Cat Treats

It is common for folks with dementia to repeat themselves, at least some of the time, on some question. From the first moment of the day until time to go to sleep, my mother's world rotates around the imaginary needs of her cat.  My mother's question is "have you fed the cats yet?"  Seven or eight times in an hour.  But it isn't just feline nutrition that drives her. Mom won't leave the house until she is sure all the animals are fed.   She won't eat her breakfast until she feeds them treats. But it works both ways. Because she is often too picky to eat what is prepared for dinner, I won't feed the dog until she eats her dinner. The dog does not mind, and mom eats.

not mom's cat

Clearly it is bigger than just the food.   She won't go to bed until they are located and secured. She cannot relax until her cat is taken care of. She wants to go hunting in antique stores so that her cat can have a throne like the one on her calendar.  I used to dress up her delivered snack with some of my best little dishes. I had collected antique salt cellars (tiny china plates) and used them with my dolls when I was young.  I put her pills on one on her tray one day.  Now that, and every other tiny dish I have, has become a special "treat dish" for her cat. She has usurped all my special little  dishes to be solely for her cat! I now have to bring her an extra fancy glass of water, having done it once, for her pills.  She now insists that her water glass be filled to the brim, after she finally gets her pills down, so that her cat can drink easily from it. "She likes it that way."  I try to stop the silliness but she broke three tumblers doing it herself when I didn't comply. They are just glasses, and it makes mom so happy.

 Mom sits with the cat on her lap in a recliner most of the time now.  She stopped coming downstairs regularly sometime before May, unless my husband was going to be there. Her arthritis being so bad, to ease her pain, we sometimes would take her her meal on a tray. Funny. When she is given her meal that way the cat climbs in the tray, making eating next to impossible.  If you try to remove the cat, my mother tells you you are mean and pouts. Forget going anywhere if the the cat is in her lap. As soon as that happens she will not get up, lest she disturb the beast. She will sit in uncomfortable positions, do without a needed item, even wet her pants, before she will move the cat.  It is as if this cat is her whole world.  It is quirky, demented and kind of cute if annoying.
In a world of such losses and pain, the happiness this beast brings mom is a gift.

Yesterday, when I was helping mom meet the people at an adult day care center we are hoping to use my cell phone rang three consecutive times.  It was a freind, trying to reach me in the hopes that, of all things, I would feed her cat while she was away for the weekend.  I had ignored each ring, allowing it to go to voicemail, in order to finish the paperwork with the program director so mom could enjoy her day.  When it rang a third time, I asked if I could be excused to take it.  Mom looked up at me in all seriousness and wet eyed asked if something had happened to her cat.  The calls were from a neighbor fifteen houses down the street.  The cat was at home where we had just left her well fed self less than 20 minutes ago, sleeping on mom's chair in her room while my husband worked at home.  Really mom?

still not mom's cat

I asked her why she thought her cat was hurt, and even  more interesting, why she thought that all my friends were calling simultaneously to inform me while her son in law, who was there, was not.
 She responded, "She is my daughter." "Mom, I am your daughter," I replied.  "You got married and left, but she stayed."  Really?  Apparently the cat is my good step-sister, and my friends are more loyal to her than me. Explains a lot.



Good to know I guess. How do I explain what comes next to her? It breaks the heart.  Few if any places will allow mom to keep her cat. The ones that will are way too expensive.


As we prepare to go get a birthday gift for a family member today she has reminded me six times. "We need Cat Treats."



meow, meow, meow?