by Tap » Fri Jul 27, 2007 6:56 am
Grim rea-purr: The cat that can predict death
by VICTORIA MOORE - More by this author » Last updated at 09:37am on 27th July 2007
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The footsteps down the corridor of the Steere House Nursing And Rehabilitation Centre are light but purposeful as Oscar makes his way towards the end of the hallway and stops outside room 310.
The door is pulled firmly shut and, untroubled, he sits down outside it, and waits some 25 minutes until a nurse's aide appears, her arms full of dirty linen.
"Ah, Oscar," she smiles, and with a nod, almost as if she were expecting him, allows him to pass into the room where a frail elderly lady, her body ravaged by cancer, is sleeping fitfully. Oscar sniffs ostentatiously around, resists the blandishments of the relatives gathered round the bedside, struts out and continues on his round. For the lady in room 310, the time has not yet come.
[img:mcxdvnui]http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/07_03/catdeath32607_468x557.jpg[/img:mcxdvnui]
The patient in the next room into which Oscar pokes his grey-and-white head is not so lucky. This time, Oscar weighs the situation carefully, then leaps on to the bed and curls up beside the woman lying in it.
A few moments later he is spotted, snuggled up there, by a passing nurse who immediately raises the alarm, not kick-starting a security alert to rid the ward of an unwanted intruder but a frenetic flurry of activity as medical records are fetched, a priest is called, and relatives are alerted to the likelihood of the patient's imminent demise.
Because Oscar, as everyone in this nursing home is agreed, has special powers - more even than the doctors and palliative care specialists who come to tend to the terminally ill here.
For like a harbinger of bad news, Oscar is able to discern the exact moment at which the angel of death comes to stand at their bedside. It is an unusual skill, certainly. All the more so because Oscar is just a cat.
The fluffy, two-year-old, grey and white brindled pet was adopted by the dementia unit at the home in Rhode Island and named by its residents after a famous American hot dog brand.