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 is one of six cats on duty at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence.
The Providence Journal / John Freidah
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
