Saturday, February 6, 2010

The Cat Who Senses Death


Several months ago I read of a cat named Oscar who baffled staff at a nursing home as he could seem to sense when a person was dying and go to them and stay.It seems he has achieved even hore acknowledgment.Just this past week there was an article, apost,and an Inside Edition spot on TV about him.
..."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."
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7129952/Cat-predicts-50-deaths-in-RI-nursing-home.html
Photo AP

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

very useful read. I would love to follow you on twitter. By the way, did anyone hear that some chinese hacker had busted twitter yesterday again.

UniqueNurseGranny said...

Thanks..No not another hacker..