Question:
I have read your book "Cat Body, Cat Mind" with great interest and would like your opinion.
You may already have heard about Oscar, a resident cat at a Rhode Island nursing home who has predicted the deaths of more than 25 human residents by going into their rooms and lying with them on their beds until they expire. Someone at the nursing home has commented that Oscar is not normally a friendly cat, so this snuggling up to terminal patients is quite unusual. This story was written up by a doctor at the nursing home and first published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2007. I've enclosed a printout in case you aren't familiar with it. What do you think?
M.McD., Bridgeport, CT Oct 11, 2009
Answer:
I certainly would have included this remarkable account of cat Oscar in my latest book, but, unfortunately, it was published before the story of Oscar came out.
The nursing-home staff came to rely on Oscar, a better observer of patients than they were it would seem. The question is: Why was Oscar so motivated? His acute senses can explain how he knew, but why he chose to be with someone in the transition into death is part of the great mystery that I discuss in my book; and toward which many cats evince considerable sensitivity and responsiveness. It is through what I term the "empathosphere" that such heightened awareness is experienced, not only by cats but by other animals, including dogs and humans. I would appreciate hearing from readers about changes observed in animals when someone is about to die or has just passed on. In the old days, people would often connect some unusual animal sighting, or the daytime hoot of an owl, with the passing of someone they knew. Around the time this summer when a score of birds was playing riotously in the drenched leaves of a tree, I had the water sprayer on to give a much-needed soak, my 98-year-old mother died in a hospital 4,000 miles away. Coincidence? Perhaps, but she had a great eye and heart for nature and all creatures, and perhaps these birds were telling me she felt just as they were feeling when she was free at last from her worn-out body -- joy and relief. She had no fear of death, and taught Hatha Yoga until the age of 95!
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