Cat Predicts 50 Deaths In RI Nursing Home

Telegraph(UK) ^ | February 03, 2010

[Steelfish]

Cat Predicts 50 Deaths In RI Nursing Home 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.

By Tom Leonard 01 Feb 2010

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 Photo: AP [Pic in URL]

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.

[green pastures]

I’d seen Oscar’s story so much over the years, I wasn’t even going to click into this thread. However, in these way too early moments of the morning, I think I have come up with a brilliant idea— they need to send Oscar to Congress...

Mr. Oscar goes to Washington.

I like it.

[caddie]

I agree, and would add that the kitty is probably trying to be of assistance or at least be vigilant to the moribund suffering patient.

[caddie]

I agree, and would add that the kitty is probably trying to be of assistance or at least be vigilant to the moribund suffering patient.

Oh yeah, I sure would like to see how the cat behaves around Hussein, who is of the ambulating-room-temperature political class.

[DollyCali]

my pets are aware of a lot of things in the home & out in the forest that I can not perceive. Some other presence often there that they react to/with. It is not a fearful interaction so I am not worried.. as if it would help LOL!

[caddie]

My wife is a convert to Catholicism. She says that animals, especially cats, are angels who are here in some capacity (mainly to eat our canned food products and sleep) but also to help us through difficult times in our lives. I am not able to comment on the validity of her stance from a theological viewpoint, but I know that Aquinas said that animals are present in the hereafter, and indeed on the Day of Judgment, and are able to render testimony about our good or bad deeds towards them when we were in our mortal hull.

Please let me know if you have heard things corroborating this, or, indeed, to the contrary.

[Yorlik803]

I wonder when the cat wandered into the Whitehouse and slept next to the Economy?

[DollyCali]

LOL

[SunkenCiv]

Keyword: oscarthecat

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