our experiences

we decided that we need to test out some of these methods before we promote them so we visited these places to help further our studying about this topic. we can now personally say we have had animals, that aren't our pets, help us with our mental health.

mewow cafe:

the cafe is an amazing place to relax, we unfortunately were scheduled with young kids which made our experience not as positive as we would've liked. but, they do offer meditation with their cats and i'm sure that it would be incredibly beneficial for mental health. even through it all, we still found our way to just zone out and relax like the cats were. the experience is only 25 minutes long but being able to escape from reality and the stressors of real life is really important. these cats are not certified therapy animals but their presence is therapeutic in itself. through some additional research, uc davis' mikel delgado explains the benefits of cats to anxious patients, “our study finds that anxiousness may be a positive trait to have because it is associated with trust and affection for a cat". while cats are beneficial towards our mental health we are also helping them and when we learned this it made our whole trip worthwhile. we all enjoyed watching the cats be so calm as we were petting them and hearing them purr as they slept. and yes, there is a huge difference between therapy animals and regular pets but either way, we learned that animals are very important for mental health. (there are some pictures down below and make sure to check out our interview with the owner of mewow cat cafe!)

rose bridge farm and sanctuary:

out of all of the places we visited, rose bridge has the most activities that kept us entertained. for only an hour, we saw pigs, baby goats, alpine goats, kittens, sheep, and horses. rose bridge has many events and activities with their animals that include feeding and snuggling with baby goats, private or public sessions, plants, soaps, and candle making with goats, goat hiking at fort washington state park, sheep and horse feeding, and separate kitten room, and so much more. their animals are all rescues and the kittens can all be adopted through a private organization. through this experience, we truly felt the positive impact of the animals. the animals are not certified therapy animals but they certainly left a positive impact on our mental health. the workers were very welcoming and gave everyone important information on how to properly feed the animals and background information on the animals that we saw. an article from people.com that mentions a quote that really stood out to me, “(...) goats will bring unconditional love, companionship and purpose to some young people" (chorney 2017). this completing relating to our main objective and the message of rose bridge. with more and more businesses and organizations using animals for treatment and for entertainment, it spreads the positive effect that animals have on mental health. overall, we had the best time at rose bridge farm sanctuary and would definitely love to come back again!