Entertaining the elderly

is an issue. I know it is an issue. Aged care facilities do not want bored, restless residents wandering around causing trouble.
It is not easy to deal with this, especially when there is a lack of staff.
The Senior Cat is not given to grumbling but I know, even though he has not said a word, he is "counting the sleeps to going home". We will get him here if it is at all possible. 
He is being polite and agreeing to going to activities in which he has no interest. He has endured a "quiz" - one where he could answer every question apart from the sports questions. He takes no interest in sport.  Why is it that he was the only person in the room who knew who had written "Pride and Prejudice"? 
The "carpet bowls" were a disaster. The Senior Cat's eye-hand coordination has never been good. When he taught me in the primary school and there were handwriting lessons he would go and take my mother's class while she came and taught us...yes, he was that bad. 
He detests "community singing". The Senior Cat may not be particularly musical but even he cringes at this.
The Activities person is nice. She is trying. He is teaching her some craft activities that he has done with children. They both agreed that some of these would be good for people who have limited attention spans and abilities due to dementia. 
Yes, this is the problem. The Senior Cat is still intellectually alert and curious. He still wants to know things. The staff were surprised he could use an i-pad. It may be that he only searches for information on it and that email remains a mystery but he can do it. I suspect there may be other people in there who could do something similar if they were given the chance and someone was there to help.
I took some knitting with me yesterday. A woman with Alzheimer's who constantly shuffles around stopped to look. Because it didn't matter if she dropped it or pulled it off the needle or anything else I gave it to her for a moment. She looked at it as if completely puzzled and then with a smile to herself she  undid the three stitches I had done at the start of a row, turned it around and began to knit. She knits differently - "Continental" rather than "English" style - but somewhere in her memory the actions came back to her.  
One of the staff saw her and said to me,
    "I wish we had time to help her do that sort of thing."
Yes, she would need help. She couldn't cast on or count but if someone had time she could knit endless rows and make "squares" and someone could sew them together for her. 
I don't have the time to help her either. It is something we should have time to do.
I don't want to grow old like that.