Meet the hospital cats of New Zealand

Indira Stewart meets the most overpaid healthcare workers in New Zealand – even if it is in tinned fish.

Swipe cards, sickness, shift work and scratching behind the ears.

It’s the daily life of five cats working and residing at hospitals around New Zealand.

Their colleagues describe them as “honorary staff members” but not all District Health Boards are as positive about these pussies.

What is undeniable though – according to hundreds of social media posts – is the cats are a source of joy, calm, laughter and friendship to patients in need. And good luck to anyone who thinks they don’t belong there.

Despite some owners’ best efforts to keep them home, the beloved hospital cats consistently show up for work; unwavering throughout a pandemic and committed to their jobs amid major health reforms and various Health Ministers.

Their office drawers are full of tuna, they’ve got their own bank accounts, a makeshift swipe card and Facebook pages with thousands of followers. One cat, Daisy at Waitakere Hospital, has more followers on Facebook than Health Minister Shane Reti has on Twitter.

After several tip-offs from a local cat informant Linda Deane, the author of several cat books and known as “the-not-so-crazy-cat-lady”, 1News decided to investigate.

Who are these hospital cats? Where do they come from?

And what kind of feline power instantly wraps hospital humans around their little paws?

Here’s what we know about five of New Zealand’s beloved hospital cats.

During the lonely days of Covid-19 lockdowns, Masterton Hospital administrator Michelle Carbin began flirting with the stray cat behind the Rehab unit.

“I was the one that trudged out there into the bush every morning and every afternoon. I lost a lot of shoes over there but yeah, nah. I persevered,” says 61-year-old Carbin.

“And then three years down the track, one day he walked in between my legs and rubbed up against me and I thought ‘oh my goodness’ and I just about fell over.

“I touched his head and ever since then he got more smoochy.”

Staff were instantly smitten.

“We did a really naughty thing,” admitted Carbin. “We put a hole in our courtyard fence – like a cat door – so he could get in and out. We got it professionally done. And he does sneak in at night sometimes.”

Today, Boone is a valued staff member, well fed, regularly wormed and cared for by Masterton Hospital’s rehab staff.

“He’s our security guard,” Carbin says. “He escorts the orderlies off the premises at night and goes right through up to the end of the corridor and sees them off the ward. He’s got a very important job here now. You can’t get rid of him.”

Every morning Boone has breakfast in the day room at 7am before embarking on his daily round, visiting patients on the ward.

Occasionally while on a break, he can be seen lying on his back in the corridor with his feet in the air, getting his tummy rubbed by a patient or staff member.

“The Kittycat people knew about him,” says Carbin, who named Boone after a character from her favourite TV show The Waltons.

“They reckon he’s about ten and he’s been desexed. They would feed him but then he would hang around in the bush at the back and I thought one day, I’ll feed him,” she says.

Who are the Kittycat People?

“Well, I’m not really sure,” Carbin says. “They’ve got a sort of colony of them.”

Cats or people?

“No, of cats! Cats that they feed!” Carbin responded.

“Anyway look, we all just love him. I just feel that it makes my heart sing when I see him curled up inside.”

Carbin has worked at Masterton Hospital for 23 years and has been in the health sector for more than four decades. It’s not the first time she’s seen the adoption of a hospital cat.

Whether the Wairarapa DHB is aware of Boone’s permanent residence at Masterton hospital is unclear.

“Well, they haven’t asked,” Carbin says. “But what harm can they do? The patients love him and we’re here to make the patients’ journey a good one. So, there you go.”

She confirmed no one has complained yet about the ginger boy sneaking in through the courtyard fence to visit the nurses at night.

“We had a doctor that says, ‘Oh, I’ll bring my bow and arrow round and we’ll shoot him, eh?’

“But he’s just being a dick. He knows that Boone is well loved and the cat’s got a collar and you touch him and you’re dead man. I mean everyone will say that – ‘You touch Boone and you’re history’.”

At Christchurch’s Burwood Hospital, a legendary hardworking cat was taking his mid-afternoon nap on an office chair when 1News called in with questions.

Cherie Porter is the Clinical Manager at the Occupational Therapy unit and says 13-year-old Harry has lived there for about a decade.

By her account, Harry is “overweight… and quite wealthy”.

“Some cats will perhaps seek those people who are at the end of their life. He is not that kind of cat,” Porter says. “He’s more of a ‘love me whether you like it or not’ cat.”

Harry’s not the hospital’s first cat. His predecessor Alfie lived there for more than a decade. Then a few months after Alfie died, Harry wandered into the Burwood spinal unit.

“One day he turned up, walked straight down the corridor and wouldn’t go home. We made several attempts to get him to return and stay home but he was rather insistent on being in this space so his owners very kindly let us sort of adopt him to the Burwood campus.”

Harry quickly became the star of Burwood hospital. His Facebook page has more than 3000 followers, he’s been published in multiple news articles and an annual calendar of his photos has sold out for the fifth year in a row.

“All profits go to Harry,” Porter says. “He has his own bank account and we get a lot of donations too, plus his calendar – all of that pays for his vet bills, his food and his general upkeep.”

Porter says Harry’s office drawer is currently filled with 16 cans of donated tuna, a box of toys and Christmas treats sent to him by his friend Daisy – the resident cat at Auckland’s Waitakere hospital.

Being popular has its challenges too.

“He just about needs an outpatient booking system,” Porter says. “He has more patients come to visit him than any of our staff.”

Harry’s schedule includes greeting the morning staff by the spinal ward entry doors at shift change, heading to the Occupational Therapy unit where he waits for breakfast and then a round of visiting patients.

In the afternoons, he squeezes in his daily siesta on an office chair.

“He has the incredible ability to calm people down,” Porter says. “I’ve seen him sit next to a patient who was waiting for test results or an assessment. He hops next to them, calms them and he makes them feel a little bit more at peace.

“He serves a great purpose and patients really engage with Harry. He reminds them of home, he makes people feel a little bit better about being in a hospital.”

He also brings joy, says Porter, as she describes the day he chased a rabbit through the spinal unit as staff tried to chase Harry. The patients watched on in hysterics.

Canterbury District Health Board has an animal policy which covers Harry and also canine friends who come in to visit patients. Its infection, prevention and control team helps to support staff with hygiene and safety. That's important because, as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn, cats are great companions but they also carry germs which can be harmful to humans.

Burwood Hospital has gone a step further and ha has built-in cat doors around the building.

Its only real concern with Harry is trying to help him lose weight.

“He’s around 8kg so he’s quite heavy. It’s been difficult to keep him on a diet despite lots of signs and comms around not giving him treats,” Porter says.

“We often have a roast once a week as part of the patients’ meals and Harry has a very strong sense of entitlement when it comes to roast chicken in particular. You’ll see him following the kitchen trolley around and we know some patients will keep a portion of their meal to one side just for him. Which explains his rather large girth.”

Porter admitted some days Harry is wheeled around on an office chair to visit his patients because he refuses to get up.

“He is an honorary staff member who everybody attests to. Yes, he is a very pampered cat but we adore him and he makes our day.”

Auckland’s Waitakere Hospital arguably has the most famous hospital cat in Aotearoa with nearly 7000 Facebook accounts following their cat Daisy.

The six-year-old rag doll cross has spent the last few years visiting patients at Waitakere Hospital almost daily. That’s despite several attempts by DHB staff and owner Chelsea Smith to keep her away.

Daisy has a mind of her own and she hasn’t returned to her original home since May.

Smith initially set up a Facebook page up just so she could keep track of Daisy’s whereabouts.

“I keep up with her life on Facebook really. I can see she spends quite a bit of time in ED, she’s in the elderly ward, she’s in maternity and in the outpatients unit,” Smith says.

“There’ve just been so many stories. Daisy is a cat with intuition and she seems to know how to be in the right place at the right time for quite a few people. She’s been known to sit on the bed with pregnant ladies during labour or pacing outside the entry doors when a woman is giving birth.

“Our neighbour’s friend passed away at Waitakere Hospital and we were told Daisy spent the night with her knowing that that was her time and apparently that woman loved cats.”

Posts on Daisy’s Facebook page capture her inside hospital wards, napping on a seat at the entrance, outside the doors where staff have placed feeding bowls for her and in the passenger’s seat of the ambulance at the end of a shift. The page also featured a photo of Daisy with a swipe card with her name on it.

A spokesperson for Waitakere DHB declined to give a statement and said staff would also not be commenting.

But it’s clear from Daisy’s Facebook page - which is called "Daisy the Hospital Cat" - that staff in security, radiology, ED and other areas, have adopted her at Waitakere Hospital and are committed to her care. Many of them take turns volunteering on a roster to keep her fed and looked after.

“We’ve had to open an account for her because people always want to donate to her care. They send supermarket vouchers, drop food off to the hospital. It astounds me that people want to do that to be honest. It’s so generous of them,” Porter says. “She’s very spoiled.”

Among those who donate to Daisy’s bank account are family members of late patients who loved Daisy.

“I have people who contact me directly with a story about how much of a comfort Daisy was for their loved ones before they passed.

“She’s quite content there and wants to stay. It’s impossible to try and keep her locked in at home,” says Smith.

“Obviously, for whatever reason, our home wasn’t quite what she was looking for so she found her place.

“It astounds me how many people follow her life on Facebook. It’s nice that people care. I guess they just want something to brighten up their day and see what Daisy’s up to.”

Staff and patients at Tauranga Hospital refer to their semi-resident cat of about eight years as an “angel sent from heaven”.

His real owner Quinn Pratt doesn’t quite have the same faith.

“I thought he was just a cat from Murupara,” Pratt says, “but apparently I was wrong.”

When Pratt picked up the then wild kitten from a possum hunting trip in Murupara 12 years ago, he never imagined how popular he would become.

“Yeah, lots of kidnappings. People try to claim him when they see him strolling around the hospital and they take him home.

“A friend who worked at the hospital started telling me he was always there and I told him what a pain in the ass it was having to get him from the vet every second weekend.”

Steps now has a tracking chip and the local vets know his owners by name.

“I was sick of getting phone calls from the vet saying, ‘your cat’s here again,’ so I started our own Facebook page for the cat so people would know Steps actually did have a home,” Pratt says.

“But apparently we didn’t post enough content so somebody else asked if they could start their own Facebook group.”

Steps’ social media content shows him hanging out with staff at the Heliport hangar, interacting with patients and resting in his own bed outside the hospital entry.

“Apparently he makes people pretty happy,” Porter says. “He’s a very altruistic cat. Higher calling and all that.”

Signs posted around Tauranga Hospital outline his job:

Hi, I’m Steps the Hospital Cat.

My job is to offer cuddles and receive friendly pats from patients who are a bit nervous about attending appointments. Sometimes I ride the lift and I might even be nosey about what’s in your bag.

I take my role very seriously. Please do not take me to the SPCA. I am not lost. I am working.

“He clocks in every morning at shift change,” Pratt says. “He doesn’t get paid very well either actually. When he comes home he has that look, ‘tough day at the office. I’m better than you because I’m a cat’ kind of look.”

Pratt’s only concern is that Steps is “getting a bit fat” so he’s kindly asked people to stop giving him treats.

Pratt isn’t worried that Steps, like some hospital cats, might get so attached to his work that he’ll never come home.

Steps’ bosses haven’t given him any time off for Christmas either so he will be working right through the holidays.

“At this point I reckon I should start charging people for pats,” says Pratt.

“People just love him. But if he gets a full-time job and doesn’t come home for that reason that’s OK by us.

“He’s pretty much a permanent resident there so if we ever sell the house, the cat’s going with it.”

Five-year-old Grace is a “long boofy-haired” heavy cat who’s been working at Timaru Hospital for the past year.

From her nearby home she heads to the hospital every morning to begin her shift visiting patients and staff.

It’s a familiar story and almost foreshadows the start of becoming a permanent hospital cat.

“The difference between Grace and a lot of the other hospital cats is that Grace is only there as a worker,” insisted both her parents, Dominique and Jared.

“And we pick her up at the end of her shift each night.”

When Grace walks into a reception in the mornings, she is scanned in and enters the door like any other worker.

“They know her, they talk about her. They accept who she is and know that she does a lot for people,” Jared says.

“She’s been in the local paper when staff were protesting about the nursing pay and working conditions,” Jared says.

“You think about the long hours that Grace does – she definitely supports her colleagues.”

Dominique and Jared live about 100 metres from the hospital. When they started receiving packages and hamper gifts in their mailbox for Grace they quickly realised there was a growing fondness for their wandering cat.

“We honestly just put up her Facebook page so that people could know about who she is and where she was really from, but it’s honestly gone beyond what we ever thought,” Jared says.

The page has now racked up more than a thousand followers.

“We’ve had so many patients tell us how great she made them feel. She knows who might need comfort and she’ll give them smooches and let them pat her,” Dominque says.

“And she cheers up so many children as well, especially as hospitals can be such a scary place for them sometimes.

“We also found out Grace’s photo featured in a slideshow at the funeral of a former patient. Grace was with that patient in their final days.”

When asked if they were ever worried Grace may eventually become a permanent resident at Timaru Hospital, both were confident she would always come back home.

“She knows where home is. She knows her safe spot and she’s here for us when we need too. She’s really good like that,” says Dominique.

“And we put a tracker on her so we can always bring her home,” Jared says.

Perhaps someone needs to tell the hospital staff who, like proud parents, have put up a photo of Grace as a baby kitten on the wall of the physiotherapy unit.

Otherwise, it may not be long before Grace, like her hospital cat friends around the country, is permanently adopted.