a good breed for friendly visiting to hospitals, etc.?

Question
Hi.  I see you know about different breeds and wonder if there is one breed that would be especially suited to become a "therapy" type cat -- not really for therapy  but just to take on visits to hospitals, convalescent homes, etc. where people could enjoy spending time with a calm and friendly animal.  Or do you think it would be better to stick with dogs for this purpose?  

I have had six or eight cats of my own in my life, plus rescued many more, but in all honesty I don't think any I've known would have been both unflappable and sociable enough with strangers to enjoy going into different environments and meeting new people all the time.  The closest I could picture might be a couple large, self-confident and friendly males I have known, but I just don't know if it would be wrong to subject a cat to that activity at all.  Maybe it is not something a cat could ever really enjoy as they seem more cautious by nature than dogs?  What do you think?  

By the way, for anyone interested in offering this volunteer service, I hope they will read "Wanted! Animal Volunteers" by Mary Burch, Revised Edition 2003, which is an absolutely wonderful resource on all the amazing ways animals are being used to help people everywhere, including prisons, hospices, with retarded people, mentally ill, not just dogs and cats but all kinds of animals from fish to llamas to horses and everything in between.  Pretty amazing stuff...  

Thank you so much for helping share your knowledge.

Answer
I know a woman who has done therapy work with Tonkinese for many years, and I personally sneaked one of my Turkish Angoras into a nursing home to visit my father and was amazed at how she responded to him. It's my fondest memory of him, remembering him smiling down at her in his lap.

While there are probably some breeds that are NOT well suited to this work, it is hard for me to point to a specific breed that IS, simply because the personality variations can be dramatic even within a breed. In general, I think the first criteria should be whether the cat has been shown rather than if it is a specific breed. Showing gets a cat used to travel, changes of environment, and handling by strangers, and some cats love it. My 11-year-old Turk neuter went to a show for 1 day this spring, for a special veteran's ring, and he was making happy feet in the ring just the way he used to when I showed him.  He would probably be a great therapy cat.

Other breeds that feel like good prospects to me include: Maine Coons, Birmans, Abyssinians, Somalis, American Shorthairs, Ragdolls, Chartreux, European Burmese, and Exotics.  This is based on personal impressions/guts rather than anything else. Hope this is what you were looking for.

iris