Nursing home cat can sense death, ease passing
If I ever have to go to a nursing home, I hope it's a compassionate one like Steere House in Providence. They moved to a new building in 1991, and within the first week they found a mangled and starving cat under a car in the parking lot. They took him in, and he lived in the nursing home for the rest of his life. Steere House is now home to 120 humans, six cats, a slew of parakeets and a floppy-eared rabbit.
But one of the cats, a gray-and-white tabby named Oscar, is special. The two-year-old cat can predict when a resident is about to die.
Oscar was adopted as a kitten and grew up in the end-stage dementia unit. After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.
By now, when Oscar settles down on the bed with someone, the staff calls the family. So far he's been at the bedside of more than 25 residents within two hours of their passing. He stays there quietly until they die, then jumps down and leaves the room.
I don't know why Oscar does this, but I have no doubt that he's able to tell when someone is about to die. Personally, I think it's a matter of scent. ms_interpret has told me that she can clearly smell when someone is sick, and if a human can, certainly a cat can. Service dogs have been trained to alert epileptic owners when they're about to have a seizure, and I believe the dogs can sense a difference in scent caused by whatever cascade of chemicals is beginning to take place. As much as we know about the human body, there's far more that we don't know.
One of the doctors who practices in the unit wrote a beautiful essay about Oscar and submitted it to the New England Journal of Medicine. It was published today, which started the media storm. Get a tissue before you read it.
I love this story because my mother died in a dementia unit in 1991. I wish they had had animals living there -- my mother would have enjoyed that, as long she didn't have to take care of them! I wasn't with her when she died because there was no warning. I'm glad the families of the residents on the third floor at Steere House have Oscar.
The Boston Globe also has a wonderful article about Oscar, with a photo.
But one of the cats, a gray-and-white tabby named Oscar, is special. The two-year-old cat can predict when a resident is about to die.
Oscar was adopted as a kitten and grew up in the end-stage dementia unit. After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.
By now, when Oscar settles down on the bed with someone, the staff calls the family. So far he's been at the bedside of more than 25 residents within two hours of their passing. He stays there quietly until they die, then jumps down and leaves the room.
I don't know why Oscar does this, but I have no doubt that he's able to tell when someone is about to die. Personally, I think it's a matter of scent. ms_interpret has told me that she can clearly smell when someone is sick, and if a human can, certainly a cat can. Service dogs have been trained to alert epileptic owners when they're about to have a seizure, and I believe the dogs can sense a difference in scent caused by whatever cascade of chemicals is beginning to take place. As much as we know about the human body, there's far more that we don't know.
One of the doctors who practices in the unit wrote a beautiful essay about Oscar and submitted it to the New England Journal of Medicine. It was published today, which started the media storm. Get a tissue before you read it.
I love this story because my mother died in a dementia unit in 1991. I wish they had had animals living there -- my mother would have enjoyed that, as long she didn't have to take care of them! I wasn't with her when she died because there was no warning. I'm glad the families of the residents on the third floor at Steere House have Oscar.
The Boston Globe also has a wonderful article about Oscar, with a photo.