Nursing Home Cat Senses Death

Oscar, a cat at a Rhode Island nursing home, curls up against patients who are about to die. According to a spokesperson, he's rarely wrong.

A cat at a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island is evidently able to sense when residents of the home are about to die.

The cat, known as "Oscar," is reported to have sensed the deaths of at least 25 elderly people. According to nursing home employees, Oscar has been living at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center for two years and seems to sense the deaths at least two to four hours before they happen, and he is rarely wrong.

"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," said Dr. Joan Teno, professor of community health at the home.

Oscar goes from room to room on a daily basis to watch and smell the patients, eventually curling up next to one that dies within a few hours. Because most of the patients he visits are extremely ill, they don't notice his presence.

Thomas Graves, the chief of veterinarian medicine at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine said that cats and dogs sense things that humans are not able to sense. "It's such a cat thing to do," he said. "Those things are hard to study. I think probably dogs and cats can sense things we can't." He added that he does not believe that Oscar's seemingly ability to sense death has anything to do with his being a "psychic cat." Instead, "there's probably a biochemical explanation."

©Copyright 2007 by AlternativeApproaches.com