Perhaps you have heard about Oscar the cat. He lives at a hospice where critically ill people go to spend their last days of life.
That might not seem so special because many places like this have companion animals who help residents in a lot of different ways. However, Oscar really is very, very special. Why? Because Oscar seems to know when someone is going to pass away and he goes to stay with them and sleep by their side to comfort them. Among cats Oscar is special because he is a nurse to dieing humans.
What an amazing talent this little guy has and how kind he is to give comfort to dying patients. Some try to find scientific explanations for Oscar’s behavior. I prefer to think he is just a furry Florence Nightingale who understands when the time has come and goes to hold the hand of his dying patient out of kindness.
A book has now been written about Oscar. It is written by Dr. David Dosa and is titled “Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat.”
From an AOL article about the book:
The nursing home adopted Oscar, a medium-haired cat with a gray-and-brown back and white belly, in 2005 because its staff thinks pets make the Steere House a home. They play with visiting children and prove a welcome distraction for patients and doctors alike.
After a year, the staff noticed that Oscar would spend his days pacing from room to room. He sniffed and looked at the patients but rarely spent much time with anyone – except when they had just hours to live.
He’s accurate enough that the staff – including Dosa – know it’s time to call family members when Oscar stretches beside their patients, who are generally too ill to notice his presence. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, he’ll scratch at doors and walls, trying to get in.
Nurses once placed Oscar in the bed of a patient they thought gravely ill. Oscar wouldn’t stay put, and the staff thought his streak was broken. Turns out, the medical professionals were wrong, and the patient rallied for two days. But in the final hours, Oscar held his bedside vigil without prompting.
Dosa does not explain Oscar scientifically in his book, although he theorizes the cat imitates the nurses who raised him or smells odors given off by dying cells, perhaps like some dogs who scientists say can detect cancer using their sense of scent.
Read more here.
So you can draw your own conclusions about Oscar. I will continue to believe with all my heart that our animal friends know much more than we do about life…..and death. A lot of them are also much more compassionate than many of us.