I got to visit the big hospital for this week’s therapy cat visit. My first stop was the Cancer Center. I always try to go there first because they often finish up early. Before going to the infusion room, I stopped by reception. They love seeing the therapy pets, and I was so happy to be adored by them.
The last few times I’ve been to the infusion room, there haven’t been any patients for me to visit, but there was one this time. She wasn’t at all talkative, so my human sat me down with her and just let me do my therapy cat thing. I got as comfortable as I could and purred lots for the patient. While I was doing that, the lady petted me almost unconsciously. She seemed to doze off and on, sometimes smiling slightly. Usually my human finishes up a session after 5 to 10 minutes, but she let me go longer this time because she sensed the woman needed some kitty energy.
After that we headed up to Pediatrics, where I saw two patients. The first was a little girl, who had to wear an extremely uncomfortable oxygen apparatus. She hated having the two pointy little cones stuck up her nose and was giving her mother a hard time about it. Meanwhile, I sat on the bed and waited for her to pet me between fussing…which she did. She has cats at home and she was really missing them.
The other girl we saw was an older teen who was so happy to see me! She was in a large room with several family members around. I got to spend time on the bed with her, and within a couple of minutes, one of her alarms started going off! It turned out that her heart rate jumped because she was so excited I was there. The nurse came in and turned off the alarm, since it was clear she wasn’t having a health incident. Funny thing about the alarm. When it went off, my human almost jumped out of her skin…but I didn’t. Which comes down to my therapy cat training.
The last patient I saw was at Behavioral Medicine. Last time, they had a meeting during my usual visiting time. This time, they had just one patient who wanted to come see me. The others weren’t up for a therapy pet visit, which a staff member told my human happens sometimes. But the guy we did visit with — he was in his 20s with dyed blonde hair — really enjoyed my visit. He had a tattoo of pawprints on his inner forearm and was clearly an animal lover. My human had me do some paw shakes with him. She also took an Instamatic photo of him posing with me, which came out really well! He was a sweet, handsome guy.
While the number of patients I saw was pretty small for this hospital, each one was such a quality visit. I was so glad to be there for them.
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