I met Mrs. Larson one day when I was covering for another nurse on my team. The report I got was that she was in congestive heart failure, had tremendous pedal edema with weeping areas, and that she had refused to go to the hospital. Like any other visit, I mapped out where her house was, gathered my materials and set out to a remote part of Weston, Connecticut. It would turn out to be like no other visit I had ever made. When I walked in I knew that I was sent there for some reason[horizontal ellipsis]the reason I didn't quite know yet, but there was something different about this visit.
Mrs. Larson was sitting in a reclining chair with her legs propped up on towels. They were wrapped in yards of dressings. I noticed how her entire life was right there around her: her television remote, her pills, her snacks were all on a folding tray table[horizontal ellipsis]and lying there with her, her cat, Robert. Robert was a 15-pound orange tabby cat who was at least 15 years old. He stood guard over her with his quiet majestic green eyes and his bent over, crooked ears.
As the visit went on and I started to get to know Mrs. Larson, I finally asked her why she didn't want to go to the hospital (as clearly, that's where she needed to be). She said "I'm not 'gonna leave Robert, there's nobody to take care of him." I didn't judge her for what some may have thought of as a wrong decision. Though I was a fairly young woman at the time, I clearly understood what she was saying to me. She had that underlying fear that if she went into the hospital she would never come out[horizontal ellipsis]and then what would become of her faithful longtime companion? I felt so much for her and for her situation that I left there very depressed and sad. I saw myself in that chair, with my cat and my television, many years from now.
I got back to my office later that afternoon, and her physician happened to be on-site attending a meeting. He asked me if I had seen Mrs. Larson, and how she was doing. As I was talking to him I remember leaning up against the cinder block wall and tearing up. He said, "What's wrong??" And all I could say was, "That's going to be me some day. All alone, in a chair, afraid, and loyal to a little cat." I think I took him totally off guard and he tried to make light of it, and said, "Don't cry!!!! We're all going to be there someday."
I never got to see Mrs. Larson again. Her regular nurse came back and I pushed the vision of loneliness and the poor old cat out of my head. A couple of weeks later I overheard a nurse talking: Mrs. Larson had not only gone into the hospital, but had died there. My head shot up from what I was doing, and I yelled out, "What about the cat????" The nurse said that the cat was being cared for by a neighbor for the moment, but that they would not be keeping him. It was a dilemma for Mrs. Larson's niece Esther, an elderly woman who lived out of town and was trying to figure out what to do with Robert.
I sat and thought for a few minutes. I had two young cats that were meek indoor cats that would have never survived this big tabby coming to live with them. I called the neighbor who was watching Robert and said I'd be coming to get him in a few minutes. I didn't know what I was going to do with Robert, I only knew that I was going to get him[horizontal ellipsis]I had to, for Mrs. Larson. All of my visits and other work were just going to have to wait.
I drove out to her home, and knocked on the neighbor's door. The little girl came out with Robert in a kitty crate and he was howling loudly. The little girl was crying softly and tears were running down my face as well. Tears for the terrified cat, tears for the forlorn little girl, and tears for poor Mrs. Larson. Robert was meowing so loudly in my car that I let him out of the crate and he nervously paced (and christened) my back seat!! I took him to my parent's house where they agreed to let him stay in a vacant in-law apartment until I could find him a good home. There he took over my childhood dollhouse, and made himself comfortable in the tiny living room. Within a few weeks my sister found him a home with a wonderful and caring woman who nursed him for the last 2 or 3 years of his long life.
To this day I am certain that I was asked to visit Mrs. Larson for a much bigger reason than changing her dressings. I connected with her somehow in the short time that I knew her. I still exchange Christmas cards with her niece Esther, who always mentions on the card that she is forever thankful that I took Robert. I could never have abandoned that cat, and knew that I had to intervene for Mrs. Larson. I hope that wherever she is, she was able to see that I took care of her kitty. And I hope that someday when it is me alone in my chair, with a faithful friend, that a kind and caring person will take care of my "Robert the cat."