When doctors and staff realized that a cat living in a US nursing home could sense when someone was going to die, the feline, Oscar, was portrayed as a furry grim-reaper or four-legged angel of death. But Dr. David Dosa, who broke the news of Oscar's abilities in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, said he never intended to make Oscar sound creepy or his arrival at a bedside to be viewed negatively. Dosa said he hopes his newly released book, “Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat” will put the cat in a more favourable light as well as providing a book to help people whose loved ones are terminally ill. “After the New England Journal article you got the feeling that if Oscar is in your bed then you are dead, but you did not really see what is going on for these family members,” said Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University. Dosa said Oscar's story is fascinating on many levels. Oscar was adopted as a kitten from an animal shelter to be raised as a therapy cat at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, that cares for people with severe dementia and in the final stages of various illnesses. When Oscar was about six months old the staff noticed he would curl up to sleep with patients who were about to die. So far he has accurately predicted about 50 deaths. Dosa recounts one instance when staff were convinced of the imminent death of one patient but Oscar refused to sit with that person, choosing instead to be on the bed of another patient down the hallway. Oscar proved to be right. The person he sat with died first, taking staff on the ward by surprise. Dosa said there was no scientific evidence to explain Oscar's abilities but he thinks that maybe the cat responds to a pheromone or smell that humans simply don't recognize. Oscar has even been thanked by families in obituaries for providing some comfort in the final hours of life.
