Oscar: Feline Death Omen
Nursing Home Cat Successfully Predicts Residents’ Deaths
Anpsi is animal psychic phenomena. One of the talents animals have demonstrated is the ability to predict the death of a loved one. Oscar accurately predicts death.
Animals Have Predicted Loved One’s Demise
Those who are familiar with the story of King Tut’s curse may know that Lord Carnarvon's dog howled and died at two in the morning in England when his master died in Egypt. Dogs howling before a loved one’s death has been documented.
Pappy Hefflefinger, a Pennsylvania Dutch PowWow doctor or shamanic healer, was a custodian at Webster School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania who loved pigeons and would feed them at a certain hour in the morning. When he retired, the birds showed up at his home at the usual hour to be fed. When he was dying, the pigeons gathered at his yard and sat with their heads under their wings, then flew off at the moment of his death and never returned.
Ravens, turnfalkens, were the Austrian Hapsburg’s omen of death.
Oscar
The two year old cat, adopted as a kitten, lives in the dementia unit in the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island.
After Oscar was there for about six months, the staff noticed he would make rounds. He looked at the patients and smelled them. He would sit by those who were to die in several hours. Dr. Davis Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor with Brown University noted that Oscar seems to know when residents are about to die and the cat is not a friendly one.
Dr. Joan Teno, an expert about caring for the terminally ill, of Brown University said she believed Oscar could predict death after he did this for the thirteenth time. Dr. Teno noticed that a female patient showed signs of impending death, but the cat wouldn’t stay in the room. The patient lived ten hours longer than the doctors thought. During her final two hours of life, Oscar was in the room.
To date, he has been accurate in 25 cases. When Oscars curls up with a patient, the staff notifies the families.
Doctors say most of the people whom Oscar visits are ailing to the point they do not realize he’s present. Most of the loved one’s of the patients are grateful for Oscar’s talent. One family wanted Oscar out of the room while the patient was dying. He paced and vocalized his indignation.
Dr. Nicholas Dodman, an expert on animal behavior and director of the animal behavioral clinic at Tufts University’s veterinary school believes more research is needed to determine if the cat really predicts death.
Theories
Dr. Teno and others wonder if dying people emit a scent Oscar can smell and if he can tell by the staff’s behavior when someone is about to die.
Parapsychologists have studied animal-human telepathy scientifically. Tests have evidenced that animals have this talent. Could it be that the humans subconsciously know they are dying? Could it be that, although the patients have dementia, they know this on a form of a conscious level? Or does Oscar have the talent of precognition, the ability to foretell the future?
Related articles:
Dogs’ Death Premonitions and Grief: Dogs Who Knew When Loved ...
The Hapsburg Dynasty’s Harbingers of Death
The Psychic World of Cats Part I
The Psychic World of Cats Part II
Sources:
Psychic Pets & Spirit Animals, Connie Hill, ed. (Llewellyn Publications, 1997)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959718/?GT1=10150
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/07/25/national/a141306D42.DTL&tsp=1
