Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The Reaper has a first name, it's spelled OSCAR

An AP story on MyWay, Oscar the Cat Predicts Patients' Deaths, tells about a Providence, Rhode Island, cat with a predilection for snuggling down with nursing home patients who are within hours of passing away. According to an interview with Dr. David Dosa, who recently had published a New England Journal of Medicine article, A Day in the Life of Oscar, "He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die."

On at least 25 occasions, Oscar has been observed to sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

According to skeptics, maybe Oscar is just homing in on a heating pad that staff will put on a sick patient. However, that doesn't really explain every situation. Some cats just flat-out have psychic abilities. A cat of mine has the uncanny knack of yacking up a hairball in a location where I am most likely to step into it barefooted. This has been observed on at least a dozen occasions.

2 comments:

MountainLaurel said...

My cat has the same ability as yours. so I wonder if it's psychic.

Unknown said...

Clearly an example of false causality (or in this case, perhaps false casualty) - the cat is obviously a serial murderer.