Revisiting the Seniors

My human doesn’t usually schedule back-to-back events for me. But the cat show this weekend was only one day, and visiting the assisted living facility only takes an hour. Plus it’s less than 15 minutes from our house. So my human thought I could handle both, and she was right. Occasionally she pushes me just a little, and I almost always embrace it because I love being a public kitty!

If you recall from my first visit, this assisted living facility is for people with dementia or Alzheimer’s. This makes for interesting conversations sometimes! In the first community room we visited, there was one woman who talked about her cat. When asked how long it lived, she replied, “28 years.” While that’s not a record, I think her math may have been a little fuzzy!

This first building has my favorite resident — I give her a one-on-one visit in her room. I snuggle up on the bed with her and make happy paws. She petted me over and over again, and said I was “a well behaved kitty.” Actually she said that about a dozen times throughout the course of our visit! But it was true, so it deserved to be repeated. I really enjoy visiting with her because she is very sweet to me.

After visiting with the resident, we went to the community room in the other building. I recognized one lady before, who was wearing full makeup. A woman sat in a chair with her medical walker in front of her. My human tried to figure out the best place for me to visit with her, and it turned out to be on the walker. So I sat in front of her while she petted me. Next to her was a man being visited by his sister and her son. The son loved me, and his uncle gave me a couple of pets. But when the younger man asked him if he liked cats, he said, “Not really.” Then he talked for a long while about his dog Snoopy. See? Even if someone is not a cat person, I can still be helpful to them.

In a side room off the community room, a group of seniors sat around a table and worked with plants. We visited them for a while, and one lady called me a “beauty queen.” That was flattering!

The last person we visited was a man who had had a stroke. Although his hair was gray, he had a young face, and was probably not a whole lot older than my human. He was very nice, and we could tell he was a little frustrated over the problems the stroke had caused him physically and mentally. But that didn’t stop him from being sweet to me and pleasant to my human. Everybody we visited today had something different and interesting to offer.

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