dressagetraks
Aug. 27, 2009, 01:31 PM
I took one of my cats with me down to the nursing home yesterday. A meeting was scheduled yesterday to go over Mom's recent problems, how some changes were working out, and directions to head from here. Because of the timing of this meeting, I wasn't going to be there eating lunch with Mom as usual on the weekly visits, so I thought it was a good opportunity for a feline visit. Dealing with the cat and a crowded lunchroom setting just doesn't strike me as a good combination, but this was a scheduled half hour meeting and then a brief visit with Mom. So Tenuto came along.
Tenuto is a fascinating combination. She's quite intelligent and has a strong, decisive personality and a wicked sense of humor. She is the most passive-aggressive cat I've ever known - witness her one-year war of friendship with HRH Rosalind, my blue point, in which Tenuto never once hissed back, slapped back, or engaged the enemy in paw-to-paw combat, but she simply NEVER went away. I've had unintelligent cats, and I've had pushover cats, and this one is most definitely in neither category. However, she is also one of the most unflappable cats I've ever known. In a thunderstorm, while Chiam the ex shelter cat is quaking under the covers and Rosalind is cursing with imperial offense at the weather she didn't give permission for, Tenuto is sitting in her usual spots with a feline shrug saying, "What's the big deal?" She's an active cat, but invariably calm. It's that quality that made me pick her to become a therapy cat to visit Mom now and then. Chiam would overload her small brain in a nursing home and freak out, HRH Rosalind would not be amused and would inform the world of that fact, Emily Dickinson would wax eloquent on everything wrong with the environment, but Tenuto will look around and think this is an interesting change of scenery, never minding if odd smells and noises are around or if strangers are pawing at her.
She was duly admired at the meeting, and then we went to visit Mom for a while. Tenuto sat in her lap and purred, and she is not normally a lap sitter. She is a grasshopper at home, never doing the same thing for very long, bouncing in for an ear scratch, bouncing back out to go do something else. Each time she has been to the nursing home, though, she has sat quietly in laps and far exceeded her usual "still" quota. Mom was her usual scrambled self but loved the cat and kept petting her. After we left Mom, I asked the nurse who else was a frustrated cat lover, and Tenuto and I briefly made the rounds to a few more, where she again dutifully sat in laps, let herself be pawed over, and purred. I think she truly realizes that these people have problems.
Then on the long drive home, I turned her loose in the car, and she sat in my lap, totally still almost the full 100 miles, and every now and then would lick my hand. She was remarkably still for everybody yesterday, but she only licked me. They got patience. I got sympathy.
The ability of some animals to read situations and emotions of them will never cease to amaze me. They put human language with all its richness to shame.
http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk8/dressagetraks/MomandTenuto082609007.jpg
Has anybody else had any neat experiences of taking any of your assorted menagerie to nursing homes/homebound?
Tenuto is a fascinating combination. She's quite intelligent and has a strong, decisive personality and a wicked sense of humor. She is the most passive-aggressive cat I've ever known - witness her one-year war of friendship with HRH Rosalind, my blue point, in which Tenuto never once hissed back, slapped back, or engaged the enemy in paw-to-paw combat, but she simply NEVER went away. I've had unintelligent cats, and I've had pushover cats, and this one is most definitely in neither category. However, she is also one of the most unflappable cats I've ever known. In a thunderstorm, while Chiam the ex shelter cat is quaking under the covers and Rosalind is cursing with imperial offense at the weather she didn't give permission for, Tenuto is sitting in her usual spots with a feline shrug saying, "What's the big deal?" She's an active cat, but invariably calm. It's that quality that made me pick her to become a therapy cat to visit Mom now and then. Chiam would overload her small brain in a nursing home and freak out, HRH Rosalind would not be amused and would inform the world of that fact, Emily Dickinson would wax eloquent on everything wrong with the environment, but Tenuto will look around and think this is an interesting change of scenery, never minding if odd smells and noises are around or if strangers are pawing at her.
She was duly admired at the meeting, and then we went to visit Mom for a while. Tenuto sat in her lap and purred, and she is not normally a lap sitter. She is a grasshopper at home, never doing the same thing for very long, bouncing in for an ear scratch, bouncing back out to go do something else. Each time she has been to the nursing home, though, she has sat quietly in laps and far exceeded her usual "still" quota. Mom was her usual scrambled self but loved the cat and kept petting her. After we left Mom, I asked the nurse who else was a frustrated cat lover, and Tenuto and I briefly made the rounds to a few more, where she again dutifully sat in laps, let herself be pawed over, and purred. I think she truly realizes that these people have problems.
Then on the long drive home, I turned her loose in the car, and she sat in my lap, totally still almost the full 100 miles, and every now and then would lick my hand. She was remarkably still for everybody yesterday, but she only licked me. They got patience. I got sympathy.
The ability of some animals to read situations and emotions of them will never cease to amaze me. They put human language with all its richness to shame.
http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk8/dressagetraks/MomandTenuto082609007.jpg
Has anybody else had any neat experiences of taking any of your assorted menagerie to nursing homes/homebound?