“One cat just leads to another.”
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
A LARGE PORTRAIT OF HENRY STEERE HANGS OVER THE piano in the lobby. It’s a cozy setting, what with the sunlight streaming through in midafternoon. But that wasn’t what I thought the first time I heard the piano playing. When I had wandered into the lobby on my first visit to Steere House, piano music filled the space with a Chopin prelude, but there was no one else in the room. I had looked over expecting to see one of the more able residents or a family member seated before the keys practicing. Instead, there were only Billy and Munchie, the two resident lobby cats, staring back at me from the comfort of an otherwise unoccupied piano bench. The oddness of the scene, two cats seated at a piano bench while music filled the air, was overwhelming—until I realized it was a player piano.
Today I was stealing a few minutes of downtime before rounds. I had settled myself into one of the lobby’s comfy chairs and was enjoying the music. I guess I was reflecting, too, on the need to soften the reality of a nursing home—the last home most of our patients will know. At Steere House, perhaps we’ve achieved the same effect with a family of cats, an atrium of glass, and the sounds of classical music played by the best pianist you never saw.
As if on cue, one of the lobby cats rubbed against my legs. It was Munchie. He’s an unusual-looking fellow: grayish-black with spatters of chestnut and brown, like an expressionist painting gone wrong. He meowed loudly, calling out for affection. Cautiously, I reached over and stroked him behind the ears. That flipped the purring switch and he continued to bang against my legs like a bumper car.
“You’re not so bad,” I said. “At least you don’t attack me, like some cats I could mention.”
Munchie looked up at me and then curled up over my feet, fully obscuring them from view. As he settled in for a nap, a more ordinary-looking black-and-white cat appeared and jumped into my lap. Billy turned twice before curling up in a ball. Then he looked at me as if to say, “You didn’t think you were going to get away without petting me, too, did you?” My pager rang, and I frowned. How do cats always seem to know when you have to be somewhere else?
“Sorry, guys,” I said as I stood up. “Mary’s paging me and I suspect that I’ve got to check in on Mrs. Rubenstein upstairs.” Munchie scurried away and Billy leaped off my lap and looked at me with that air of disdain only cats can muster. Feeling guilty for having shortchanged him, I leaned over and gave him some gentle petting. But he lost interest after only a few seconds and wandered off to find his friend. Calling a cat fickle is like saying snow’s wet.
As I left the lobby I looked back at the cats in the atrium; they were already engaged in chasing each other, like two kids playing tag. My comings and goings were of no concern to them. They were truly in the now. My life is made of pagers, deadlines, appointments, and responsibilities. At that moment the existence of a cat looked pretty good to me.
I got on the elevator and, as if by reflex, found myself looking to the back corner, half expecting to see Steere House’s very first cat, Henry, curled up on the floor. It’s Henry and his successors that make Steere House so different from other nursing homes; it’s a menagerie of cats, rabbits, and birds.
It wasn’t always this way, though. Before the 1980s there was no such thing as pet therapy. Animals didn’t have a place in health care institutions. Why bring a “dirty animal” into a sterile environment? Then some scientists began to espouse the human-animal bond theory—the belief that animals can have a beneficial effect on human health and psychology. Research increasingly began to back up this belief. Nursing home patients in particular—with or without memory loss—were less depressed and lonely with animal companions. I suppose intuitively this makes sense. Most people love animals. Why wouldn’t they want them in their last home?
I’d like to tell you that Steere House’s acceptance of animals came about as a result of this research, but truth to tell, I think it was all due to a little guy named Henry. He was literally Steere House’s first occupant—and the one the nursing home tried hardest to get rid of.
Since its foundation over a century ago, Steere House has gone through several incarnations, growing to suit the needs of the community. As the current structure was being built, workers noticed that a stray cat had wandered onto the construction site and was living in the unfinished building. The cat was even known to steal from an unattended lunchbox or two. By the time the building was completed, the cat had seemingly moved on and was forgotten. Shortly after the dedication ceremony for the modern Steere House, however, the cat returned to give the building his own inspection. Early one morning he strolled back into the facility, liked what he saw, and sat down in an easy chair. At first the staff tried to shoo the animal away, to no avail. Each day the cat returned, undaunted, through the lobby’s sliding glass doors. His attitude was one of entitlement. “I was here first,” he seemed to suggest with each wave of his tail.
Like my earlier run-in with Oscar over desk space, the administrator at the time also failed to win his argument with a cat. Eventually the cat’s persistence paid off and the staff gave up on chasing him out of the building. A meeting was held and the leadership at Steere House decided to accept their unwanted guest. But he needed a name. It seemed only fitting that he be named after the building’s benefactor, Henry Steere, whose likeness looked down upon the very chair that our Henry favored during those early days.
So Henry stayed, and for the next ten years he became a favorite of staff and residents alike. Until his final days he was known to ride the elevators up and down, constantly on the prowl for a cozy place to sprawl in a warm pool of sunshine. But as with all the other residents of Steere House, age eventually caught up with Henry. In his last year of life he began to lose his vision. As a result the poor thing started to walk into walls or closed doors. Over time Henry’s behavior also became increasingly erratic. He would wander out of the facility and get lost outdoors. Search parties would be organized and the cat that was once chased away was now ironically returned to the facility. On some days he would simply walk into the elevator, curl up in the corner, and ride between floors all day long, going up and down hundreds of times.
“Do you know there is a cat just sitting in the corner of your elevator?” visitors would ask.
The staff would respond with a smile and gentle reassurance that it was just “Henry being Henry.” In truth, many members of the staff had privately started to wonder if Henry had developed dementia like so many of the human residents he lived with. Increasingly, his behavior seemed to confirm this diagnosis.
At the end of his days, Henry had trouble eating, became incontinent, and even started to lose weight. Some in the facility began to question whether he should be euthanized. Several members of the staff lovingly doubled their efforts to care for him in order to stave off a one-way trip to the veterinarian. I suppose it’s only fitting that the staff refused to stop caring for their ailing cat. Henry was no different than many of the patients they cared for on a daily basis.
Thankfully, the staff never had to make the difficult decision of putting him down. As if to do them all a favor, Henry went to bed one night and never woke up. A funeral was conducted several days after; almost everyone, staff and residents alike, was there. It was the kind of send-off you would expect for a head of state. Someone gave a eulogy; another member of the staff had even crafted a handmade coffin out of wood. When the service was over and people were still drying their eyes, Henry was laid to rest on the grounds behind the facility.
Henry changed the culture at Steere House. Thanks to him, the nursing home became increasingly animal-friendly and perhaps more of a home. Sensing the loss of their pet, members of the staff and several more able residents began to vehemently petition the nursing home leadership to replace Henry. Though resistant at first, the chief administrator gave in and staff began to scout out potential replacements. Oscar and Maya were eventually adopted from separate newspaper advertisements and came to reside on the third floor. Billy and Munchie were rescue cats whose owner had died. A hospice nurse brought them into the facility. Finally, Chico and Molly were adopted for the lower-acuity dementia unit on the first floor. All told, six cats were brought in to replace Henry, along with a handful of other animals. They were brought here because of an unwanted cat that didn’t want to leave.
Maybe we started adding cats to make this house feel more like a home. But I was starting to think they were the ones teaching us that what makes a home is a family.