The Georgetown community has rallied together to give senior residents at Platinum Resort their own furry family members.
“We have 15 residents who live in our house and one of our residents who really, really loves kitties,” Shannan Conway told Hello Georgetown. “She has cats in her room, she talks about how she wants to hold them and pet them, and how she loves them; and so Laura and I were talking about it, and we wanted to do that.”
But, Conway added, there were several things that made bringing a live cat to the home difficult, like allergies, for example. Luckily, there was an alternative option that would work. Shannan and Laura had learned about a company called Joy for All that specialized in interactive, realistic and lifelike stuff animals. So, on March 3, Laura Chotkevys and Shannan Conway, both owners of Platinum Resort, posted a 72 second video about the cats on Facebook.
“One day Laura and I decided we were going to make this funny cat video, like we always do, and the [community] jumped on it.,” Shannan Conway said, “Everybody was like, ‘We want to invest in these cats.’ Did we know that this video was going to turn into like a purpose, daily tasks, giving life? No, we thought we were going to make one person’s life happy and give her cats, and we made a whole household excited about these cats.”
Within literal minutes, Chotkevys and Conway were inundated with messages from community members: a veritable litter of Joy for All cats were on the way.
“The community was so excited about it,” Chotkevys said. “We just put the link up and people were like, ‘Hey, the cats are arriving tomorrow.'”
It wasn’t long before Milkshake, Benji, Daisy, Kitty, Stormy, and Oreo and an interactive dog named Blondie joined the home, and the new furry family members have been enthusiastically welcomed by all the residents.
“When we gave the first lady that her cat, she was just, I mean, this smile and just how her face lit up, and she was kissing it and she said, ‘I really wish my mother was here to meet my cat,'” Chotkevys said. “We started crying. It meant that much to her.”
Not every resident wants their own kitty companion, the two women said, but every resident has been lifted up by the kitty’s presence in the home.
“It gives them purpose. It gives them something to look forward to, someone to take care of, It makes them feel like they have ownership of something, and it makes them smile, and that’s the greatest gift of all,” Conway said.
The kitties will need replacing at some point, Chotkevys and Conway said, and when the time comes businesses and individuals are already lined up and waiting to donate. Conway added anyone can also donate kitties to be given to other organizations the two women work with.
“We can share them with other assisted living and memory care [organizations],” Conway said. “We are doing…mentorship to help other assisted livings build their communities from start to finish, and so we want to educate them on dementia…and so we would like to use them in our education program.”
Anyone interested in donating can order by clicking here and sending the cats straight to Platinum Resort at 208 Mesa Drive in Georgetown, TX or by emailing shannan@platinumresortassistedliving.com.
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