A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book. Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death.
The cat, now five and generally unsociable, was adopted as a kitten at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, Rhode Island, which specialises in caring for people with severe dementia. Dr Dosa first publicised Oscar’s gift in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007. Since then, the cat has gone on to double the number of imminent deaths it has sensed and convinced the geriatrician that it is no fluke.
The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch on the door trying to get in.
When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar “charged out” and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat’s judgement was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.
Dr Dosa and other staff are so confident in Oscar’s accuracy that they will alert family members when the cat jumps on to a bed and stretches out beside its occupant. Far from recoiling from Oscar’s presence, now they know its significance, relatives and friends of patients have been comforted and sometimes praised the cat in newspaper death notices and eulogies, said Dr Dosa.
So, the next time you’re mean to a cat… make sure his name is not OSCAR!!!!
Oscar Kevorkian
This was played out in an episode of House MD. The cat likes warmth, so if a bed-ridden patient gets a fever, the cat is there to keep warm. So when elderly patient gets a fever they often don’t survive it. Also if the patient is already dead the body starts to decay and gets warm so the cat gets close to the warmth.
Cats like weird smells. If my wife puts on perfume, our cats can’t stand it.
But if I cut a juicy fart, the cats seem to… well… Like it.
Sick, I know, but it’s true.
obviously the cat is killing them. “then we found out that all the patients that died had severe cat allergies.”
The cat knows they are going to die because he’s going to kill them – all – one at a time – while the staff is away calling the family.
Everyone knows cats are evil!
Having the Kitty of Death curl up beside you might just cause enough stress to cause you to stroke out.
Might be a good idea to find the cat another home.
He’s waiting for lunch.
Soul sucker? Banshee?
Doesn’t matter for these people death is an escape.
I for one welcome our new…..
This cat is a death eater.
Confirmation bias.
http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html
#3. “But if I cut a juicy fart, the cats seem to… well… Like it.” – Thanks for sharing.
geez this is like a year or so old. Nice fresh content on dvorak, kitty must like it.
and better yet it’s been here before… http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2007/07/26/oscar-the-cat-knows-when-nursing-home-patients-are-going-to-die/
There is a saying, “Even a broken clock it right twice a day”.
I think the odds are simply stacked in the cat’s favor, and humans associate it with something other than dumb luck.
The kitty died. It was visited by a mouse that had the uncanny ability to tell when a kitty was too old and fat to live.
God, what is this? 3 years old?
Why don’t the DU editors ever check dates on the stories they post? Even the article text states **2007**
[From the article: By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 7:42PM GMT 01 Feb 2010….why do you come here? – ed.]
Since 2004 a dog at a nursing home in northern Ohio does the same thing. At last count it was at 58 deaths with a near 100% accuracy rate.
My thinking is that people start giving off cadaver like smells and odors right before they die and the dog or cat just smells it.
We have five cats and they all jump up on our bed and sleep with us.
Maybe they are just wishful thinking.
What do you wanna bet an old person in a home has more or less “given up” on life and resigned himself to death. It occurs over time and the cat senses these changes. In short I don’t think he could predict a piano falling on a young person.
This would make a great plot element for a movie.
predictions from cat for 50 case!!!really amazing!we know cat has extra sensitive smelling ability.but as this is very old news why you put on this blog?
[From the article: By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 7:42PM GMT 01 Feb 2010 – sheesh ed.]
the terminator
My cat can’t even find his food bowl, I have to pick him up and practically put his face in it.
In case you guys didn’t know, animals can detect death. They can smell it miles away. In China, they are being studied as early warning system for earthquakes as animals can get nervous before a calamity like earthquake strikes.
See. Process. Understand. Wait. Respond. Type.
Hey! That’s MY cat Fluffy!!!
She was stolen 4 years ago, soon after she was a feature story in the papers here. I taught her how to speak!!!
She can say “fuck you” and “scream and I’ll scratch your eyes out”.
Oh Fluffy, how I’ve missed yoooo, boogie boogie booo.
Dear “Ed”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_%28cat%29
See external links:
#
# ^ a b c d “Cat’s “Sixth Sense” Predicting Death?”. CBS News. 2007-07-25. Retrieved 2009-03-20.
Hence people wondering why this is news now? Only because some guy wrote a book about it:
Oscar became the subject of a book by Dosa in 2010, Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat.
We may be commenting on your blog, but we aren’t all just dumb trolls
Here in Delhi we have the same thing, except the animal is a two-ton cow.
When that thing crawls up into your lap… Well, let’s say there is not a single person who lives more than a few minutes longer.
Amazing, but true.
i think i read this story like a year ago…
Has it occurred to anyone that the people dying may be allergic to OSCAR?