I finally got to visit the children’s hospital this week. Originally, I was going to visit last week, but as you probably know, I was busy with a big photo shoot! So it was nice to go see the kids.

There were a few kids in the lobby. One toddler was interested in me for about a minute before he got distracted by the plastic gear toy he’d been playing with. A girl at the arts and crafts table paused her painting for a few minutes to pet me. Then we headed into the exam rooms.

One of my first patients was a young boy with a form of dwarfism. His whole family was with him. They were all very nice. The mom asked my human lots of questions about me. Dad mostly spoke Spanish, so the mom translated my human’s answers for him. The boy, meanwhile, alternately petted me and was a little nervous around me.

“Will she bite me?” he asked. My human assured him that I was very gentle and not at all bitey. A lot of times people are scared I will act aggressively towards them because they are used to other cats doing that. So it’s extra important for me to show I’m gentle.

We also visited with a teenage girl and her mom. The girl’s x-rays were lit up, and it was pretty clear she had scoliosis or something similar. She was nice and enjoyed seeing me.

We also spent time in a couple of the rooms where kids were getting casts removed, put on, or changed. The first child was a little girl who squealed happily when she saw me. Her discarded cast sat on the exam table, and she was keeping her arm raised. (When a cast is removed, you have to keep your arm elevated for a while.) Her dad let my human use the chair he had been sitting in so she could move it by the girl’s free arm. That way I could sit on it and she could pet me.

In another room, a nurse was busy wrapping a cast for a girl with a broken finger. It took a few minutes but it was worth the wait because the girl really enjoyed visiting with me. We stayed for a few minutes until they got their discharge papers.

We had enough time to go up to surgery and see the nurses and staff there. They had one boy in a post op room, but he was still knocked out.

It was a nice visit. And as you can tell, even though nothing really stood out, we still had a good time brightening everyone’s day.