A Virginia woman was feeling sad. Her doctor prescribed her a cat.

[Nevilledog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/10/18/cat-prescription-virginia-doctor-wellness/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/9gpNy

Robin Sipe’s eyes filled with tears as soon as her doctor entered the examining room.

“My cat had recently died and I was feeling really sad and depressed,” Sipe said she told her pulmonologist, Earl D. King, whom she’s known for 15 years.

King has treated her for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a condition that blocks airflow and makes it difficult to breathe. Sipe said he’d saved her life three times in an intensive care unit at Sentara RMH Medical Center in Harrisonburg, Va.

So when he asked her what was wrong, Sipe, 67, opened up to him about her loneliness since her beloved cat died over the summer.

“I was really going through a bad time,” she said she told him during her appointment in September.

*snip*