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After a year, the staff noticed that Oscar would spend his days pacing from room to room. He sniffed and looked at the patients but rarely spent much time with anyone — except when they had just hours to live. "His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families." Watch on YouTubeHe often shows up a few hours prior to the patient's death, and he leaves their bedside shortly after. Reports of his amazing talent started early in his career, and Oscar has reportedly now predicted 50 deaths. He sniffed and looked at the patients but rarely spent much time with anyone - except when they had just hours to live.
- 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 typically arrives at a dying patient's bedside a few hours before death, Dosa says, but sometimes a half day before. His presence has been a comfort to many family members, Dosa says. And his presence, coupled with a resident's worsening state of health, can help alert the nursing home staff to let family members know the patient may be nearing death.
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As he ventures into his senior years, Oscar still finds the time to comfort ailing patients at the nursing home — even though he’s occasionally caught napping on the job. He’s accurate enough that the staff — including Dosa — know it’s time to call family members when Oscar stretches beside their patients, who are generally too ill to notice his presence. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, he’ll scratch at doors and walls, trying to get in. Since Oscar works in an end-stage dementia unit in the nursing home, it's inevitable that some of his patients will die.
If kept outside the room of a dying patient, he'll scratch at doors and walls, trying to get in.Nurses once placed Oscar in the bed of a patient they thought gravely ill. Oscar wouldn't stay put, and the staff thought his streak was broken. Turns out, the medical professionals were wrong, and the patient rallied for two days. But in the final hours, Oscar held his bedside vigil without prompting.
Do you think Oscar the cat has special natural abilities?
Angela Lutz is a writer and editor who has been fascinated by felines since childhood. She has more than a decade of experience writing about everything from health care and books to yoga and spicy food. Angela lives near Kansas City, Mo., with her husband, son and three cats.
I've seen resident trying to fight to stay alive, some wasn't afraid. A story...my cat Saberina always knows if I am sick, mad or happy. She always go under cover with me each night till I fall asleep then she sleep next to my feet. It is almost as if she was giving me this worry look. “After the New England Journal article you got the feeling that if Oscar is in your bed then you are dead, but you did not really see what is going on for these family members,” said Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.
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When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure. 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. Oscar with Dr. David Dosa, who is still alive.Dosa’s essay also details a time Oscar visited several patients who were ill and considered their situation before curling up next to a woman shortly before she took her last breaths. The cat’s uncanny ability to comfort those in need seems impossible — but the way Dosa describes it, even Oscar’s supernatural skill seems unmistakably feline. That is, Oscar is occasionally indifferent and cranky.
If Oscar really is a furry grim reaper, it's also possible his behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures like a heated blanket placed on a dying person, Dodman said. Just like any cat, Oscar is occasionally indifferent and cranky.Oscar is not the only therapy animal to have made the rounds at Steere House. Because the nursing home’s staff believes in “the therapeutic benefits of animal companionship,” it has also been home to parakeets, a floppy-eared bunny, and several dogs — but it’s safe to say Oscar’s story is the most intriguing. The normally elusive Oscar says hello to the camera.Nursing home staff sees the cat’s presence at a patient’s bedside as an almost certain harbinger of the grim reaper. Richards was at her mother’s bedside nonstop as she died. At its heart, Dosa’s search is more about how people cope with death than Oscar’s purported ability to predict it.
In 2013, in Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining, grown-up Dan Torrance is aided at a hospice by a prescient cat who can sense when people are about to die. King stated in an interview that Oscar served as an inspiration to the story. "It is not usually the type of article they will publish." The saga of Oscar, complete with his photo, is in the July 26 issue of the journal. These days Oscar is back to full fitness and has resumed his role comforting patients near the end of their lives.
He suggests Oscar is able - like dogs, which can reportedly smell cancer - to detect ketones, the distinctly-odoured biochemicals given off by dying cells. Dosa said the story of Oscar, who is now nearly five years old, initially had sparked a bit more interest in families wanting to send their loved ones to Steere House. Dosa said there is no scientific evidence to explain Oscar’s abilities, but he thinks the cat might be responding to a pheromone or smell that humans simply don’t recognize. In 2014, the comedy film Just Before I Go features a cat seen curling up next to Greta's dying grandmother. 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."
The tables turned in November 2013 when Oscar suffered a serious allergic reaction and he was taken into intensive care, where his heart stopped beating and he died for several seconds. Scientists remain uncertain whether there is any predictive basis for Oscar's talent, or if there are other factors at work, for example, an attraction to the warm blankets often placed on seriously ill residents. Such is Oscar's apparent accuracy - 25 consecutive cases so far - that nurses at the US home now warn family members to rush to a patient's beside as soon as the cat takes up residence there. While it's not known just how Oscar is able to do this, he often keeps family members company during this stressful time. His actions also may alert staff members to the impending passing of a patient, giving them time to call the family so they can show up and be with their loved one.
Instead, he says many caregivers consider Oscar a comforting presence, and some have praised him in newspaper death notices and eulogies. It was very werid, because all my life I had cats, and I swear I've never seen anything like this before, it almost like she knew exactly what was going on and knew what I was feeling inside. "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.
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