This
cat has a sense for patients’ final hours
01:00
AM EDT on Thursday, July 26, 2007
By
Mark Arsenault
PROVIDENCE
— Death walks silently among us, invisible except to the cat’s eyes.
The
cat would be Oscar. He seems to know when people are about to die.
Doctors
cannot say for sure how Oscar does it, but they insist the 2-year-old house cat,
one of six cats at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, has foretold
the deaths of more than 25 residents.
Oscar’s
uncanny prophecies are described today in The New England Journal of Medicine,
in an article by geriatrician Dr. David M. Dosa, an assistant professor at the
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
The
stocky long-haired cat lives among patients with severe dementia, in an end-state
ward in which death is a common event. The facility treats people with Alzheimer’s
and Parkinson’s disease.
“There
are weeks that three or four people will die in that unit, and Oscar will nail
every one of them,” says Dosa. “I know it’s seemingly far-fetched,”
but he has repeatedly witnessed Oscar’s odd gift. “It’s a very
surreal thing.”
Usually
about two to four hours before a patient dies, Oscar goes to them.
He
hops onto the bed, curls up, and stays with them.
The
cat’s “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,” wrote Dosa, in his article for the Journal
of Medicine.
Another
doctor who treats people at Steere House, Dr. Joan M. Teno, professor of community
health at Brown and an expert in end-of-life care, confirms that Oscar “always
manages to make an appearance, and it always seems to be around the last two hours.
“Dying
is a process that occurs over days,” she says. “It’s not like the
cat parks himself there several days in advance. He only goes for those last hours.
If it’s not the last hours, he’s not there.”
After
the patient dies, Oscar “just gets up and leaves the room,” says Steve
Farrow, executive director of Steere House.
So
how does Oscar know? How does he know when people are about to die?
“I
don’t think this is a psychic cat,” says Teno. “There’s been
proven scientific articles that dogs in England are able to sniff out cancer cells
and I think a similar type of explanation is possible here. Oscar is smelling
some type of chemical or toxin from the body that helps him recognize that the
person’s dying. He may like the scent. Part of me says it’s a little
bit freaky. Sometimes when I’m making rounds Oscar will come and sit with
me in the window, and I keep on saying, ‘Does he know something I don’t?’
”
Dosa
cited studies that suggest some animals can predict seizures in people. Animals
have been known to act strangely before earthquakes. “Animals, for whatever
reason, are able to pick up things that we cannot.”
It
seemed that nobody in Oscar’s domain was near death yesterday afternoon.
The cat chomped some treats at a nurse’s station, and then plopped down in
a hallway and licked his shaggy white belly. Oscar looks to be at least 15 pounds.
He’s friendly, accepting a quick scratch on the head, but not interested
in any more luvin’ than that.
His
feline companion on the ward, Mayer, dozed in a plastic tub. Mayer does not share
Oscar’s gift for premonition. The cats were not from the same litter, and
are not related, Farrow says.
The
ward bustled with patients pushing walkers, and nurses wheeling equipment on carts.
Oscar
ignored it all.
“He’s
just become part of the life there, and really become a very positive part of
the life,” says Teno.
Home
and Hospice Care of Rhode Island presented Oscar with a certificate of merit for
providing exceptional end-of-life care, said Farrow.
And
Dosa says, “Oscar provides companionship at the time of death.”
So
what are family members going to think? “I hope they realize this is a behavior
that comes from a community that really cares for these patients,” Teno says,
“That’s what I know and see.”
What
Oscar sees in the halls of Steere House remains his secret.
