Cat reaper

Cat who lives in hospice facility predicts death more reliably than staff.

In the dementia wing at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, the cat has foretold the deaths of over 25 patients by curling up beside them in bed within four hours of their expiring. It's gotten so that if Oscar lies down with someone, the nurses hurry to call the person's family, he's that unerring

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He’d sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours. [...]

[Dr. David] Dosa[, a geriatrician at Rhode Island Hospital], said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. “This is not a cat that’s friendly to people,” he said.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill.

And this really gets me.

Within a half hour the family starts to arrive. Chairs are brought into the room, where the relatives begin their vigil. The priest is called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged, instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandson asks his mother, "What is the cat doing here?" The mother, fighting back tears, tells him, "He is here to help Grandma get to heaven." Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath. With this, Oscar sits up, looks around, then departs the room so quietly that the grieving family barely notices. [...]

Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone.

The detail I highlighted was omitted from the MSNBC story, but it seems key. It is hard to avoid the impression that Oscar feels compelled at least to try to warm, and even more so to comfort, a dying person.

This might seem more bizarre to me if I had not witnessed a cat doing it for another cat. Max and Lucky were rivals in our household, usually irritated with each other. They'd "box" often and occasionally get into a real brawl Yet when Lucky was 16, blind, deaf, emaciated and dying of kidney failure, I was amazed and touched to see Max casually but deliberately lying down in contact with him, hindquarters touching. A cat does not do that by accident, least of all with a cat he is not friendly with. It looked as if he was trying to comfort and orient Lucky, to not let him feel alone. I've actually called him Dr. Max since then.