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July 20, 2006
Black cat brings therapy of love
The black cat with the yellow eyes lies cuddled close to the woman who once disdained cats, all cats.
She used to barricade her door when she would visit her daughter, who had one.
Yet, here in her hospital bed, Dorothy Grobman has mellowed. The black cat with the yellow eyes won her over.
She pets him with her mottled hand, then jokes, "I wish I had someone to pet me."
For the first time in her 86 years, Dorothy Grobman has responded positively to a cat, a particular and uncanny killer-cat named Baldwin.
Baldwin looks at Dorothy and winks one of his yellow eyes, then gives her hand little cat-kisses.
He's flirting.
Baldwin the therapy cat curls up next to Alive Hospice patient Becky Goldstein, who strokes his thick, black fur while owner/trainer Nan Shinn chats with her. Baldwin provides pet therapy to patients here once a week.
Baldwin has been a pet therapist at The Residence at Alive Hospice for three years, an unusual "calling" for a cat. He's actually the only feline therapist the facility has, compared to eight canines (who don't count if you're Baldwin).
Baldwin comes to "work" every Tuesday for three hours, sometimes on weekends and always on holidays. In Baldwin's world, Nan Shinn chauffeurs him here...
Shinn is known as the woman who bought her cat a condo. Her cat Emily, that is. Emily lives in the condo, which Shinn uses as a second home; Baldwin and her other two cats live in Shinn's other home, where Baldwin pesters his housemates and throws tantrums until he gets his way.
"At home he's the cat who does what he wants because he knows he can get away with it," Shinn says. "But at 'work,' he's the perfect gentleman."
Nan Shinn practiced pet therapy before it was vogue.
As a young girl she used to go on rounds with her dad, a doctor. She had a dog then, and she knew instinctively that her dog would make some of her father's patients more comfortable.
She began smuggling her dog into convalescent homes with her father's blessings, even though pets then were outlawed in medical facilities.
She's been volunteering her pet therapy ever since.
When she married Kim Shinn she still believed in the health benefits pets could offer people.
Kim was the one who found Baldwin, a kitten sick and abandoned on the Baldwin Trail when the couple was living in Jacksonville, Fla.
After much medical treatment, the 1-pound kitten grew into the cat that loves frail people.
Soon after the couple moved to Nashville four years ago, Nan volunteered Baldwin at Alive Hospice.
The facility didn't accept cats in its pet therapy program then, but when they met Baldwin the staff had a change of heart.
"Cats are very calming to sick people," says Pam Brown, the vice president for community development at Alive Hospice. Brown has seen the effects on residents after they've had a 15-minute love fest with Baldwin. Some nod off to sleep; others want to talk about the unusual visit.
When Shinn knocks on a resident's room at The Residence at Alive Hospice, she has Baldwin in a baby sling around her neck.
She leans in and asks the resident and their family members if they like cats and their company.
She's had only one resident to refuse a quarter-hour with Baldwin, and that resident was terrified of cats, especially black cats.
Others have been so receptive to the tom that they've asked that a picture of Baldwin be placed in their casket when they die.
Baldwin has even been to the funeral of one person he closely bonded with. He actively mourned another resident after the resident died. He was so fond of her that he would hardly enter The Residence. Once in, he would cower down in the baby sling whenever Shinn got close to the woman's room.
"I thought I was going to have to retire him," Shinn says. "For weeks and weeks, he mourned."
One day, Shinn says, Baldwin unexpectedly took up with another resident. When that resident died, Shinn and Baldwin went to the viewing. The woman's daughter welcomed Baldwin and sang the cat's virtues, how he needed her mother as much as her mother needed him.
"My mom saved Baldwin's career. . . . He met her and began his therapy again," she told all the bereaved gathered at the funeral home.
Nan Shinn believes Baldwin senses a resident's love for him or for someone like him.
Becky Goldstein lies in bed at The Residence. Her room resembles a photo gallery. Most of the pictures are of Stella, Goldstein's tabby.
This day is a special day — Goldstein's 62nd birthday.
Baldwin seems to know this, giving her more than his normal share of cat-kisses.
He seems to sense something more profound: Becky Goldstein's frailty. He reluctantly allows Nan Shinn to pick him up from his friend's bed when she grows too tired to visit any longer. Baldwin doesn't take his yellow eyes off his very pale friend as Shinn carries him out of the room.
If Baldwin could talk, his owner thinks he would be telling her that he doesn't want to find an empty bed in Room 141 next Tuesday.
He's had too many goodbyes.
Nan and Baldwin ready for their ride home. Baldwin curls up in his pet taxi for the trip. He's tired; Nan Shinn is tired, too.
She has multiple sclerosis, but she so believes in the good deeds that Baldwin does for the residents that she pushes a few steps more, out the door and to her car.
She turns on the air conditioning in her SUV.
Because of his caring heart, Shinn says, the cat with the yellow eyes deserves a cool ride home.
And the right to rule the roost there. •
Posted by sue at July 20, 2006 12:07 PM