Oscar was a special cat adopted by a nursing home in Rhode Island, USA, back in 2005. The people at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence were convinced that Oscar could somehow sense when someone was very sick or close to passing away. He had a habit of choosing to sleep next to patients just a few hours before they passed on.
Some folks think that certain animals have a ‘sixth sense,’ a kind of special ability to know things without using their regular five senses. This sixth sense is like a gut feeling or instinct that helps someone make decisions without relying on sight, smell, sound, touch, or taste.
While many stories about animals predicting things like earthquakes are often just based on people’s experiences, Oscar, the therapy cat, was a bit different. Unlike other animals with occasional success stories, Oscar had quite a few instances where he seemed to know when someone was about to pass away. After this happened about 20 times, his story got a lot of attention. Some of these instances were even written about in a 2007 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In one example from the article titled ‘A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat,’ a nurse walked into a patient’s room and saw Oscar there. Worried, she quickly left the room and went to her desk to check the patient’s chart. She made some phone calls, and soon the patient’s family gathered in the room. Even when the priest was called for last rites, Oscar stayed by the patient’s side, purring and comforting them.
There was even a time when the staff thought a patient was about to pass away, but Oscar refused to sit next to them. Instead, he went to someone who seemed healthier but, surprisingly, that person was the one who passed away first. It was as if Oscar had a unique way of knowing when someone’s time was near.
In 2005, a nursing home in the US got a six-month-old kitten named Oscar as a therapy cat. The staff soon noticed something unusual about him.
— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) December 24, 2023
Oscar often liked to be by himself, but sometimes he would go and lie next to one of the residents. Strangely, the resident he chose… pic.twitter.com/eA5TzK09Wr
