Although it wasn’t a super busy day at the big hospital, I had a full therapy cat visit seeing both patients and staff. Our first stop was the cancer center. While the infusion patients couldn’t see me today, I did show off some of my tricks to the nurse there. She was funny — she started off by saying she didn’t recognize me because I wasn’t wearing my tie! So my human had to dig it out of her bag to put on me.
Next up was Pediatrics. There were just three patients available for me to see (the rest were in isolation). The one boy was sleeping. The next room we went into had a mom fussing over a crib. My human thought she was with a baby, and we usually don’t visit infants. So she was about to back out when the kid popped her head over the top of the crib. It was a toddler, and her face lit up when she saw me! So of course we wound up visiting.
Since there was only one other patient in Pediatrics, we spent quality time with the toddler and her mother. I got to sit in the crib with the little girl and she was very sweet and gentle with me. That was pretty amazing, since this was the first time she ever spent time with a cat, or any animal for that matter. But it was obvious she already loved animals, and she knew how to communicate silently with me the way kids sometimes do.
The other girl in the room over was a teenager who was bedridden. So I spent some time on the bed with her while she petted me. She seemed pretty sick, so I’m glad I got to be there.
Thursdays are Behavioral Medicine days, so we went there after Pediatrics. The nurse told us there were a couple of patients for our visit. But then she came back with four people — three men and a woman. They all petted me, and the small older man with a beard really liked me a lot. He was definitely a cat person. I don’t think the woman knew how to handle cats. But my human and the nurse made sure she didn’t get too grabby with me, and I only spent a little time with her. Funny enough, I think the toddler handled me better!
It was nice I got to make people happy today just by being me. Next to treats, that’s my favorite thing to do!
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