I saw an amazing article this morning and thought I'd share it all with you!
A cat in a nursing home named Oscar has predicted 25 deaths by curling up next to the patient. When he does this the patients usually dies within four hours, and the nursing home now actually call the patients relatives when the cat curls up next to them as they are so sure he is right!
In one case, a doctor identified that a woman was near to death, and thought that Oscar has lost his talent as he didn't go to sit with her. It turned out that the doctor was too early, and later that day about two hours before the woman died the cat went to sit with her!
Do you think the animals have emotion and can feel human suffering? I think this proves in some cases that they do!
I don't think we will really ever know until we can understand how to communicate with animals. I am no Dr. Doolittle, and I know I am completely baffled by my cats!
It's an interesting story, though. Do you have a link?
Kingfisher
It is a great story, I would like to know how many people the cat lies next to that don't die for every one that does die though.
I just read about this in my home newspaper. Apparently Oscar has been written up in the New England Journal of Medicine. He's being studied to see if it can be determined how he knows that the people are dying.
The story in my local newspaper, the Seattle Post Intelligencer:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1...h_cat.html
Thank you Squirreler, it's very interesting.
Kingfisher
If he is actually predicting deaths, I hope the study manages to uncover how he is doing it. It would really help relatives if doctors could detect accurately that a person is going to die in the next few hours, a lot of people wouldn't have to have the heartache of not being at a loved ones side when they die.
Thanks for beinging this story up Squirreler, I hadn't heard anything about it before. I'm always a bit sceptical when I hear stories like this, but I do agree that really we don't know how much animals can understand and how it might be possible to communicate with them. I'm glad some proper research is being done on this cat, because as Elden points out if it is found how the cat is doing it and it turns out it can, then it could lead to a new scientific discovery.
I think some animals do have a greater understanding of huans than we realise most of the time! Dogs can often tell a persons mood and behave accordingly, and I'm sure cats can too. This is an extension of that but definitely possible.
I heard some more about this story and experts believe that the cat is picking up the smell of some sort of chemical released when humans are near death. It's the same sort of thing as dogs predicting fits by smelling a chemical relesaed before it happens.
Do humans relesae a certain chemical before dying? I would have thought that it would depend entirely on how the person was dying.
I think cats know something we don't:
When I was a teenager, I moved to Somerset with my parents and inherited 2 farm cats called Dinky and Flame - they were sisters. We lived in the country so there was plenty of 'food' available for them, although they always had cat food twice a day too. About 4 years later we moved house about twenty houses down the road, taking the cats with us. Flame always stayed with us but Dinky completely vanished despite my mum asking the owners of our old house numerous times and going up there and calling for her. Then about a year later of not having any sign of Dinky, Flame got ill with cancer and had to be put down - horrible. The very day she got put down, we had a phone call from the owners of our old house saying that a grey cat had appreared at the door miawing in great distress. Despite not seeing her for a year, Dinky came back the day her sister died. She stayed with us in our new house, never wondering off until she died 8 or so years later
That's is an incredible story, I don't think anyone could explain that other than by assuming that cats have some sort of sense for these things that we haven't discovered yet.
It could be a combination of chemicals (similar to how dogs and other service animals detect problems), and perhaps a sense of heat leaving the body?
Such a fascinating question. Cats being cats though, they are not likely to be easily persuaded to give up their secrets
.
Kingfisher