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Rebecca Hamilton is the Health Services Director of Catalina Springs Memory Care in Oro Valley, Arizona, an assisted-living facility that supports patients with memory loss, who also harbors an immense passion for fostering kittens.
In the past, Hamilton has worked personally with the local Pima Animal Care Center to adopt and care for kittens that require around-the-clock care and bottle feeding every two hours. She found her experience so rewarding that she decided to bring this experience to the assisted living center.
This was how Catalina Springs Memory Care’s “Bottle Babies” program began.
Hamilton arranged with the animal care center to have the assisted living facility “temporarily adopt” two kittens for their residents to help nurture and foster.
Although the “Bottle Babies” program has required much extra work on Hamilton’s part to train both her staff and residents how to care for these young kittens, she believes it has been a great success thus far.
The kittens have quickly and easily become “incorporated into [their] day,” and the kittens’ presence has even helped trigger long-lost memories in these patients, all of whom suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
It has been an incredible process to see these patients’ faces light up.
“Loss of memory does not erase the ability to love -- that’s really hardwired,” Hamilton explained. “Many memories have started to resurface just by the act of caring for these babies. People began to bring up long-forgotten memories of a cat or a dog they had as a child.”
Every single one of the facility’s 30-some residents has helped take care of a kitten, and Hamilton can say with certainty that “the kittens have enriched the lives in this center in indescribable ways.”
See some of the adorable interactions and photos here:
