This story really touched my heart....
Meet Oscar, the cat who knows too much...
Posted by
THAI-PANDA on Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sixth sense: Oscar, who lives in a nursing home, can sense when a patient is about to die and waits with them in their final hours
When a nursing home doctor heard that the resident tabby could sense when a patient was about to die, he was sceptical. But a series of spooky events convinced him the cat might really have special powers.David Dosa is a doctor at Steere House Nursing Home, where patients have Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, or are terminally ill.
One of the home's pets, a cat named Oscar, is special. Dr Dosa believes the tabby can predict the death of patients, seeking them out and remaining with them in their final hours. Here, he explains how Oscar challenged everything he learned at medical school.
Cats may have nine lives, but we only have one, and we're all terrified to talk about the ending of it.
Many of my residents have forgotten almost everything they have ever learned over their lifetimes. They seldom remember the names of their children or the year they were married.
Yet they seem to like having pets around. Their love of animals, like their love of babies and music, is one of the last things to go. Perhaps animals provide a connection to the person that they used to be - they are like a bridge back to the world.
Oscar was adopted from an animal shelter when he was a kitten, to join the menagerie of pets that we have living at Steere House.
When I met him for the first time, he wasn't friendly with me and he wasn't chummy with any of the patients either. He was the type of cat that would hide under the bed or stare out of the window all day long.
But then, about six months after his arrival, Oscar's aloof behaviour changed. He started to make house calls to fellow residents.
I'd like to say that I was the first one to notice Oscar's peculiar abilities, but I wasn't. It was a summer morning in 2006, when Mary Miranda, the day-shift nurse, called me over. 'David,' she said, 'I'd like to show you something in room 310.'
As we walked down the hall, Mary told me a little about Lilia Davis, who lived in room 310. She was about 80 and had colon cancer that had spread everywhere. Given her severe dementia, her family had decided not to treat it.
As we walked in the room, we found Mrs Davis lying on her back, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Mary pointed to the base of the bed. 'Take a look,' she said.
As I approached, the head of a black-and-white tabby cat slowly rose up from beneath the sheets. Moving caused the bell on his collar to jingle slightly. The cat's ears perked up and he glanced at me with questioning eyes. Then, with a look of resignation, he rested his head back on his front paws and purred softly while he nestled against Mrs Davis's right leg.
'You brought me in here to see a cat?' I said.
'I know this is weird, David,' said Mary, 'but the thing is, Oscar never spends any time with the patients. He usually goes off and hides, mostly in my office. Lately, though, a couple of us have noticed that he's spending more time with certain residents - patients who are about to die.'
Now I'd heard everything. Mary continued, 'You know, Oscar wandered into another patient's room right before she died yesterday.'
'Don't get me wrong,' I told Mary. 'I love the concept of an animal sitting with me as I die. Maybe he likes the patients who are dying because they don't give him any trouble.'
I left the hospital and drove across town to my outpatient clinic. On my way there my phone rang. It was Mary. 'Mrs Davis died a few minutes after you left,' she said.
It had been less than an hour since I was standing in her room, watching her breathe
No longer doubtful: Dr David Dosa, who has written a book about Oscar
I tried to tell Mary not to make too much of that cat business - that Mrs Davis was going to die soon anyway.
'But it's happening every time someone dies,' said Mary. 'Even some of the residents' families are talking about it.' She was quiet for a moment. 'David, I really think the cat knows.'
I put Oscar out of my mind for the next few months, until I received a phone call one day from Mary.
'I wanted to let you know that Ellen Sanders has passed away. Oscar was there at the bedside, just like all the others. He's made about five or six visits since Mrs Davis died.'
While Ellen Sanders' death was not surprising, the timing of it was rather unexpected. She had given no indication that she was terminally ill. Other than her dementia, she was a poster child for good health. But while none of the medical staff, myself included, thought she was even sick, let alone close to death, that cat sensed something else.
I asked Mary, 'When did you first start to question what Oscar was doing?'
Mary replied, 'Some of the aides started to talk about the cat always being there when patients died.
As I remember it, I suspect Oscar's first patient was Marion McCullough. Her son, Jack, used to bring Oscar into the room with him because his mother loved cats.
Oscar wouldn't stay very long, but as she got sicker, he would stay longer. On the day Marion died, Oscar jumped on to her bed and sat down beside her.
'But the thing that finally made me a believer was a death that occurred several months later. By then, a number of people were beginning to talk about Oscar.
Ralph Reynolds was dying, and we were trying to do everything that we could to make him as comfortable as possible. We believed that he was close to death and one of the aides put Oscar on the bed and announced to us that if the patient were dying, Oscar should be present.
Oscar looked at all of us as if we were mad and ran out of the room.
'Ralph hung on for another 36 hours. But, sure enough, just four hours before he finally passed away, we found Oscar, pacing up and down outside his closed door.
When we opened the door, he dashed straight for the bed and leapt up next to Ralph. He curled up there and refused to budge. A few hours later, Ralph was gone. Oscar didn't leave his side until the funeral director came.'
I thought for a moment, 'When you consider it from a scientific point of view, it's easy to shrug off suggestions that a cat can predict death. Maybe he just likes to hang out with dying people because they don't move much. Most cats sleep two-thirds of the day anyway, so chances are a cat is going to be found on a warm bed somewhere.'
However, in truth, I felt I had to get closer to the heart of this mystery. I decided to talk to families of the patients who had died on Oscar's watch.
Jack McCullough's mother, Marion, had passed away in November 2005. 'When Oscar was just a kitten,' recalled Jack, 'I used to bring him into my mother's room and put him on the bed. He would stay with her for a minute or two and then he would leave.
'During the last week, when my mother had fallen into unconsciousness, Oscar would come into the room, look around or jump on to the bed for a moment and then leave. However, on the night my mother died, I went to her room and saw Oscar lying on her bed. Two hours later, my mother took her last breath.
'Oscar never moved until she died. Then, he got up casually, as if nothing had happened, and left the room.'
Lawrence Scheer was also accompanied by Oscar when he died after a prolonged battle with Alzheimer's.
'We thought that Oscar had missed the boat with my father,' said his son, Robin, 'because we hadn't seen him.
'To pass the time, my mother and I went looking for him and found him in another unit sitting with a patient. He looked really anxious. A little while later, Oscar suddenly raced into my father's room.
'It was only later that we learned that the patient in the other unit was dying. Oscar stayed with that patient until he was gone, then he raced over and came to my dad. A few hours later, my father died.'
So how does Oscar know?
There is a plausible biological explanation for the so-called 'sweet smell of death'. As cells die, carbohydrates are degraded into many different oxygenated compounds, including various types of ketones - chemical mixtures known for their fragrant aroma.
Could it be, perhaps, that Oscar simply smells an elevated level of a chemical compound released prior to someone's death? It is certainly clear that animals have a refined sense of smell that goes well beyond that of humans.
It has been suggested that dogs could be trained to identify microscopic quantities of certain biochemicals excreted by cancer cells on the breaths of lung and breast cancer patients. Is it outlandish to suggest that Oscar has learned how to pick up on a specific smell emitted in the final hours of a patient's life?
Oscar's peculiar ability appears to be as real as it is mysterious, and he continues to hold vigils over departing patients.
Science has taken us a long way in our profession, but we still just scratch the surface. The rest remains a mystery. Maybe some people just know when their time has come. Some cats, too.
