PROVIDENCE —The cat’s uncanny. It knows when death approaches.
At first this was just a curious observation. Now it’s an undeniable conclusion, first published two years ago in a medical journal and now in a new book coming out Tuesday: “Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat.” (Hyperion, $23.99).
Oscar is the cat. David Dosa is the author and the doctor. And it would be a mistake to assume from the title that Oscar merely accompanies Dosa at Steere House in Providence, which cares for patients with terminal dementia.
“It’s definitely his world,” Dosa says. “He just lets us work there.”
Oscar lives at the nursing home. And in his roughly five years there, Oscar has sensed the imminent deaths of some 50 patients whom he insisted on sitting beside and keeping company as their lives came to a close.
“It’s not like he dawdles,” Dosa writes. “He’ll slip out for two minutes, grab some kibble, and then he’s back at the patient’s side. It’s like he’s literally on a vigil.”
Dosa is an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University. He has faith in science, not in a cat. Well, that was once the case. Dosa’s faith has been shaken.
“My own intellectual vanity made it easier for me to reject the notion that some errant feline could know more than we as medical staff did,” Dosa writes. “I felt strangely elated by the notion that I could be completely wrong.”
A few years ago Dosa realized he was completely wrong. Two patients on opposite sides of the nursing home were dying. A female staff member who earlier noticed Oscar’s aptitude to sense the onset of death took Oscar out of one patient’s room and brought him to the room of the other patient who was regarded as more deathly ill.
“She brought in this angry cat and put him on the bed,” Dosa says. “Oscar charged out of the room and immediately ran back to the other room. Oscar was right. That patient died that evening. The patient we thought would die first lived a couple of more days.”
Dosa could no longer deny Oscar’s ability. So Dosa didn’t. Instead, he told everyone. He wrote an article about Oscar that appeared in July 2007 in the New England Journal of Medicine. And suddenly, Oscar was national news.
Everyone knew about Oscar, certainly families using the services of Steere House.
“People would say, ‘Have you heard what this cat does?’ ” Dosa says. “Now there is this added sense of, ‘My God, Oscar is in the room. You know what that means.’ Families have taken it for what it’s worth, perhaps comfort for a loved one, but haven’t taken it overboard.”
Dosa is a geriatrician, not a veterinarian. However, he has had plenty of interaction with cats: Steere House has five besides Oscar.
“None of them do anything like this,” Dosa says. Their most interesting behavior is by one cat that likes to sleep on the bench of the lobby’s player piano.
“It makes it appear as though he’s playing,” Dosa says.
That’s nothing compared with Oscar appearing on the bed of a dying patient several hours before the patient dies.
Why Oscar does this is a matter for speculation. Dosa’s best theory has to do with ketones. They’re biochemicals with a distinct smell that is created when the body’s cells begin to degenerate, easily detectable by a cat with its keen sense of smell. But why is Oscar — and only Oscar — attracted to it?
“Obviously we’d love to be able to say that he’s helping the dying,” Dosa says. “That’s something we all hope for. We all have a fear of dying and the idea of a cat sitting with us and praying with us into the next life is something we all want. We’ve gotten a number of letters from people saying just that.”
Maybe Oscar likes the smell of ketones. But, Dosa say, Oscar also likes the nursing home residents.
“This is essentially his whole world,” Dosa says. “He has 40 family members on the floor. He wants to be with them when they’re in need.”
The need, apparently, is only at the end of their lives. Oscar is not that social a cat.
“This is not a cat that likes me,” Dosa says. “The first time he met me, he bit me.”
Oscar’s unsociable nature makes his death’s-door visits even more remarkable.
“You find him under a bed or behind a medicine cart. Like any cat you could probably bribe him if you wanted to see him.”
There’s some question whether the patients, all suffering from dementia, know Oscar is sitting with them. “I don’t know that they would know if a cat jumped on their bed,” Dosa says.
On the other hand, Dosa has seen surprising responses.
“Even with patients with terminal dementia, things get through. Patients who can’t hold a conversation or walk will light up when they see a baby on the floor. Music is another.”
Oscar may be a harbinger of death, Dosa says, but he’s also comfort to the living — especially family members. “They find comfort in having Oscar there,” Dosa say. As much time as family members may spend with a patient, Dosa says, it never seems enough. “It’s easier to leave knowing there is a cat sitting there.”
One clear benefit to Oscar’s presence is the notification of kin.
“Families always ask, ‘Should I fly my daughter out from California?’ It’s a very difficult question.”
Oscar makes the answer easy. Sometimes a dying person can hold on far longer than doctors expect. However, when Oscar visits a patient, the staff knows the patient hasn’t long to live. “Oscar has allowed us to be a little more responsive and to call family members.”
And family members appreciate that. A few of the obituaries of Steere House residents have mentioned that the person died in the company of their family and “Oscar the cat.”
“The cat has something to teach us,” Dosa says. “Death is a difficult time and Oscar being there at the end of life serves as a model for all of us. People see what they want to see in Oscar. But they definitely do seem to take some benefit from him and what he does. That in itself is amazing doctoring.”
brourke@projo.com
Source:projo.com/