The Furry Reaper...

You’ve heard about Oscar? If not, he’s been written up in the current edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. Oscar is a cat in a Rhode Island nursing home who has demonstrated an ability to predict when patients will die. Actually this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this phenomenon. Years and years ago, there was a TV segment on another nursing home cat that did the same thing. His means of communicating an approaching demise is uniquely feline: he curls up and naps next to those close to death. Oscar, aged 2, is pictured ----->

Does Oscar have supernatural powers? Generally, I’ve found that if a cat will curl up next to you and nap, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are about to die…or win the lottery, or get a phone call from the President or have lunch. Anyone who has ever lived with cats know that if a cat will curl up next to you and nap it means, merely, that you exist.

My experience is that cats love laps. They especially love the laps of people who aren’t kicking them off to go places (dinner, bathroom, do something more interesting than sit and watch a cat nap). I know that when I’m not well, my cats – not all of them at the same time, but one-by-one or two-by-two, seem to know that I’m not well and appear to “tend” to me. My inactivity would seem to indicate the cat(s) know that I’m somewhat immobile and, therefore, take a chance that they can lay on me for a good long time.

Either that, or they’re all still in training.

Furry Reaper…indeed.