Senior citizens living at the Catalina Springs Memory Center in Oro Valley, Arizona have seen themselves recovering some memories after they began participating in a program that paired each elderly resident with a foster kitten.

The elderly folks living at this facility each struggle with various types of memory loss. To help them, Center’s Health Services Director Rebecca Hamilton developed a program that would allow them to bond with foster kittens, who they are given the chance to take care of.

Rebecca came up with the idea after she fostered two cats herself and saw how therapeutic it can be. When she heard the Pima Animal Care in Tucson always needed temporary foster parents for their newborn kittens, she knew that her seniors would be up for it. This is a difficult job since the newborns need to be fed every two hours, but she thought her seniors would be up for the task.

“This is extremely labor intensive, but only for a short period of time,” Rebecca said. “But for that period of time, it is very difficult to find fosters to take these kittens.”

Rebecca’s “Bottle Babies” program involves giving the elderly people the chance to care for a newborn kitten. Experts at Staff Relief said that this kind of program is mutually beneficial.

“A feline companion helps to reduce loneliness and depression,” the expert said. “Owning a cat can also help seniors feel less isolated and more satisfied with their lives.”

Seniors participating in the program said that they felt a great deal less stress after they started. Much to everyone’s surprise, the kittens have also been restoring their memories!

“Loss of memory does not erase the ability to love — that’s really hardwired,” Rebecca said. “When you put a kitten into someone hands their faces just light up!”

“Many memories have started to resurface just by the act of caring for these babies,” she continued. “People began to bring up long-forgotten memories of a cat or a dog they had as a child.”

“The kittens have enriched the lives in this center in indescribable ways,” Rebecca concluded.

Find out more about this program in the video below.