The cat has the ability to predict death

Every time a patient is about to die, Oscar cat jumps on his bed and lies beside him. It heralded the death of 50 people.

The cat Oscar rarely gets close to anyone, except for those who are about to die.Photo: AP.

Telegraph said, Steere Medical Center in Providence, Rhode Island, USA specializes in care and treatment of people with severe memory impairment. The staff in the center raised a 5-year-old cat named Oscar. The animal with white fur mixed with this tortoise does not appear friendly to humans. Most of the time of the day it just hangs out or sleeps in rooms. People find it rarely played with anyone. But if Oscar suddenly approaches a certain patient and lies beside him, a few hours later he will die.

Dr. David Dosa - the center's expert on old age diseases and also a professor at Brown University, USA - announced the possibility of predicting Oscar's death in Medicine magazine in 2007. Rosa asserts, During the past 5 years, Oscar has hardly made the mistake of predicting the lives of patients. Every time the cat approaches a patient, the doctors know they will have no way to prolong that person's life. Since then it has correctly predicted about 50 cases.

If a room has a dying patient but the door is closed, Oscar will scratch the door and find ways to get inside.

Once the nurses guessed a certain patient who was about to die and carried Oscar to his bed. But he immediately left and went to another patient's bed. Actual proof of Oscar: the second patient died a few hours later, while the first patient lived a few more days.

Dr. Dosa and many others in the center believe in Oscar's prediction that they often call the patient's relatives to the center immediately whenever the cat jumps on a certain bed and lies next to the patient. According to Rosa, the center also has 5 cats, but none of them have the same ability as Oscar.

In an Oscar book - titled "Making rounds with Oscar: the extraordinary gift of an ordinary cat" - Dr. Dosa did not give any firm explanation about the cat's strange ability. He said that like dogs, Oscar has the ability to smell ketones - a group of organic compounds that cells release when they are about to die.

Patients in Steere center and their relatives are not afraid or show discomfort about Oscar's presence. They even appreciate the ability of the cat to report the death of the dead. Dosa insists that everyone in the center now knows the importance of Oscar.

"Relatives of the dead feel comforted knowing that Oscar was by their relatives in the last moments , " Telegraph quoted Dosa as saying.