The cat, named Oscar, had just woken up and scanned his territory with one eye. It looked out from the doctor’s desk to the two corridors of the nursing home, quiet on the east and west sides.
It slowly got up and began to stretch, first bent down to raise its hips high, then moved its center of gravity forward, and then sat down to consider where to start today’s “rounds.”
Oscars on the Table丨Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
If Oscar stopped when he found a room and leaned against the resident, the nurse, worried that death would come in a few hours, immediately notified the resident’s relatives, giving them a chance to say their final goodbyes.
After accurately predicting more than 100 deaths, Oscar also passed away this year due to illness.
It sniffed, jumped out of bed and left the room
“not today”
The nursing home is close to the highway. It is a three-story building with an ordinary appearance. The third floor is dedicated to caring for people with dementia. There are 41 rooms in total. Pets are allowed to visit and live here, and Oscar was one of six cats that were adopted in 2005.
In the corridor on the third floor, Ms. P was coming from a distance pushing a walker. She has lived here for three years and has long forgotten her family , even though they visit her almost every day. The occupants of other rooms are similar, and most of them are terminally ill patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other diseases.
She walks aimlessly back and forth every day, getting closer and closer to Oscar on the table at this time, but Ms. P didn’t notice it at all, just muttered to herself.
Oscar stared at her uneasily, hissing softly as she passed, his warning “leave me alone”. Oscar is not usually a relative, and often uses this sound to keep people away from it.
She walked away down the hallway, and Oscar relaxed. Ms. P hasn’t had time yet, and it doesn’t want to do anything to her right now.
Oscar jumped off the table, drank water, and ate something in a hurry. It stretched again and started patrolling, deciding to start in the west corridor. Oscar went all the way to room 310 at the end, the door was closed, it sat down and waited quietly.
Oscar sitting at the door of the room丨Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
After 25 minutes, the door finally opened and a nurse came out with dirty sheets. “Hello, Oscar,” she said, “are you going into the room?” Oscar waited for her to come out, then entered the room, where there were two people.
Ms. T was sleeping on her side, facing the wall. She is very thin and has not spoken for several days. Her daughter sat next to her, looking away from the book, and said enthusiastically, “Hello, Oscar. How are you today?”
Oscar ignored the woman and jumped onto the bed. It watched Ms. T. She was clearly in the final stages of her illness, struggling to breathe. It sniffed the air, took one last look at Ms. T, then jumped out of bed and quickly left the room.
not today.
Oscars on tour | HyperionBooksVideos
mother telling child
“It came to help grandma go to heaven”
Oscar returned to the hallway and entered room 313. Ms. K was resting quietly in bed, her breathing steady but shallow. She was surrounded by pictures of her grandchildren, but apart from the mementos, she was alone. Oscar jumped on her bed and sniffed the air. He hesitated a little, turned twice, and finally curled up beside Ms. K.
An hour passed, and Oscar was waiting. A nurse came into the room to check on the patient, and she stopped, noticing Oscar’s presence. So she hurried out of the room anxiously, took Ms. K’s medical records from the medical record shelf, and started to make phone calls.
In less than half an hour, relatives began to arrive, ready to be the last guardian. Oscar hadn’t moved away, but snored and rubbed Ms. K’s nose lightly.
Ms. K’s grandson asked her mother, “What is this cat doing here?” The mother fought back tears and told him, “It’s here to help grandma go to heaven.”
Thirty minutes later, Ms. K took her last breath. Oscar sat up, looked around, and left the room quickly , barely noticed by the grieving family.
Oscar returned to the table and curled up, his tour completed. In these few hours, no one will die on the third floor of the nursing home, and it can also sleep peacefully after work. If you’re lucky, it can feel the catnip madness again when it wakes up.
Sleeping Oscars at work丨Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
The last time they got catnip, Oscar and another cat, Maya, sprinted around the table so fast that they seemed to break their necks at any moment, stopping and rolling and flapping their limbs in the air, too ecstatic. Nursing home residents and medical staff gathered around to watch, and geriatrician Dr. David Dosa squeezed into the crowd.
He has always felt that Oscar is a smart and serious creature with the ultimate answer, and published the article “Oscar’s Cat’s Day” in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), letting the world know its special where it has inspired many movies and books.
And now, the furry god of death is chasing his tail like crazy…
Left – Oscar and himself in the magazine, right – Doctor Dosa and Oscar丨Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
Just in time
Sometimes its predictions are more accurate than doctors
Although he often slept during work hours and had occasional fun, Oscar made daily rounds like doctors and nurses, entering every room on the third floor of the nursing home to observe and sniff patients, and find and accompany those he thought were dying.
The staff noticed half a year after Oscar came to the nursing home that death always followed him, and after repeating the verification 25 times, they were convinced that the patient’s family should be notified when it made a choice.
In the eyes of nursing home doctor Joan Teno, Oscar is better at predicting death than doctors and nurses. Dr. Turno said she once noticed a female patient was not eating, had difficulty breathing, and the skin on her legs had begun to turn blue, signs that usually meant death was imminent. But Oscar was reluctant to stay in that room at the time, thinking its predicted winning streak was about to be broken. As it turned out, Dr. Turno’s prediction was about 10 hours ahead, and Oscar showed up at the patient’s bedside with just two hours to go.
While helping patients, Oscar himself has also become a “patient” recuperating in a nursing home. It was in November 2013, and his heart stopped beating due to a severe allergic reaction, but the veterinarian rescued him, and after a few months of convalescence, Oscar was back healthy and started his “work” again. As of 2015, it is believed to have accurately predicted at least 100 deaths.
The people Oscar has served, mostly relatives of patients, often thank him for his last companionship, and for the opportunity to say goodbye in advance of warning, which is comforting . However, there are also people who want it out of the room when the patient dies. If the staff had closed that door early, Oscar would have paced back and forth in front of the door, or even walked into the next room, trying to scratch his way through the wall. Whenever this happens, the staff can only take it out of the nursing home temporarily.
Knowing about death in advance can be an opportunity to say goodbye to loved ones, and it can be a panic for those who are about to die. Here, though, most people don’t notice their surroundings, and when Oscar comes to visit, they’re in the final stages, and probably won’t know it’s there or that death is coming. What’s more, some people will die alone, and Oscar is the only company at that time.
To this end, a local hospice agency awarded Oscar a commemorative plaque: “In recognition of his compassionate hospice care, this commemorative plaque is specially awarded to Oscar the cat.”
Figure丨Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
How did Oscar predict death?
No one can be sure if Oscar’s actions make scientific sense and how it should be explained.
Doctors Dosa and Tenor believe Oscar may have been helped by smells or other chemicals released when humans are about to die, or by what it read from the behavior of doctors and nurses. Certain diseases do have a peculiar smell, such as in diabetic ketoacidosis, where the patient’s breath smells of rotten apples. Maybe death itself has a smell, but humans don’t notice it.
Some animal experts have also hypothesized that Oscar’s behavior, in addition to smelling the characteristic smell of death, may be that he noticed the room became quiet and learned to stay in the room with this signal.
Others argue that Oscar has no ability to predict death at all , a phenomenon known as “confirmation bias.” Meaning, it appears unrelated to death, but people selectively memorize instances that happen to happen in succession, ignoring those irrelevant stays.
Regardless of the conclusion, right now, doctors have not found the secret to predicting the exact time of death. While studies can tally the risk for an entire population, doctors cannot yet make precise judgments about specific individuals. A study has recorded a doctor’s judgment on whether a patient will die within 72 hours. The results show that the doctor’s accuracy rate is 65% to 73%, which is equivalent to one error in three judgments , far less accurate than Oscar’s “room rounds”.
Sadly, Oscar’s predictions stopped on February 22, 2022, and it took away its own secret forever. This time, Oscar did not announce that death is about to come, but his friends spent the last moments with him, just like the company it has provided people more than a hundred times in 17 years.
Figure丨Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
references
[1] Dosa DM. A day in the life of Oscar the cat. N Engl J Med. 2007;357(4):328-329.
[2] Dosa D. Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat. Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent). 2013;26(2):200–201.
[3] Szawarski P. Classic cases revisited: Oscar the cat and predicting death. J Intensive Care Soc. 2016;17(4):341-345.
[4] White N, Reid F, Vickerstaff V, Harries P, Stone P. Specialist palliative medicine physicians and nurses accuracy at predicting imminent death (within 72 hours): a short report. BMJ Support Palliat Care. 2020;10(2) :209-212.
[5] Carol Kaufmann. An Angel With Whiskers. AARP Bulletin. 2010.06.10.
[6] Oscar the Cat Predicts Nursing Home Deaths. Fox News. 2015.01.13.
[7] David Raven. ‘Miracle’ cat predicts deaths of 100 people in nursing home. 2015.03.30.
[8] Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
Author: Dai Tianyi
Edit: odette
Title image source: Steele House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
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