Cat Kills Patients in Old Folks Home
Here’s a charming story from the CBC about Oscar, a cat that lives in a Rhode Island nursing home. Oscar apparently has an unusual skill:
Oscar makes his daily rounds, waiting patiently outside rooms if the doors are closed, wrote Dosa. Once inside, the grey-and-white cat jumps onto beds and appears to inspect patients by sniffing the air.
If Oscar leaves the room, the patient isn’t likely to die that day, said Dosa.
But when the cat curls up on the bed, staff notice. They start phoning family members because the patient usually dies within four hours.
Experts are uncertain about how Oscar makes these calls–they cite scents given off by the patient or the behaviour of the nurses as possibilities.
Poppycock! Clearly the cat is secretly knocking off these poor patients when they’re not looking.
July 26th, 2007 at 8:48 am
I have three cats. They regularly curl up on my bed. Are they really trying to tell me something?
July 26th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill!
July 26th, 2007 at 10:05 am
I have three cats too. Once I dreamt I was suffocating, only to discover that one of our cats, Mojo, was sleeping on my chest. FYI, Mojo is a black persian that weighs close to 10 kilos.
July 26th, 2007 at 10:30 am
I’ve heard numerous stories about this phenomenon. I think one of the explanations cited a change in body temp/body smell when a person was about to die.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
My previous cat used to curl up on my lower abdomen whenever I had bad menstrual cramps. The pressure (she was huge) and heat from her actually helped a bit.
Also, my current cat likes to jump on me at dawn every morning. I think she’s trying to get me to death faster.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
[…] become quite popular in the last few days. Reuters, CNN, CBC and Yahoo News have all covered it. Darren Barefoot thinks the cat is knocking off patients when no one is looking. Ze Frank has an interesting title […]
July 26th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Hmmm…. I’m not getting a cat anytime soon.
July 28th, 2007 at 5:36 am
I, too, have heard of cats in nursing homes staying with a client thru the dying hours.
July 29th, 2007 at 4:24 am
I worked for six years as an art therapist in a dementia unit. We had two cats during that time. Both cats always slept with dying patients. I came to the conclusion that they did this because dying people give off heat and cats like warm bodies to snuggle up to.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:59 am
[…] I love this kind of news. And how can this be wrong when it feels so right? And I am now afraid of my cat. But I agree with this […]
June 29th, 2008 at 2:52 am
[…] become quite popular in the last few days. Reuters, CNN, CBC and Yahoo News have all covered it. Darren Barefoot thinks the cat is knocking off patients when no one is looking. Ze Frank has an interesting title […]