This week, my therapy cat visit was at the assisted living facilities. Since these people suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s, I’m never sure what to expect. But this visit was really sweet.
We always do our visit in the big room with the TV. I saw a couple of regulars right away, the lady who always wants high fives from me, and a newer resident, who’s now settled in. They were sitting together on a couch, so I snuggled in between the two of them and got lots of attention. And of course I did high fives for the first lady.
My human noticed one of our other regulars, the nonverbal woman with heavy hands, was at the far end of another sofa, and could tell she was waiting to spend time with me. I think the high five lady saw too, and said she had enough time with me and to go see other people. (She’s actually the most mentally present resident out of everyone I see there.) So we did, and the woman got so much pleasure out of seeing me and petting me. She never says anything, but it’s pretty obvious.
Two elderly ladies were cuddled together on another sofa, and they were both really delighted to spend time with me. (Not all the residents are that old. Some are only in their 50s or 60s. These ladies were probably in their 80s.) We saw a lady in a wheelchair looking over and smiling at us, so I visited with her too. We even spent a little bit of time with a health worker who was there.
The last person we saw was a man who chatted happily with me in Armenian as he petted me. He wasn’t familiar to my human so she watched him carefully as he interacted with me. But he was a very kind man, so she finally relaxed.
It was a really nice visit, and I enjoyed making the residents happy for a little while.
Here are a few of my other visits with the assisted living residents:
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