A Robotic Pet Brings Joy to a Patient Who Has Dementia

Published in the magazine: Brain and Life April/May 2019

It has been a month since I've visited my 94-year-old mother, who lives in an assisted living facility in Florida. I moved her there after she was diagnosed with dementia a year ago and it became clear she needed more care than I could give her. Besides, I had no room in my small Manhattan apartment.

During our last visit, we were able to harmonize Gershwin tunes, and my mother smiled at the familiar lyrics. Music could still open the door of her rusty memory. Now, one month later, I wonder if we still have that connection.

When I enter her room, she smiles at me. "I think you are my friend," she says. In her shiny metal wheelchair, her body is as soft as a Raggedy Ann doll, but her white hair is still vibrant, and her green eyes explore the room with interest, even if she can't decipher the maze of her world.

As I watch her greet me, I think back to the days when she taught archery at a summer camp in Connecticut. I can picture her erect posture and her taut arm pulling back the bow and letting the arrow fly. She started at the camp in her twenties and continued teaching until she was 47, when the camp was sold. The rest of the year she taught history to middle-school students, effortlessly accommodating children of different abilities. In the class with a blind student, when she wrote on the blackboard, she would also say what she was writing so the student could hear. In another class, she had a deaf student for whom she wrote bold, legible letters on the blackboard.

These many years later, in the grip of dementia, her words trip into shattered phrases, an invented vocabulary. Her speech is broken blocks with scrambled words. Verbs and nouns switch places. I no longer understand her.

Two months ago, I bought my mom a massive furry robotic cat. A social worker had suggested it would comfort her and assuage her loneliness. Unlike a real cat, this one doesn't need daily care, a responsibility too confusing for my mother. In other ways, the robotic cat is surprisingly lifelike. It has soft fur and a soothing purr. When my mother strokes its head, it stretches. With another pat, it makes soft sounds. These reactions make my mother feel content, and she starts singing.