Oscar the nursing home cat apparently knows who is about to die. More remarkably, he stays with them as they reach their end. From the story:
A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book. Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death…
The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch on the door trying to get in. When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar “charged out” and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat’s judgment was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days. Dr Dosa and other staff are so confident in Oscar’s accuracy that they will alert family members when the cat jumps on to a bed and stretches out beside its occupant. “It’s not like he dawdles. 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,” Dr Dosa wrote.
I have no doubt that animals can smell or otherwise sense impending death. Several years ago, my now late cat went outside to meet his good friend, the kitty next door. Usually, they hung out together happily. That day, he walked up to her in his usual friendly way, but then, suddenly hissed, swiped at her face, and ran back into the house. I was very perplexed. First, he was a very docile cat. And second, he had just turned on his best pal for no apparent reason. Two hours later I went outside and discovered that she had crawled underneath a car and died. That raised an eyebrow, I will tell you. It would appear that my cat had smelled or sensed her impending demise and found whatever it was to be extremely unpleasant.
I bring this up because some might say that Oscar’s wonderful story undercuts human exceptionalism. There is no doubt that Oscar appears to be showing empathy. If so, the reason it might be morally relevant is that empathy is a distinctly human attribute, the lack of which in us is a symptom of mental illness, such as in sociopathology. But that could be because domesticated cats–who run us, we don’t run them–have been changed as a species by their intense and continual contact with us. Not as much as the wolves we turned into dogs, but still changed nonetheless. More to the point, Oscar is remarkable because he is acting in a way that is not inherent in the feline species. Note in the story that the five other cats in the nursing home don’t exhibit the same tendency. Moreover, Oscar is not duty bound to hang with the dying or treat humans or other cats well at all. This is because as an animal, he is not a moral being and cannot have any enforceable moral or ethical duties imposed upon him.
So what we have is a remarkable individual cat. This does not raise the species to the level of moral exceptionalism possessed by all human beings. Indeed, the fact that we might be chagrined that Oscar treats nursing home residents better than a lot of people do tells us that we have a right to expect moral actions from people that we never would from any animal.
February 2nd, 2010 | 2:04 pm
[...] See original here: Nursing Home Cat Comforts the Dying » Secondhand Smoke | A First … [...]
February 2nd, 2010 | 2:18 pm
I think that the cat’s actions can be understood as having both personal and non personal implications. Ie, I often think of my cat as a “person,” because he has so many “personal” attributes. But, even though I think of my cat as a person, I don’t accord him the same philosophical status that I do to human beings, who I consider persons in the most basic philosophical sense. The same logic applies here.
February 2nd, 2010 | 3:51 pm
Wesley…thanks for your always illuminating and provocative posts.
But I have to ask you: are you suggesting that empathy isn’t a trait that many (or even most) cats and dogs have? (This runs counter to my experience with pets.) Or are you suggesting that because it has to be learned that it can’t be an inherent trait of the species?
It seems to me to be an exceedingly odd claim that now, because of domestication, these cats are now of a different species. Is this what you are claiming? Surely human beings are socialized to feel empathy as well; and if they are not (or they are not taught/socialized well…or they are anti-social in this regard) then they often don’t end up being empathetic people.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Cats are often lacking in empathy, as the top life form on the planet! I am making no claims about empathy and dogs and cats. I think domesticated animals are changed by their association with us. I don’t see how that is disputable.
February 2nd, 2010 | 5:15 pm
I could tell you a little something about animals and their odd reactions to death and dying. Saw it first-hand in my father’s favorite horse when he died. When I’m not feeling well, my cat sleeps next to me and literally twirls my hair. Maybe it’s some strange parenting instinct. I really don’t know. I only know that I’ve seen behavior from animals that could definitely be construed as empathetic.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:18 pm
My aunt told me her father’s dog died of a broken heart after he–her father–was killed in an auto accident. Just kept waiting by the door…
February 2nd, 2010 | 7:55 pm
Right, no one would argue that animals are not ‘changed’ by the interaction with less. Just as no one would argue that immature human beings are ‘changed’ by their interaction with us. Empathy, you’re suggesting is a learned behavior in non-human animals…but its also a learned behavior in human beings.
Why would we say it is ‘intrinsic’ in humans but not intrinsic in non-human animals?
February 3rd, 2010 | 10:41 am
Oscar is an interesting cat. He has a very focussed interest, and his behavior suggests that there is a point at which imminent death is inevitable. That hasn’t been entirely missed by human beings; in the XIXth century, when therapeutic options were more limited than they are today, and when physicians had more humility about the possibilities of their interventions than they do today, simply being able to predict the future course of an illness, to provide the prognosis, was considered a valuable service and a worthy skill. In those days, it was taught that one of the signs of impending death was carphology – the telltale movements of the fingers, when patients aimlessly fiddled with their bedclothes.
I question whether there is any evidence, however, to support your headline. How do we know if Oscar’s behavior actually “comforts” the dying, or even if comforting the dying is what he is trying to do?
It’s clear from Dr. Dosa’s article in the NEJM that Oscar’s behavior comforts at least some of the family members of some of the dying patients. One is quoted as explaining to a child that the cat was helping the patient get to heaven.
The dog is well-known in some cultures as a psychopomp, and that role is recognized to this day in Zoroastrian death rituals as described by Mary Boyce in her book “A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism” (1977). I am not aware that the cat has been so considered.
Cats appear to be attracted to the energy fields that are associated with the focussed gaze or attention of human beings. They like to sit with us, or get in between our eyes and the book, newspaper, or computer we are gazing at. It may be that Oscar senses the activity of the soul as it is being prepared to exit the body.
I think it is however difficult to be sure why he senses that energy, or why he is attracted to it.
The cat you describe didn’t seem to enjoy that sort of encounter.
I should also mention that the staff of a hospital where I once worked believed that there was a “death fly,” a large black housefly, the size of a horsefly, which signalled the imminent death of the patient upon whom it had been observed to alight.
February 4th, 2010 | 11:47 am
There’s a dog out there somewhere that is used to diagnose something – cancerous areas, particularly, I think.
In any case…the critical commonality is apparently scent. The question for me is whether there would be any purpose in scientifically determining what that scent is. With the dog that apparently can smell skin cancer (I think), yes, there is something that might be of use.
With the cat which is apparently drawn to some scent the precedes death, I can’t think of any useful purpose to identification. If the person is dying, then the person is dying. It _is_ a good thing that family can be given notice, but other than that? I don’t think so.
February 4th, 2010 | 11:51 am
Found these two articles on a quick search:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4515651.stm
February 4th, 2010 | 2:41 pm
I don’t think the story is an exaggeration at all. We have two cats, and my daughters have two each. We’ve seen the same reactions in all of them: when one of us is ill they have a tendency to curl up with us on our beds, to come in close and stick with us, as if to comfort us. And it IS very comforting. Some may think it’s anthropomorphizing them to say that they’re doing this intentionally, but then I’ve hardly known a cat to do anything it didn’t WANT to do. In any case, that’s the way their behavior seems — to my family at least.
February 4th, 2010 | 4:25 pm
Wesley-I also heard of similar very tragic story of a cat at the humane society where I volunteered last year. She was sent there after her owner died and even though the staff tried to comfort her and spend time with her, the cat was extremely depressed and wouldn’t eat-all it wanted was it’s owner. Sadly, the cat’s kidneys began to fail and they had to euthanize it, an important difference between how we sometimes deal with animal suffering vs. how we should deal with human suffering.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Dean Koontz’ biography of his dog Trixie, A Big Little Life, has similar stories of dogs mourning.
February 5th, 2010 | 5:48 pm
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Stop projecting what you have decided animals are and are not onto them and just observe them. Why don’t I like the Judaeo-Christian, particularly Catholic, frame of reference? Because, for one thing, it makes such ridiculous, categoristic, self-serving pronouncements, distinctions, and judgements. That’s not science, either, any more than vivesection is. Of course some cats have talents more in some directions than others, common tendencies that yet vary along spectra of manifestation and intensity, and the same goes for all animals — including us — and of course other animals have empathy, ethics, etc. Not all humans behave the same way, and the way humans behave, they’ve got no business opining about other animals. A human could be Shakespeare and you call it human exceptionalism; a cat has Oscar’s talent (and I doubt he’s the only one, or the only one in a nursing home, for that matter; this instance has just gotten press, and it’s cause for indepth analysis?
February 5th, 2010 | 10:26 pm
Come to think of it, my Agamemnon did that for another cat years ago. What I find interesting is that I haven’t seen anyone comment, in all the media coverage there’s been about Oscar, wondering how the dying nursing home patients feel about this. Some may appreciate the comfort, maybe others dread his showing up.
February 6th, 2010 | 9:41 am
Ianthe, evidently you did not read my comment. I explicitly mentioned that there is no evidence at all that the patients were actually “comforted” by Oscar’s behavior.
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