Sally Continues to Work Selflessly and Tirelessly for the Demented and Dying at a Wisconsin Old Folks' Home Even as She Herself Approaches the Final Curtain in Her Own Life

Lovely Sally Has Been Comforting the Aged and Dying for Seventeen Years

 "Sally would know when someone was passing away and we would find them (sic) on the back of their chair for no apparent reason or she would just start being in their room and she's never been in their room before. And then they would actively begin to die."

-- Janita Larson

"Life is a moderately good play with a poorly written third act," is how that Truman Capote once summed up the human condition. No one wants to grow old, to lose their strength of both body and mind, and to ultimately descend into oblivion but that is the inevitable consequences of being mortal.

At least the one-hundred or so individuals who reside at Riverside Transitional Care on the banks of the Mississippi River in La Crosse have Sally in order to help them get through the third and final acts of their lives. She is neither a geriatrician nor a Bible thumper, however, but rather a seventeen-year-old tortoiseshell who resides at the long-term care facility and has magnanimously devoted her entire life to doing for the elderly, demented, and dying what neither they nor modern medicine can do for them.

"She sensed that mom was dying and she got off my lap and went and laid on the bed. I was there with mom for two days and Sally never left unless someone came in and did comfort care," Kris Fry, who lost her mother in 2019, recalled to WXOW-TV of La Crosse last August 30th. (See "Sally the Cat Comforts Dementia Patients at the End of Their Life (sic).") "She was right there even after mom passed. She didn't leave. She stayed there."

Although there is not really anything that can compensate for the loss of a loved one, especially a mother, Sally and her comforting presence did at least make the distressing situation somewhat more bearable for Fry. "It was a very peaceful passing. I am very grateful for it," she continued to WXOW-TV. "It was a wonderful thing to have happen at a time when you're having a hard time saying goodbye and to have that memory of this wonderful thing that happened with this cat, it takes some of the stings away."

In that respect, Sally's ministrations to the survivors are, arguably, every bit as important as the comfort that she brings to the dying. "Sally came in and got on my lap and walked right up to my chin and put her shoulder right on my neck because I was feeling bad," Fry related. "I was shedding a few tears."

Sandra Rockwell is another believer in Sally. In fact, she has been brightening the days of her one-hundred-one-year-old mother, Hazel, for the past four years.

"It gives me a lot of comforts. She talks about Sally and she knows Sally will lay in her lap and she does," she confided to WXOW-TV. "She really enjoys having the cat around."

Sally with, Most Likely, a Resident and a Visitor

Not only that but Sally is not the least bit timid about intervening in emergencies. "My mom took a really bad fall here almost a month ago (July of 2021) and I think Sally was around her a bit more," Rockwell added. "I think she senses when she needs to comfort people more." 

In addition to showering both patients and their families with unconditional love and devotion, Sally is the best goodwill ambassador that the Lutheran-run facility could ever desire. For instance, given that Hazel always has been a huge fan of the species, Sally's presence helped to reassure her devoted daughter that moving her into Riverside had been the right decision.

As wonderful and comforting as those invaluable contributions may be, Sally is perhaps better known for her uncanny ability to predict the arrival of the Grim Reaper. "Sally would know when someone was passing away and we would find them (sic) on the back of their chair for no apparent reason or she would just start being in their room and she's never been in their room before," social worker Janita Larson, who has been at the facility every bit as long as Sally, told WXOW-TV. "And then they would actively begin to die."

Although providing comfort to the dying may appear from afar to be a piece of cake for a cat, that is hardly  the case. "After a person passes away, she lays in that bed for two days and just sleeps," Larson disclosed to WXOW-TV. "It's like it takes everything out of her."

It is not as if Sally is bored and therefore has nothing better to do with her time because residents of the dementia ward, where she spends a lion's share of her time, have problems other than dying. "In the afternoon we have a little anxiousness or a little agitation but oddly enough Sally seems to know who are the people that might go into crisis and sure enough you're gonna find her on their lap," Larson explained to WXOW-TV.

Over the course of the seventeen years that Sally has been faithfully serving both residents and staffers, the facility has received only one complaint about her presence and that came from a male relative of a patient who hated cats. Considering how many ailurophobes that there are in this world, that in itself is rather remarkable.

Given her advanced years, Sally is rapidly running out of time herself and that disturbing reality raises numerous end-of-life issues. Most importantly, will Riverside be willing to pony up for her veterinary care once her health begins to fail her or will it take the cheap and easy way out by taking her to a veterinarian in order to be killed off?

Sally's Job Often Leaves Her Physically and Mentally Drained

Even if she should reach a point whereby she is no longer capable of properly caring for herself, let alone the facility's dementia patients, will one of the staffers that she has worked alongside for almost two decades, such as Larson, be willing to take her home and to provide her with a safe and loving environment in order to live out her dwindling days? To put the matter succinctly, will Riverside be willing to respect her right to live and thereby extend to her the same compassionate and tender care that she has bestowed upon its paying customers for so long?

Whether or not Riverside is willing to acknowledge it, it owes Sally at least that much, especially considering that she has given up her entire life as a cat in order to toil away for it and for practically nothing in return to boot. First of all, since she apparently was brought to the facility as a kitten, she has been forced to spend her entire life locked up indoors.

In that light, it is doubtful that she ever has felt the warmth of the sun on her lovely face, frollicked in the green grass, or even so much as chased a bug. She quite obviously has been sterilized and that has deprived her of not only a sex life but also of having kittens of her own.

Sadly, she is the last of her line in that her genes are destined to die with her. There are not going to be any little tortoiseshells who resemble her and bring back memories of how that she used to behave.

Being cooped up with the demented and dying likewise has deprived her of the companionship of other cats. Although Riverside does keep an unspecified number of other therapy cats, that is not quite the same thing as allowing her to freely choose her companions.

Perhaps saddest of all, she never has had either a home of her own or an owner who loved her to bits. It is not, however, too late for Riverside to rectify that gross injustice and it could easily do so by placing her in a loving home where her right to live will be held as sacrosanct and she will be allowed to live out her remaining days and to die at time and place of her own choosing.

That is no less than what she so richly deserves. Besides, it is long overdue that Lutherans and all Christians  stopped looking down their long, dirty schnozes at cats and other animals as being inferior and expendable beings and instead began treating them as beings entitled to at least as much compassion as they extend to their fellow believers.

Above all, cats such as Sally never should be used, abused, and nakedly exploited as a source of cheap  labor and then afterwards murdered and their remains tossed out in the trash like yesterday's newspapers. Furthermore, individuals and institutions that mistreat cats in such a cavalier fashion never should be allowed to adopt them in the first place.

Photos: WXOW-TV.