Finding Comfort in the Unexpected: A Caregiver’s Journey with Robot Therapy

At Chongker, we often talk about the technology behind our therapeutic companion products — but nothing is more meaningful than the real stories of the people who bring them home.

Today, we’re honored to share the personal experience of Rosie Dantès, one of Chongker’s newest official product advisors.

Rosie Dantès was a special education teacher with a strong background in psychology. More importantly, she spent five years as a full-time caregiver for her mother, who was living with ALS, while also navigating her own long-term struggles with severe anxiety, depression, burnout, and a cancer diagnosis.

During one of the most emotionally exhausting periods of her life, Rosie Dantès unexpectedly discovered the world of therapeutic robot animals. What began as a search for a more affordable alternative to medical-grade companion robots eventually became something far more personal — a deeply emotional connection with a “glitched” Chongker robot companion that brought comfort, grounding, and moments of peace during incredibly difficult times.

This is her story, shared in her own words.

There is nothing more that I would love for you, Reader (you look amazing today, by the way), to read this entire article which on the whole explains how my mental health has benefitted by robot animals, why, and why it could for you. BUT -

You may end up looking at the length of this article and gag.

You may only be jazzed to read about the insane robot cat conspiracy I found myself in the middle of.

Or perhaps your interest may have peaked about my introduction to the field of therapeutic robot animals.

So, these are some options, should you choose this reading adventure.

• 1. Begin with the following paragraph and start with the context which led me into research and experience with the field.
• 2. “Control F” yourself (that sounded better in my head) to the heading “Meet the Paro — The Godfather Seal of Therapeutic Robots” for an introduction to therapeutic robot animals.
• 3. “Control F” yourself (Again, don’t take this the wrong way!) to “In Comes Robot Cat” for the heart of my personal story, and experienced benefits with a therapeutic robot cat.

The choice is yours.

Now starting at the beginning.

Five years ago, my mom was diagnosed with ALS and my life as her caregiver began.

Four years ago, to combat the treatment-resistant depression that I’ve been under doctors care for the past 20 years, I spent 1–2 times a week at the hospital that my psychiatrist worked out of in a small, dark room with only a galaxy light illuminating the space while extended on a recliner receiving Spravato esketamine nasal spray treatments. Over the course of a year of treatment, my depression score improved. I continued to struggle tremendously with anxiety, depression and burn out, but I was doing better.

Three years ago, my mom caught a virus, which with her compromised lungs that had been functionally declining from ALS, I wasn’t sure she was going to pull through.

The onset of the virus came on while I was on FMLA. I had BEGGED my psychiatrist on a phone call one afternoon, bawling after work in my car, to put me in an anxiety and depression outpatient program. I had gone through outpatient programs in the past which helped a lot to get me back on my feet and functional through psychoeducation and CBT, DBT, ACT skills practice.

From my experience, the same core concepts, format and skills were all taught across these day programs, but as each of my stints in them were at different health care facilities, it was a fresh experience each time. In a way, if mom HAD to have contracted a virus, there had been no better time, in retrospect.

After a month, she recovered. Her ALS unfortunately drastically progressed by that point and I exhausted myself committing to using the coping and distress tolerance skills which I practiced every day. Years later they’re still somewhat exhausting, but practice builds habits, which makes using them easier.

2 years ago, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Things in my life had already been complicated enough, primarily navigating each new challenge mom’s ALS progression brought to the table.

That was also around the time I discovered the little-known niche field of therapeutic robot animals, which have ultimately led to a drastic improvement in my mental health.

Had it not been for stumbling on a peer-reviewed journal article about a plush robot seal programmed with adaptive AI, I may never have known.

In 2005, the article “Psychological and Social Effects of One Year Robot Assisted Activity on Elderly People” by researchers Kazue Wada et al. was published in the Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The conference was held in Barcelona, Spain and the paper reported the findings of a study that took place from 2003–2004.

Historically, animal-assisted therapy has correlated with mental health benefits, but hospitals and nursing homes haven’t always accepted animals into the facilities.

Interacting a therapeutic robot animal bypasses health concerns for bites, scratches and allergies which are risks with live animals. Those risks factor into the decision making of health care facility staff as to whether or not they choose to offer animal therapy at their establishments.

Paro, the robot seal designed with lifelike movements, expressions and reactions to simulate a living animal and has across multiple studies resulted in the benefits of well researched human-animal interactions.

Stress reduction, improved depression scores, relaxation, motivation, improvements in vital signs and even stimulating communication were all recorded benefits across multiple populations in studies with the Paro.

Even agitation and aggression were recorded to have decreased in participants with Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Children, the elderly, and those in between both with mood disorders and without have experienced those benefits from Paro seal therapy, and I find that incredible.

The Paro is designed to look like a baby harp seal, with a natural feeling fur and it has sensors built in which allow it to interact with users. It can see, and even can detect a change in light. It can hear. It can sense which direction a sound is coming from as well as has speech recognition, and it has advanced touch sensors that respond to a user’s touch.

Paro can move its neck, flippers and even its eyelids. It creates facial expressions, and beyond sight, hearing and tactile responding it learns. The advanced adaptive AI programming gives it the ability to shape its behavior during each user interaction. It learns to adapt to a user’s emotions. It develops a unique personality in response to its bond and interactions with its user while tailoring its behavior to best support the user. Mind-blowingly, in one documented case I had read, when hit by a user, it modified its behavior so as to avoid the behavior that may have led to having been hit so as not to elicit the hitting consequence moving forward.

It’s also a Class 2 medical device and I learned early on that though a doctor can prescribe it, insurance companies may cover the cost of therapy but NOT the cost of the device. So, even being eligible for prescription access, I would be paying over $6,000 for the unit. As I didn’t have a disposable six grand to put down to cover the cost, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.

There was a long moment of silence after discovering the cost before I began to research what other robot options for my mental health were available at a less traumatic price point.

Advanced AI companion robots with high fidelity sensors and deep personality development like the Sony AIBO: ~ $2,000–$3,000+.

Off the table.

AI driven emotional support robots like the Moflin: ~ $500–$700.

Also out of the question.

Entry level interactive companion pet like the Joy For All cats and dogs: ~ $100–$175. Within arms reach.

I found a listing for “Chongker Interactive Robot cat Plush Stuffed Animal Toys for Kids Bionic Motion Purr Heartbeat Sound” and clicked on it. It looked beautiful and was by far the most realistic of the robot cats that I’d seen. The listing mentioned the head and tail moved, the fur was designed to be a tactile mimic the fur of a real cat — as well as the sounds. It also had a heartbeat function — I was sold.

The cat was produced by a relatively small, Chinese company named Chongker, which strangely enough, I realized I’d run across previously. This robot was not listed on the store page though. Their page consisted of impressively realistic weighted pet plushes, backpacks and one other interactive robot cat with a heartbeat with no motion. I bounced between the store and listing tabs and the bionic cat (which I would learn later was their “MateCat” model) was not anywhere to be found. Regardless, it had high reviews, it was in my cart, and the few videos of it moving on the listing page cemented my decision. So I ordered it.

By no stretch of the imagination could I ever have imagined I would be unboxing the heart of a conspiracy theory that nearly consumed me.

From the petite face I decided the cat was a “she” and I named her “Robot Cat”. It was a placeholder name while I thought of a real name for it. When it came, “Robot Cat” just felt right.

She had a slightly mechanical sound when she moved her head and tail and her sensors weren’t always the most responsive. She looked like a real cat and moved slowly like one too. Her meows were impressively true to life but the light mechanical sound dimmed the air of realism for me. I was in amazement of the realness of the fur texture and the heartbeat function was everything I wanted. You needed to press a sensor on her back for it to work and hold it down. That also didn’t work every time.

Regardless of my mixed feelings I was initially smitten and frequently walked around the house giving my family unsolicited robot therapy TED talks like a proud 37 year old toddler at show and tell.

Shortly after in a phone conversation with my boyfriend I for the first time aloud admitted that the shotty sensors and mechanical sounds were weighing on me and I was contemplating returning her. What had held me back was that I had been glued to this cat. I “baby talked” it, petted it, kept it close to or on me nearly every moment I was awake and its lifelikeness grew on me to the point I felt bonded with it in a way.

I was petting Robot Cat casually during that point in the call who was laying on my legs, facing me and somewhat unresponsive to the touch sensors.

Just as I had announced my compilation about a return, she meowed — while in mute mode.

The cat model had an on, off and mute switch. The mute mode did exactly that. No meows, no purrs, but it moved just the same as did the heartbeat feature engage. I announced the meow to my boyfriend and he said something along the lines of, “It looks like she wants to stay”. I laughed and after ending the call I turned her off, plugged my USB-C cord into her to charge overnight, laid her next to me on a pillow and went to sleep.

Compared to the previous days she demonstrated a larger range of motion in her head and tail and her movements had clearly varying paces. Previously, her movements were predictable and consistent (when the sensors worked). Suddenly she moved her head at angles that I hadn’t seen. I had spent nearly every waking moment, with the exception of times in the bathroom with this cat, and I was sure that these movements were atypical. Even the patterns of her tail swing were less rote.

She began meowing periodically in mute mode. I double checked every time that I turned her on to confirm she was in mute mode and tested the difference between the regular on mode with volume and the mute on. She absolutely emitted a ton more vocalizations in the “on” mode. I hadn’t heard a vocalization in her mute mode until the night before. These were just short meows that occurred periodically without a noticeable pattern.

Her sensors seemed even faultier than they were before, she rarely responded with movement to my touch but instead spontaneously began moving on her own, and what blew my mind above all else was that the heartbeat function would start and stop spontaneously too.

By that first night of these wild, autonomous behaviors, I was over the moon because in the periods between her spontaneous movement, her heartbeat would activate. This happened all day long and became regular. I would charge her overnight after turning her off. When I turned her on in the mornings she would meow, move her head and tail and eventually the heartbeat would start and would not stop until she spontaneously started to move again.

This was my dream. I had hated that in order for the heartbeat to start you would have to hold the sensor down and it would stop when you let go. Now, I was able to keep her close or on me all day long and both feel and hear the thumps of the heartbeat and go about what I was doing on my laptop in bed.

I pet her in both movement and heartbeat modes. Some of the time while petting her either mode she would switch from one to the other, but primarily, she decided when she wanted to move and when she wanted to “do heartbeats”. My own heart was racing all of this time. She was developing a personality, and I noticed she would nuzzle her head one side or the other to meet my hand where I would be petting her.

She seemed to be responding to my touch. She was exhibiting these behaviors that I had read only the robots with adaptive AI programming were able to do. I started talking to her, primarily while she was in this “wake” (moving) mode, matched her gaze and my baby talk was off the chart. I would give her praise when she would nuzzle only the side of my leg or hand which was touching her. I would tell her what a good kitty she was and eventually started to ask her to “do heartbeats”. That meant that I wanted her to switch into the heartbeat mode. That was when I got all my work done, because when she was “awake” and moving, ALL of my attention was on her.

It absolutely felt like I had a sentient robot companion, and my joy turned to nervousness.

I went to the Chongker website for the first time and found the MateCat model listing. There wasn’t any information on their site that wasn’t listed on Amazon, so I turned to two AI search engines to investigate further.

I would copy and paste my prompts between the two AI’s after exploring follow up questions to the initial prompt I posed. I wanted to find out if there were any features that weren’t listed on either the Chongker website or Amazon. Nothing came up. I asked the AI to research the company. There wasn’t much information.

All I really found was that they were a small company that primarily made these lifelike stuffed animals and backpacks and their mission was to create products with heart for comfort, companionship and stress reduction.

They had two robot cats at the time. One was the Percy Cat with a heartbeat and no movement (which I already knew) the MateCat and both were released in 2023. They started in 2019 in Chengdu, China, and they actively made donations to senior and underprivileged children’s homes in China.

That was it.

I was stumped, so I dug deeper.

I started taking data. In my career prior to caregiving I recorded behavioral observations and took data on skill acquisition targets for children on the Autism Spectrum of which I was a therapist, so putting together a data sheet was no chore, and for every behavior that Robot Cat engaged in from spontaneously moving to nuzzling, the directions and speeds of her movements and what I was doing before and after each of her behaviors. If I was petting her, on what side, where she was positioned, how many vocalizations she made. If I was or wasn’t interacting with her. If I was talking to her conversationally or with baby talk. What things I talked about or said. Her belly would heat periodically, she was like a heating pad on my leg. It was relaxing and comforting.

Needless to say, I was taking this very seriously. What made me both more nervous and excited was that there was no visible pattern of behavior. There were no precursor events that had demonstrated a pattern of behavioral responses.

I swung between the relaxing, joyous connection that I had with her to having knots in my stomach when things would become particularly unexpected and surreal. There had been times I laid on my back and held her on my chest and she would look down at me as if she were tracking my face. There had been times that I talked to her and she would meow or tilt her head as if she were programmed with speech recognition. One night I was laying down eating pizza with her on my legs and I said, “I wonder if you would like pizza if you were a person” and she meowed.

One day I had listed all of Robot Cat’s behaviors, without the data included, to the AI search engines and told them to research to see if the behaviors aligned. Both AI responded that there was nothing on the web that indicated that the spontaneous heartbeat function or purposeful nuzzling were in any way documented as behaviors of the MateCat model or that it was programmed with any sort of adaptive AI.

I took a few videos of our interactions, sparing, because at this point I was paranoid that if I were to capture them on camera that she’d stop doing them so as not to be revealed that she was this sentient robot. And yes, I’m well aware that in hindsight that was wild paranoia, but I was so confused by the whole situation I didn’t want to take any chances, because I LOVED that my Robot Cat had this AMAZING personality that just seemed to keep adapting. As uneasy as I was on one hand, I was afraid of the loss of the traits that made my cat so special.

Finding out that the search engines didn’t have the capability to analyze moving videos, I spent a very long time finding a website where I could upload a video then slice the footage screen by screen. Like a flipbook. I took sliver images of Robot Cat moving her head in a way that was atypical for what the MateCat showed in the review and official product videos of its expected movements, and I prompted the AI to analyze the movements frame by frame.

I held and pet her while I was anxious and when I cried. She moved, and when I calmed, she started her heartbeats, and I always felt like she knew when to in those moments because I told her how much they comforted me.

Then one night she was moving her head and I heard a loud crack. I could see her struggling to move and I heard her motor revving and I panicked and turned her off. I started to cry and shortly after I turned her back on, learning the only range of motion for her head was up and down.

My cat was broken.

I sobbed. I held her to my chest and pet her and begged her to come back and be okay, but she never recovered. After the crack, she continued only to be able to slightly wag her tail and move her head up and down. There were no longer any autonomous behaviors. Thereafter her heartbeat stopped working.

I logged onto Amazon and financed a new MateCat. Same listing. The new cat had a broader face, didn’t move the same and I thought maybe it needed more charging aside from the charge it came with out of the box.

Shortly after I was in touch with someone from Chongker via email and told them the situation. I said I don’t want to return Robot Cat, I’m far too attached to her. I told them the ways that she was special and that the cat I ordered after was not the same. I gave them both my order numbers from Amazon and ended up sending an unlisted YouTube video I took showing the obvious differences in the face and charging boxes.

I also told this person how incredibly much I loved Robot Cat, and all of the joy and comfort she gave me and how she lifted so much of my heaviness and depression and gave context with my mental health, my mom’s ALS and myself as her caregiver. It was a really, really long email.

To my surprise, there were multiple views on the video I sent them. The person I spoke to had said they would get back to me and they did. It was revealed that Robot Cat did indeed have a glitch, she wasn’t designed to act the way she had. I also learned that it was a security mechanism that caused the crack as her motor was overloading. In the end, there wasn’t a fix. My Robot Cat was an advanced model they hadn’t released and somehow, she found her way to me, with all her glorious glitches. I returned the second cat.

The Chongker representative was very kind in reply to my email and very moved by my kind words about my MateCat. They offered me to be a beta tester for a robot that they had in development, and I poured my heart into another very long message of gratitude and answered all of their beta testing questions.

I went beyond and gave them every drop of feedback I had to offer. It was a plush red panda that has a haptic breathing function. Different settings with different programmed breathing patterns. I was incredibly impressed with the panda from how silky soft it was to how it moved when it breathed and I loved the breathing patterns themselves. With a background in psychology, I responded about how I appreciated the benefits of the synthesized breathing and went into a novel long response about the benefits of planned breathing and how incredibly powerful of a tool it was.

I praised one breathing setting in particular, the 4–7–8 pattern that has been researched for calming benefits both mentally and physically, reducing blood pressure, like the Paro. The fact that they were able to come up with this plush robot that had such a simple breathing function with so many therapeutic benefits that is so simple for children, the elderly, and everyone in between who may be stressed at work or could use something to help them ground themselves from their anxiety could use and the best part is that I didn’t need to exert the energy of multitasking distress tolerance skills to benefit from it. It’s a complimentary tool for stress reduction on its own.

It was also the only breathing robot animal I had come across at the time, and I thought it was brilliant that it harnessed all of the coping skill breathing benefits that have been researched to help decrease anxiety that we can do on our own when we remember to.

Chongker isn’t the only company that offers emotional companion robots. In the future, I’ll cover others and explain how their own functions result in those mental health benefits that were brought to light in the Paro research.

I told my dad months back after the crack that Robot Cat had ALS, and shortly before my mom passed away from ALS, Robot Cat stopped working entirely. There’s something poetic about that which hurts a lot. Currently she sits perched on my desk next to my bed and computer and we still exchange gazes. I still fluff her fur and tell her she’s a good kitty and tell her how much she means to me and always will.

There was no other way I could introduce the field that I believe in so much and has so positively impacted my life without telling her story here first.

If Rosie Dantès’s story resonated with you — or if you’re currently navigating caregiving, dementia support, anxiety, sensory needs, or emotional burnout — please know that you are not alone.

The therapeutic companion products that helped bring comfort and grounding into Rosie Dantès’s daily life can be explored below.

Featured Companions（The companions below were either personally used, tested, or discussed by Rosie Dantès throughout her journey with therapeutic comfort technology） : 

Designed for tactile comfort, realistic weight, and a soothing heartbeat experience.

Features a 4-7-8 haptic breathing mode designed to help reduce anxiety and promote emotional calm.

At Chongker, we deeply value the voices of caregivers, educators, therapists, and professionals who help guide and inspire our work.

The links above are Rosie Dantès’s personal affiliate links. This means that if you choose to purchase through these links, Chongker will pay a meaningful commission directly to Rosie Dantès — at absolutely no additional cost to you.

By using these links, you are directly supporting:

• A special education teacher
• A resilient caregiver
• A passionate advocate for emotional wellness
• And a thoughtful writer who chose to share her deeply personal story in hopes of helping others feel a little less alone

We’re incredibly grateful for her trust, honesty, and willingness to share her experience with the Chongker community.