In 2005, a six-month-old kitten named Oscar was adopted by a nursing home in the US to be raised as a therapy cat. However, the workers noticed something peculiar about him.
While Oscar usually preferred to be alone, he occasionally crawled into a resident's bed and snuggled beside them. The eerie thing about this is that the resident that Oscar would cuddle with would usually die within hours. Initially, the staff didn't think much of it, but after this happened 20 times, they started to believe that Oscar knew when someone was close to passing away, and so when they noticed the cat next to a resident, they would call their loved ones to warn them.Researchers speculate that Oscar could smell biochemicals released by dying cells and so chose to comfort lonely residents.
On one occasion, the staff was convinced that a resident was about to pass away, but Oscar refused to sit with them. Instead, he chose another resident who looked healthier, and that person passed away first.
Oscar died in 2022, and over the course of his life he accurately predicted over 100 deaths.
I saw this article on Facebook. It brought back so many memories. In 2002, my aunt Audrey Jeffery in London was in hospice. A relative phoned to say "the cat is laying with Audrey and she will pass anytime. The cat always lays with people in their last hours of life." They were right, she passed that day.
I don't know where that article was from, but I believe it!
I did a Google search and found this:
It is thought that animals, and especially cats, can detect by smell the chemical changes that occur in an animal or human body immediately before death. They have also been known to respond to the physical and emotional needs of the animal or person that is passing away.
