Cat Predicts Patients' Deaths.


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 they have less than four hours to live.

Oscar has lived almost all of his two years in the third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island. Most of the people he visits are unconscious, so his visits don’t frighten them. Experts don’t know what clues Oscar senses, but an animal behaviorist says the only way to really track his record of predictions is to carefully document how Oscar behaves with everyone. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072501753.html -via Arbroath

Perhaps the ancient Egptians were on to something?

Lets get the cat memes out of our systems:
Im in ur lap, reapin' ur solz.
I r serious reaper, this r serious work.
I can has soul now?
brb, going to afterlife. Dropin off, kthxbai!
Invisible psychopomp!
I see that what you died, thar.
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Just more proof cats are evil. This adopted cat repays its owners by killing people!? Meanwhile Jake, a black Labrador, who was 10 months old with a broken leg and a dislocated hip, repays its owner by becoming a world class rescue dog.
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If I were in a nursing home, I would want it to be one with a cat like Oscar. What more peaceful passing could you imagine than with a cat purring next to you? I imagine (though I am many, many decades away from nursing home age) that by that point, death might be a welcome relief, and having a cat next to me would be a comforting departure.

And no, Lala, they weren't allergic to cats. He's predicted all 25 of the deaths of patients that have died since he's been there, and there is no way they were all allergic to cats.
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Cats tend to pay attention to people who don't look at them and who don't make a lot of sudden movements and noises. Ever notice how cats seem to gravitate towards people who proclaim not to like cats? It's because the cat hater's avoidant behavior is welcoming in cat language.

I think I'd be more likely to believe this cat's ability if he hung out in an elementary school and whichever kid he sat next to keeled over.

These people are in a nursing home. They're already unconscious. Chances are their life expectancy isn't long anyway.
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I think they smell something in the air, from my experience the dead or soon-to-be-dead specially when they're dying of cancer, they exude this very specific odour.
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The CBC Show "As It Happens" interviewed the nursing home doc last night. Should be on their wesbite audio file from the first half of the show:

http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/asithappens/20070726-aih-1.wmv

More details, including discussion on how many times the cat had successfully predicted death, including fooling the Dr.

-S.
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