Oscar the cat predicts patient's deaths

I just saw this news on CBS Up To The Minute and found the story repeated on various newsites.

The report says that when Oscar the cat goes to the room of a patient in a nursing home and then decides to stay and curl up on the bed with them, the person passes away within 4 hours. Weird.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/25/death.cat.ap/
When death comes calling, so does Oscar the cat

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) -- Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours.

His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means the patient has less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," Dr. David Dosa said in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.

Here is the report from the New England Journal of Medicine
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/328
 
I heard about that.... It's rather eerie, isn't it? On the other hand, animals can sense things that humans can't. I once heard about a man that took his dog for a walk, & the dog suddenly stopped, refusing to go any further. So, the man decided to go back home, assuming there was something wrong with the dog. When he got back & went into the kitchen, he had a heart attack. Coincidence? I think not.....
 
I know that there are stories of other pets that can sense when there is something medically wrong.

There is a dog who can sense when it's owner is going to have an epileptic seizure and warns him or his family. There's another dog that kept on sniffing at the owner's mole. The person found out that it was cancerous. So animals must be able to smell abnormal biochemistry of people and try to warn them.

It would be nice to think that Oscar the cat is trying to comfort those patients who he senses are about to die. Those other pets are getting some benefit in their warning of their owners. Oscar isn't getting any apparent benefit curling up with patients about to die. It is strange.

I wonder what one of those 'animal psychics' could find out about why the cat is doing it?
 
They can also sense natural disasters, like the tsunami in Indonesia a couple yrs ago. Most of those animals fled & survived. I had a dog once that knew a thunderstorm was coming hours ahead of time. She would start shaking & then hide somewhere. How she managed to fit under the sofa, I'll never know......
 
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