David Doza, professor of geriatrics at Brown University, published a book last month about a cat named Oscar, which staff at a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island believe has the unusual gift of anticipating the death of patients
In a book entitled Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat, published by Hyperion, Dose describes about 50 cases in which the animal accurately guessed which of the inhabitants of the asylum was on the threshold of death. The geriatrician also puts forward several versions that can explain this phenomenon.
On the third floor of the private nursing home Steere House in question, there are people suffering from a severe form of senile dementia - they are unable to speak and do not recognize their loved ones.
After the New England Journal of Medicine published an essay on the Oscar in 2007, Dose feared the hospital's patient families would be horrified by this "furry angel of death." However, his fears were not confirmed - many of them call the cat a "comforter" and speak warmly of him in obituaries and funeral speeches.
The staff at Steere House won the Oscar in 2005 - they felt that this ordinary gray-and-white cat of average fluffiness would bring home comfort to the life of a nursing home. He distracted the sick, sitting in line to see the doctor, from heavy thoughts, and also played with the children of visitors.
About a year later, the hospital staff noticed that Oscar, who usually did not sit up for long in the same room, spent long hours lying on the chest of those who were living out their last hours. The cat's "diagnosis" was so accurate that the hospital staff began to report it to relatives. If the cat was not allowed into the dying ward, he began to cross at the door and meow plaintively.
One day, a nurse put Oscar on the chest with a seriously ill patient who, as doctors believed, did not have long to live. However, the cat refused to spend time in his bed, and after a short time it turned out that the doctors made a mistake - this patient was on the mend.
In his book, Dose does not provide a detailed scientific explanation of the Oscar phenomenon, but suggests that the cat smells decaying flesh, which is inaccessible to the human sense of smell. In support of his conjecture, he cites the example of some dogs that can distinguish cancer patients by smell.
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