Ask the cat. If it knows who is to die next, perhaps it can tell
whether this stock market crash is a crisis to come or not.
NEW YORK (AFP) - He is a two-year-old cat and looks innocent
enough. But at the nursing home where he lives in the US state of
Rhode Island, Oscar has developed a reputation as an angel of
death.
Since being adopted as a kitten by staff at the advanced dementia
unit of Providence's Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation
Center, Oscar has revealed a rather morbid tendency to pick which
patient is going to die next.
According to David Dosa, a geriatrician at Rhode Island Hospital in
Providence, Oscar makes regular rounds, looking in on patients and
giving them a quick sniff, before either moving on or settling down
for a cuddle.
So accurate have his predictions been, that as soon as the white
and tabby harbinger of death curls up with one of the patients,
staff immediately start summoning family and clergy to the
soon-to-be deathbed.
"No one dies on the third floor unless Oscar pays a visit and stays
awhile," Dosa wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and
nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending
death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families," he
added.
"Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25
residents."
Dosa did not offer any explanation for Oscar's uncanny powers of
prognostication, which patients were not yet believed to have
spotted.
