A woman from Ohio whose leg was amputated following a car accident has praised her adopted cat, who is also an amputee, after the duo became a cat therapy team.
Juanita Mengel, 67, and five-year-old tortoiseshell cat Lola-Pearl, who is missing her left hind leg, visit hospitals, nursing homes and schools to aid in therapy and other activities to improve wellbeing.
Ms Mengel said she knew Lola-Pearl would be a good therapy cat after she brought her on a whim to an amputee coalition conference about a month after she adopted the domestic shorthair.
“She was so good with people I just knew she would be a good therapy cat,” Ms Mengel said. “People really were attracted to her, too.”
The duo is one of an estimated 200 therapy cat teams registered in the US through Pet Partners. The nonprofit organisation sets up owners and their pets as volunteer teams providing animal-assisted interventions.
“A therapy animal is an animal who’s been assessed based on their ability to meet new people and not just tolerate the interaction, but actively enjoy it,” said Taylor Chastain Griffin, the national director of animal-assisted interventions advancement at the organisation.
Pet Partners registers nine different species as therapy animals: dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, birds, mini pigs, and llamas and alpacas.
As part of her research, Ms Chastain Griffin studies the impact of therapy cats and argues more research needs to be done. There is abundant research on other therapy animals such as dogs, she said, but there’s often a “shock factor” involved with therapy cats because many don’t know they exist.
“They go into a setting and people are like, ‘Whoa, there’s a cat on a leash. What’s happening?’” Ms Chastain Griffin said. “It kind of inspires people to connect in a way we haven’t traditionally heard talked about in other therapy animal interventions.”
During a recent visit to a limb loss support group meeting, Ms Mengel pushed Lola-Pearl around in a stroller — labeled “Therapy Cat” — so attendees could pet the animal as she woke up from a nap.
“She’s very intuitive of people,” Ms Mengel said.
The former nurse, who lost her left leg in 2006 after years of surgeries following a near-fatal car accident, has seven cats, most of which have disabilities.
“They find you, you don’t find them,” she said.
Lola-Pearl was found at only a few weeks old with her back legs completely twisted together. She was unable to walk and brought to a friend of Ms Mengel at an animal shelter in Missouri, where vets could not help her.
The shelter found specialists in Iowa who were able to splint Lola-Pearl’s legs as an attempt to save them, but they decided her left hind leg needed to be amputated.
After Lola-Pearl healed from surgery, Ms Mengel adopted her and they formed the pet therapy duo.
“It’s a really rewarding experience,” she said. “I get just as much out of it as the people that I visit.”
