I read with great interest an Associated Press article about Oscar the Cat, a 2 year old feline in Providence, R.I., who lives in a nursing home and who, according to the staff there, can accurately predict when a patient is near death.
Stories like this abound, of course, but they are usually very credulous, claiming psychic abilities or some such silliness. One BABlogee who sent this to me (cough cough Emily cough cough) mentioned the article had an unusually skeptical bent. I am skeptical of claims of skepticism, so, skeptically, I checked it out.
Emily’s right! The article starts off talking about the cat’s behavior (it appears to tend to cuddle up to patients who wind up dying within hours) and then offers this:
Nicholas Dodman, who directs an animal behavioral clinic at the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and has read Dosa’s article, said the only way to know is to carefully document how Oscar divides his time between the living and dying.
HOORAY! That’s precisely correct. We have a tendency to remember the hits and forget the misses, so it’s very important to look for those misses. Does the cat really spend more time with dying patients, or is that merely when the staff notices? Maybe the cat curls up with anybody, and the staff remembers later when the patient dies. This is a variation of the Full Moon Effect, which is known without doubt to be bogus.
Even better, the article goes on,
If Oscar really is a furry grim reaper, it’s also possible his behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures like a heated blanket placed on a dying person, Dodman said.
So even if Oscar does tend to visit the dying more often, it may not be due to anything more than the special treatment given to patients under those circumstances.
I am thrilled that an article would mention this, and also that nowhere in there is any mention of psychic or special powers of animals.
The article also says many families take solace in the fact that the cat is there, and I can understand that. I have a cat myself, and I remember (fuzzily) studies showing that cats — especially their purring — can have a calming effect. I imagine for many people, having a cat around for those last moments with a family member would mitigate things, if even a little. It’s times like those that people’s minds are more easily swayed by things that aren’t true, but that we wish were true. I’m glad that the article was written the way it was.
Hat Tip to the many folks who sent this to me, including, of course, Emily.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I read this in the Metro paper on the Tube this morning and I thought it was well written too.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Have you seen this article?
Hollywood physics - is it all science fiction?
Are Hollywood movies contributing to scientific illiteracy? Costas Efthimiou and Ralph Llewellyn, two physicists at the University of Central Florida, US, certainly seem to think so.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/07/hollywood-physics-is-it-all-science.html
July 26th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I heard this on the radio on my way into work, and it was also mentioned the odors that people give off (via medications, etc.) and that may be attractive to the cat. Don’t laugh, I had a cat who loved to lick my mom’s fingers after she used bleach!
July 26th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I thoughtthe most interesting thing was that the original article, which seemed to suggest that the cat could predict patients deaths, was in the New England Journal of Medicine, which, last time I checked, was a pretty reputable medical journal. It wasn’t a peer reviewed article obviously, but still, the AP article is more skeptical the NEJM article!
July 26th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
[…] (more…) […]
July 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
There’s another leap of logic in the story — even if everyone the cat sleeps with does end up dying in a few hours, that doesn’t mean the cat’s predicting it. Sometimes correlation really does equal causation.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I think everyone is missing the most obvious conclusion… The cat must be a murderer. Only explanation that fits
July 26th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
They claim the cat is predicting deaths. How do they know the cat isn’t causing the deaths? You know, sucking the remaining life out of them. Happens all the time with babies.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I have a photo of the real cat in question.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Unfortunately by the time it go to the Sydney Morning Herald (reprinted from the Boston Globe) Dr Dodman’s skeptical note was edited out …
July 26th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Apparently we cant post images? I used correct xhtml…
End Cat
July 26th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Wasn’t this in the last episode of the Sopranos?
July 26th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I’m getting a weird error when the page tries to refresh to add my comments.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Without granting the cat any special powers, it’s my understanding that research has been done into using dogs to detect cancer because they can supposedly smell the cancer. (N.B. I have no idea how this research turned out.) Could this be a similar thing where the cat is smelling something or observing something that is beyond the range of humans?
July 26th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I think Sean O’Hara and dogscratcher are right. The cat is probably killing these old folks. Everybody knows that cats are evil!!
July 26th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I saw this earlier today as well, and agreed it was well written. One other possible cause of any correlation that may exist is that cats are curious, and may naturally be interested in hanging around someone who is getting more attention than average from staff and visitors.
I know my cats hang around the babies. It doesn’t mean that they’re predicting the death of the babies. At least, I sure hope not…
July 26th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I’m certain there is a scientific explanation. One possible answer could be that the cat is picking up on an odor due to ketoacidosis .
I’ve read that many nurses claim to notice a distinct, sweet smell in the rooms of dying patients in the final days of those patients. That smell is likely caused by the build up of ketone bodies that are produced during ketoacidosis, which is the breaking down of fatty acids. This process could be occurring in patients who are near death because they may not be eating so the body is using those fatty acids to generate energy.
A cat might mistake that smell as the sweet smell of fatty food and think it’s going to find a meal. (Gruesome, huh.) That would explain why the usually unfriendly animal “paces and meows his displeasure” outside the door of the dying patients.
Just a guess.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
To me, this is way more credible than “drunken astronauts”
Many animals have far more acute senses than humans (smell, hearing, perhaps certain visual ranges) and do not generally “block out” or deny what they sense.
An important, connected question is, IF the cat could sense that a person is moribund, why would it choose to curl up beside them? Anticipation of reward? Fear of punishment? Sudden affection?
Motivation? This is a cat.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
“…nowhere in there is any mention of psychic or special powers of animals.”
The belief that animals, particularly cats, dogs, elephants, etc., have some kind of super-special psychic ability is one of my pet peeves (no pun intended).
Not that the following anecdote is necessarily related to this story, but it did make me think of it. One friend of mine, almost always when she sees a dog, is to say, “Dogs chose people,” because there’s this Native American myth about how dogs decided to become domesticated to save humans from the wrath of other animals. I saw in the news recently a story about how cats, unlike all other domesticated animals, may have actually self-domesticated rather than having humans begin the process, because of the advantages the cats earned by hanging around human settlements (catching rodents attracted to granaries, protection from larger predators, etc.). Amusingly, when I told my friend about this, and said that cats chose people, she pretty much dismissed it out of hand.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
“Many animals have far more acute senses than humans (smell, hearing, perhaps certain visual ranges)”
- This is a common myth, but, excepting smell, it is actually not true. Human senses are actually better than most people believe.
Otherwise, I agree with you. But this blog is about science and facts, after all
July 26th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I have two comments: first, great reporting BA, but where did that last bit:
” It’s times like those that people’s minds are more easily swayed by things that aren’t true, but that we wish were true.”
come from? I think though dost protest too much. Are you suggesting that a dying person who has a cat curl up with them *wants* to believe they are dying? Or are you talking about the calming effect of a cat when someone is deeply ill– but you yourself mentioned that is a perfectly plausible fact! So I think you kind of threw that in as a non sequitur, which is a bit of overkill for a skeptical position.
The second point is, I’m surprised no one has mentioned what I suspect must be true here– someone who is near death is probably less aware of the presence of the cat! For example, they are sure not saying “eek, get that grim reaper cat away from me, I feel fine!” So if they are less aware of the cat, perhaps their behavior is altered in other ways too. Maybe the cat likes warmth but hates to be petted, for example. Maybe the staff doesn’t allow the cat to lie with sleeping people, as the cat might like, unless the staff thinks the person is near death and is acting concerned. Those all seem more likely to me than the smell of a dying person, or the use of a warm blanket, or possibly even the Full Moon effect (which is a tiny bit derogatory to the intelligence of the staff).
July 26th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Oscar? The furry grim reaper? I think I’d prefer the Grim Mouser. Or was that Gray’s older brother? I forget.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I think though dost protest too much. Are you suggesting that a dying person who has a cat curl up with them *wants* to believe they are dying?
Keep in mind that many people, especially when they or a family member are near death, attribute a lot of supernatural significance to innocent events. Just knowing the cat came as the person was dying can be comforting in a, “[diety] is saying this is meant to happen!” manner of thinking. The idea being that [diety] is acting by proxy through the cat to let the person know they are not alone and it’s “their time.”
I can’t speak for the BA, but that’s my interpretation of what he was saying.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Ken,
I read that section as the BA talking about comfort to the attending family members, who would no doubt like to think the cat came to provide some comfort for their loved one and will also be affected by the verifiable calming effects pets can have on people. I don’t think he was talking about the patient themselves so much… but i could be worng!
July 26th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I have a psychic cat! I’m trying to teach her how to write so she can tell me the powerball numbers. And yes, she knows how to use the toilet but cannot flush.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
*I have tried posting the below comment a few times but keep getting a “duplicate entry” error message. Hopefully, this will work.*
I’m certain there is a scientific explanation. One possible answer could be that the cat is picking up on an odor due to ketoacidosis .
I’ve read that many nurses claim to notice a distinct, sweet smell in the rooms of dying patients in the final days of those patients. That smell is likely caused by the build up of ketone bodies that are produced during ketoacidosis, which is the breaking down of fatty acids. This process could be occurring in patients who are near death because they may not be eating so the body is using those fatty acids to generate energy.
A cat might mistake that smell as the sweet smell of fatty food and think it’s going to find a meal. (Gruesome, huh.) That would explain why the usually unfriendly animal “paces and meows his displeasure” outside the door of the dying patients.
Just a guess.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Jonas said:
“Many animals have far more acute senses than humans (smell, hearing, perhaps certain visual ranges)â€
- This is a common myth, but, excepting smell, it is actually not true. Human senses are actually better than most people believe.
Otherwise, I agree with you. But this blog is about science and facts, after all
——-
Can you see in the dark? Can you see UV or IR lightwaves? Can you detect the smell of the pheromone cocktail given off by female moths? Can you hear ultra and sub sonic sound waves?
Of course household pets don’t possess all these abilities, but it is certainly not a myth that animals do often have senses for things that humans do not. Birds, for example, can detect Earth’s magnetic field. Humans cannot.
I’m sure there is a scientific explanation for this, and it may be something completely simple. However, from a scientific standpoint, I’m certainly intrigued. I kind of hope they do study his behavior.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Jonas said:
“Many animals have far more acute senses than humans (smell, hearing, perhaps certain visual ranges)â€
- This is a common myth, but, excepting smell, it is actually not true. Human senses are actually better than most people believe.
Otherwise, I agree with you. But this blog is about science and facts, after all
——-
Can you see in extremely low light conditions? Can you see UV or IR lightwaves? Can you detect the smell of the pheromone cocktail given off by female moths? Can you hear ultra and sub sonic sound waves?
Of course household pets don’t possess all these abilities, but it is certainly not a myth that animals do often have senses for things that humans do not. Birds, for example, can detect Earth’s magnetic field. Humans cannot.
I’m sure there is a scientific explanation for this, and it may be something completely simple. However, from a scientific standpoint, I’m certainly intrigued. I kind of hope they do study his behavior.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
(sorry about the double post - I got an error with the first one, and made a correction before reposting… so you can delete the first comment!)
July 26th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
“An important, connected question is, IF the cat could sense that a person is moribund, why would it choose to curl up beside them? Anticipation of reward? Fear of punishment? Sudden affection?
Motivation? This is a cat.”
Well, we all hear those stories about how a cat will eat you if you die and it’s trapped in the home with you. Perhaps he’s simply calling “dibs”?
It may be something as brute-force simple as the cat likes nice, warm beds - but the people in most wiggle too much and disturb the cat. Those with just a couple of hours left, though, are nice and still - _and_ they don’t try to pick up the cat, or squeeze him, or do anything else to him the cat doesn’t like (which - if he doesn’t like people - could range all the way up to scratch head lightly). So Oscar gets all the benefits (warm, soft bed) without any of the negatives (annoying people bothering him).
July 26th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I don’t know much about the process of dying, but does it actually happen all at once? One moment, the body is “all alive”, and the next, it’s “all dead”? Or does it happen more gradually over the course of hours or minutes?
If certain things start dying first maybe they give off a different odor than a normally healthy human does. If that’s the case, maybe it’s an odor the cat finds appealing - like a musk or other pheromone.
I personally find few things more interesting than a seemingly paranormal situation that can actually be studied and have data gathered about it. It should be pretty easy to determine if the cat really spends more time with terminal people than the non-terminal or if it’s just selective memories - people only paying attention to when he’s there when someone dies while ignoring other visits. And if he does indeed more often visit those with an impending death - well, that’s interesting and there must be some way to find out how and why.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
“Dogscratcher” “You know, sucking the remaining life out of them. Happens all the time with babies.”
Please, please, please tell us you don’t really believe that…I mean, saying that here of all places.
http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/catsuck.asp
July 26th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Oscar the Killer Kitty had a segment on MSNBC’s “Countdown” just now; replay will be at 12 ET / 9 PT tonight.
July 26th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
I’m not sure why there has to be a supernatural bent to it. I have five cats who always react when I’m sick with a great deal more attention–and of a different nature–than when I’m well (you know, when they generally ignore me unless I have a treat for them). I don’t doubt that the cat knows when people are dying, when they’re within striking distance of death. Animals tend to comprehend a great deal more of the natural world than we do (we, after all, give it the supernatural bent, not them). To have one who simply reacts to impending demise by staying close seems no more unusual than one who stays close by when one is sick (the latter being something I could document and prove).
July 26th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
I am very very very allergic to cats. Exposure to cats has, in the past, sent me scrambling to the emergency room. Cats = bad.
however, they do have certain redeeming qualities…
http://www.squidzone.ca/photos/uncategorized/cthulhu_kitty.jpg
July 27th, 2007 at 12:45 am
Kesh: That could well be, that the families want some kind of sense of closure, but I thought it was the *staff* that was observing this effect, so they would need to be the ones who “want” it to be true. Maybe they also feel the way you are describing, but why would any medical professional “want” to think that a cat knows more than they do?
Mike: That does seem like an interesting possibility, that there could be a foodlike odor. I got the sense that the staff felt the cat was predicting deaths better than they could, however– surely if dying people give off particular odors, modern science should by now be aware of it! It would be nice to have a monitor for that sort of thing, after all.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:11 am
The BBC has this story too (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6917113.stm). They refer to the New England Journal of Medicine which sounds quite serious. Unfortunately I can’t access the original article (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/328) at NEJM. The BBC story says that the cat “is not generally friendly to patients” which would suggest that he actually spends less time with the ones that are not going to die any time soon. They also end with this:
A doctor who treats patients at the home said she believed there was probably a biochemical explanation, rather than the cat being psychic.
I agree.
Regards,
/Adam
July 27th, 2007 at 4:28 am
I wonder how long it’ll take for this to become a lolcat…
IM IN UR HOSPITIL BED
PERDICTIN UR DETH
July 27th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Luke, it’s already there:
http://www.lolcats.com/view/8888/
/Adam
July 27th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Another pic in this thread, plus a CNN article with the appropriate sections bolded. Obviously the cat is misappropriating their souls
http://p099.ezboard.com/frealitysucksfrm13.showMessage?topicID=35531.topic
July 27th, 2007 at 6:17 am
PUSSY CAT OF DEATH!
http://www.lolcats.com/view/8903/
July 27th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I suspect biochemical explanation, but there’s lots of possibilities.
Has the “self-fulfilling prophecy” explanation been ruled out?
It’s conceivable that after a few “lucky” events where the cat attends a patient who died, some staff start believing that the cat predicts death, and treat the feline-attracting patient accordingly, thus accelerating the progression to death.
This is getting a fair bit of unskeptical coverage on the Boston TV news outlets.
I think the good news is that they allow cats in this institutional setting. Cats (and other furry pets) are very calming for people under stress.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:11 am
The article pointed out that the dying patients were generally unaware of Oscar’s presence.
As far as cats “stealing” babies’ breath, put a 5-lb. cat on an 8-lb. baby’s chest, and watch that baby try to inhale. Cats do seem to investigate the milky smell associated with babies.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Cats like it when you lie very still, because they can nap without being disturbed. If you wiggle a lot, they leave. What could be more pleasant for a cat than a warm human that lies still? Not mystical, biochemical, psychical, emotional or mysterious in any way imho.
July 27th, 2007 at 8:10 am
This article from the BBC might be of interest.
I did look on Wikkipedia for mythology of cats, but could not find anything difinitive, so no X-files show here.
July 27th, 2007 at 10:27 am
here’s a theory: what if all of the patients who die within hours of the cat visit are….violently allergic to cats!?
July 27th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
[…] senses something common to people who are within hours of death, but to do answer this question, as Phil Plait points out this is what we would need to […]
July 27th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
For those of you proposing that the cat enjoys dying patients because they don’t bug him, you are explaining why the cat picks them, but not how.
The hospice staff think the cat is standoffish and doesn’t like people. They think the cat doesn’t spend a lot of time with the non-dying patients. Now maybe there’s some confirmation bias or “full moon effect” going on, but the pattern seems to indicate the cat only hangs out with the soon to die. How does the cat know those are the patients that won’t bug him?
I did consider the possibility the cat is contributing to the deaths. I hope that has been investigated. However, I would expect there to be some connecting symptoms if that were the case. No one seems to notice the pattern of every patient dying by anaphalaxic shock, or suffocation with cat hairs in their mouths, etc., so that link seems sketchy.
Is it possible the cat is responding to the behavior of staff/family of the patients, how different they behave? Perhaps, but the article suggests that sometimes the families and staff are alerted by the cat, rather than the other way around. Note that all the patients are terminally ill, so predicting their death is not a matter of if but when. The cat seems to have better timing, more accurate than the staff. This matches the description of occurrence 13, where the nurse observed the patient nearing death, and the cat showed up at the 2 hour mark.
I’m leaning toward biochemical.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Ken G said:
> I have two comments: first, great reporting BA, but where did that last bit:
†It’s times like those that people’s minds are more easily swayed by things that aren’t true, but that we wish were true.â€
come from? I think though dost protest too much. Are you suggesting that a dying person who has a cat curl up with them *wants* to believe they are dying? Or are you talking about the calming effect of a cat when someone is deeply ill– but you yourself mentioned that is a perfectly plausible fact! So I think you kind of threw that in as a non sequitur, which is a bit of overkill for a skeptical position.
Phil’s talking about the attitude of the staff and families, attributing to the cat the motivation of caring for the dying patients.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Have we established that the cat is predicting the deaths and not somehow killing the patients? Perhaps the cat is covered in ricin or is radioactive or has been infected with some highly contagious cross-species virus.
July 27th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
“It’s conceivable that after a few “lucky†events where the cat attends a patient who died, some staff start believing that the cat predicts death, and treat the feline-attracting patient accordingly, thus accelerating the progression to death.”
Tell me you’re kidding!
Even if they were pretty sure the patient was going to die sooner than expected, why for the love of God would they stop treating them?
July 31st, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I don’t think he means they stop treating them. I think it’s more an attitude thing.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Excellent logical conclusion to this story:
http://www.dailyredundancy.com/archives/1031.html