeting people and being friendly to them. It’s not something we have to do, it’s something we get to do! Being a therapy cat team is an honor because not everyone has the opportunity.
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