I AM IN UR DEATHBED

                                                        Stew Milne / AP
SO U DONT GETS COLD FEETZ

MSNBC calls two-year-old hospice cat Oscar a "furry grim reaper," but that couldn't be more wrong.  The Grim Reaper personifies death, brings death, is death. Oscar merely heralds it, and that is incidental to his mysterious mission. 

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.

She was convinced of Oscar’s talent when he made his 13th correct call. While observing one patient, Teno said she noticed the woman wasn’t eating, was breathing with difficulty and that her legs had a bluish tinge, signs that often mean death is near.

Oscar wouldn’t stay inside the room though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor’s prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient’s final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside. [...]

Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure. [...]

Oscar recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his “compassionate hospice care.”

What's up with that?!

Here's an account of Oscar's behavior from the original article in The New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Dosa (which I paid to read): 

Making his way back up the hallway, Oscar arrives at Room 313. The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is resting peacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. She is surrounded by photographs of her grandchildren and one from her wedding day. Despite these keepsakes, she is alone. Oscar jumps onto her bed and again sniffs the air. He pauses to consider the situation, and then turns around twice before curling up beside Mrs. K. 

One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room to check on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar's presence. Concerned, she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk. She grabs Mrs. K.'s chart off the medical-records rack and begins to make phone calls. 

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.

I don't know if Oscar is helping Grandma get to heaven or wherever (which would make him a psychopomp -- more here and here), whether he instinctively tries to warm and revive one of his "kittens"  whose body is cooling (I've read that cats patiently present us with slain mice because they regard us as retarded kittens that need remedial hunting lessons), or whether he feels compassion or something even more mysterious in the presence of impending death.  Whatever, it's the kind of story it gives me sadistic pleasure to watch hard-line Darwinians tie themselves in knots trying to explain away.

UPDATE: I guess you'd have to call him The Last LOLcat.   

Comments

[Dave Schuler]

I have no doubt that Oscar can smell the effects of the body shutting down.

All of our adult dogs are (were) registered therapy dogs. Qila, our male, was demonstrably able to sense seizures seconds or even minutes before they occurred. I also have reason to believe that he was able to sense impending death. Except his own. He was completely unaware in the changes in his own scent.

All of our dogs are very clearly able to sense where specific aches and pains are and can tell when people are sick or are in pain.

Whether it's by sense of smell or some other cues I have no idea.

[michael Reynolds]

I know I shouldn't say this in a room full of cat lovers, but . . .

Cats are predators. They can identify the weak member of the herd. The kitty cuddles up to the dying because he's thinking, "I can take this one down! Mmmm, baby, we're eatin' some old man meat tonight!"

[Ruth Anne]

I like the psychopomp in those circumstances.

Cool story, Amba.

[amba (Annie Gottlieb)]

And when they can't explain it away, they resort to ad felinem insult humor.

[Simon Kenton]

When my wife had her first episode of psychosis, the cat would come in and lie down in her arms by the hour. A better comforter than I was.

[david]

Of course, I'll never feel quite as warm and fuzzy about a cat jumping into my lap again...

[demian]

Dave, I have to admit I whimsically thought the same thing... cats are predators, first and foremost!

[PatHMV]

And yet, Michael, we never read any stories of old ladies found dead and half-eaten by the 2 dozen cats in their house.

Dogs? You bet. A dog's your best friend until you're dead and he's hungry. But cats? Their affection for us is perhaps less demonstrative than dogs' but it runs deeper.

[Pogo]

Beautiful post.
I have seen such cat behavior with illness. I especially liked your comment that "it gives me sadistic pleasure to watch hard-line Darwinians tie themselves in knots trying to explain away."

I think this story would make Christopher Hitchen's head explode.

[Patricia]

Uh oh, my cat's been really affectionate lately...

[michael Reynolds]

Pat:

I think it's obvious that such cases of cat-on-elderly predation are covered up by the CIA. You know, the Cat Information Agency. Unless you think the whole story is just another anti-cat manipulation by Opus Dog.

[PatHMV]

I don't think those agencies are capable of such a massive cover-up, Michael. But maybe the Tricateral Commission...

[Dan]

The cat story reminds me of something that happened when I was a teenager. I had the flu and was feeling miserable; I was sitting in a beanbag chair watching television and quitely kind of moaning and complaining to myself. Our dog, who was a wonderful German Shepard, came up to me and started to nuzzle me and whimper in sympathy -- he felt sorry for me! Several times after that I tried to fake being sick by moaning in the same way I had been when I was actually sick, to see if I could trick our dog into giving me the same sympathy. I never came close to fooling him.

[jason]

I don't know what to say. Believable? You bet. With five of them who care for me when I'm sick or just down, I've learned not to question their ability to know us, to understand us, to be well ahead of us in all ways.

And this made me cry in all the right ways. . .

[Randy (Internet Ronin)]

I imagine that there is a great deal of truth to the story but am sort of sorry to see it published everywhere. I doubt Oscar will be able to continue doing this under the new circumstances. That is too bad because I'm sure that his presence brought comfort to some.

[JaneC]

It's good to see stories like this. I hope Oscar is allowed to continue for many years.

(And, erm, although I am a cat lover, I must admit that there has, in fact, been at least one case where a woman died at home and the authorities said her cats "may have had access to the body"--read between the lines.)

[txpublicdefender]

I don't understand why a Darwinian would have a problem with this or tie herself in knots trying to explain away. There's nothing about what this cat does that conflicts with Darwinism.

[Dave]

Compassion is a form of mutual support that helps species survive and procreate. Compassion is good in itself, of course, but if you're looking for a perfectly logical Darwinian explanation, that's it. Was that so hard to think of?

[amba (Annie Gottlieb)]

What's that term for an accidental byproduct of natural selection? I just read it recently and it's driving me nuts that I can't remember it. "Wild card" isn't it . . . I just looked at Stephen Jay Gould's book and he refers to them as "spandrels."

Those are the "something extra" uses animals find to make out of what natural selection has provided them with, things that aren't in themselves directly useful for survival.

Remember that I said "hard-line" Darwinians.

[amba (Annie Gottlieb)]

Point is, hard-line Darwinians look for utility in whatever characteristics persist. Not utility for a species as a whole; utility for the survival and reproduction of the individual or of his kin who carry many of the same genes.

What utility, in that narrow sense, can you find in compassion for the dying? If that's what it is? It might be a characteristic that would win a human a mate, but a cat??

[Emy L. Nosti]

Fascinating story. I wonder what they sense, specifically.

Anyway, to play Darwin's advocate, what utility can you find in panic attacks? They are an unintended consequence of fight or flight, or anxiety taken too far/felt in inappropriate situations. Compassion for the dying is just an unintended consequence of compassion in general, an emotional state taken too far (at least in the Darwinian sense).

Regardless, there's no rule against lasting non-beneficial phenotypes, so long as they aren't specifically selected against. On the other hand, one could argue that this aspect of compassion would be selected against as it means less hunting time and potentially more vulnerability. Not that this would necessarily address that argument, but would the cat show compassion for the dying if he felt hungry or threatened?

[Dave]

I don't know of any "hard-line Darwinians" (which is itself a gross misnomer - it's like calling physicists today "Einsteinians" or "Planckians") who would argue that every single persistent characteristic can be explained in terms of immediate (or even longer term), solipsistic pleasure. It's simply not an implication of evolution of species. The very simple rebuttal is that the survival advantages of a species could outweigh whatever weaknesses it has (cats with a sense of compassion, humans with an appendix). But for a more direct argument, think of it this way: A group of monkeys, cavemen, lions, whatever, can only survive in the wild by dividing other life forms into 2 groups: threatening ones and non-threatening ones. It makes perfect sense from a survivalist point of view to show the non-threatening ones compassion - they might be able to support and help you later. So members of the species that can survive only through communal living (unlike sharks, for example) will be selected for an ability to be sensitive to the suffering of other life they find non-threatening. Note that I'm speaking in aggregate here - there will always be a lot of variation in individual behavior (diversity being a crucial catalyst for evolution). But rather than see this as cold and mechanistic, I think you could give it a deep spiritual interpretation - shouldn't compassion be so much more integral to our lives if it arises naturally from it?

[amba (Annie Gottlieb)]

Have to think about that -- seriously. A deep spiritual interpretation based on ultimate self-interest? In other words, we have evolved a capacity to be kind and empathetic to others because it increases the odds of eliciting the same kind of cohesive behavior that could benefit us. To put it differently, we believe down to our cells that life is good, and we want to join in mutual solidarity to further life on "our team" -- the non-threatening (and non-food) ones.

The question is: can natural selection explain everything? Or only "not rule out"?

[Helayna]

Dont be stupid!!! U can scare kids by putting that up!! Models like me dont do that!!!!!!!!!!