July 26, 2007
Coincidence? I don't think so
Did you hear about the cat that can detect the Grim Reaper's presence?
Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.
According to the author of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the two-year-old cat has been observed to be correct in 25 cases so far.
Staff now alert the families of residents when he sits down next to their ailing loved one.
"He doesn't make many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," David Dosa, a professor at Brown University who carried out the research, told the Associated Press news agency.
The cat is said to do his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses at the home, but is not generally friendly to patients.
Although most families are grateful for the warning Oscar seems to provide, some relatives ask that the pet be taken away while they say their last goodbyes to their loved ones.
When put outside the room, Oscar is said to pace up and down meowing in protest.
Thomas Graves, a feline expert from the University of Illinois, told the BBC: "Cats often can sense when their owners are sick or when another animal is sick.
"They can sense when the weather will change, they're famous for being sensitive to premonitions of earthquakes."
A doctor who treats patients at the home said she believed there was probably a biochemical explanation, rather than the cat being psychic.
Of course, there's another explanation.
Maybe the cat is killing the patients.
Honestly, if we were discussing Oscar the nursing assistant, would anyone say, "Isn't it odd how Oscar's patients always die when he spends extra time with them?"
I'm just sayin'.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 26, 2007 07:19 AM
| TrackBack
Comments
Well, that's what I thought - and offered it as a possibility in a conversation about this cat, at work. It got a few chuckles.
But our group's token vegan-tai-chi-yoga-forming-scrap-metal-collecting-to-save-the-earth-thru-recycling-23-cat-owning-birkenstock-sandal-wearing-all-year-even-in-New-England-winter moonbat says that cats are psychic and can communicate with "the other side".
He knows, since he can see all 23 of them communicating psychically with one another and all the other cats in the neighborhood. Out of respect for his technical expertise and his being a DBF veteran, I stifled my guffaws.
In all seriousness, based on one of the reports I heard and because my mother was a vice administrator of a few nursing homes (and as a career geriatric R.N.), there is a flurry of activity going on when a patient nears death. The cats goes in there because it can see all the activity and naturally gravitates to where all the people are hanging out.
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't following a particular nurse, aid, or doctor.
Posted by: sonarman at July 29, 2007 10:42 AM