Oscar, The Cat that Predicts Death
Oscar has been working at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centerin Providence, RI for the past decade or so. In 2005 Oscar was brought to Steere House to serve as a therapy cat in hopes that he would help cheer up the residents at Steere. He was descirbed as generally aloof and “not a cat that’s friendly to people”, sometimes hissing at people when he wanted to be left alone.
He generally kept to himself and would often be found hiding under beds or in the storage closet, except when someone was close to death.
After about 6 months of Oscar being at Steere, the staff noticed that Oscar would choose to cuddle up/nap next to residents who died just hours after his visit.
Joan Teno, a physician at Steere House, clarified that “it’s not that the cat is consistently there first. But the cat always does manage to make an appearance, and it always seems to be in the last two hours.“
After Oscar accurately predicted 25 deaths, staff started calling family members of residents as soon as they discovered him sleeping next to someone in order to notify them and give them an opportunity to say goodbye before the impending death. As of 2015, it was noted that Oscar had predicted over 100 deaths.
Oscar is so good at what he does that Dr. David Dosa, a health researcher at Brown University and a geriatrician working with patients at the Steere House, actually wrote an entire book( Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat )about it.
While there is no concrete explanation as to how Oscar predicts these deaths, one theory is that Oscar is picking up on the lack of movement in such patients or that he can smell biochemicals released by dying cells.
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