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Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, which specialises in caring for people with severe dementia.
    Dr Dosa first publicised Oscar’s gift in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007. Since then, the cat has gone on to double the number of imminent deaths it has sensed and convinced the geriatrician that it is no fluke.
    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 judgement 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 onto 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.
    Dr Dosa noted that the nursing home keeps five other cats, but none of the others have ever displayed a similar ability.
    In his book, Making Rounds with Oscar: The extraordinary gift of an ordinary cat , Dr Dosa offers no solid scientific explanation for Oscar’s behaviour but he does suggest Oscar is able—like dogs, which can reportedly smell cancer—to detect ketones, the distinctly odoured biochemicals given off by dying cells.
    Far from recoiling from Oscar’s presence, now they know its significance, relatives and friends of patients have been comforted and have even praised the cat in newspaper death notices and eulogies, said Dr Dosa. ‘People were actually taking great comfort in this idea, that this animal was there and might be there when their loved ones eventually pass. He was there when they couldn’t be,’ he said.
    From the Daily Telegraph, United Kingdom

Cat said, ‘I am not a friend, and I am
    not a servant. I am the Cat who walks
    by himself, and I wish to come into
    your cave.’
    Rudyard Kipling, from Just So Stories

Mrs Cat Rules the Roost

    M y three children and I had recently found good families for our mother cat’s litter of kittens, except for the two—brother and sister—we could not separate ourselves from. These two—one completely white and the other completely black—always lay together so closely intertwined that all our visitors thought we had trained them to look like the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol. We were contented with our cat family, but it wasn’t long before our situation changed dramatically.
    Some friends of ours who owned a Siamese cat were going overseas and at the last minute had been left in a position where they had to find a home for her. When they first asked me it was easy to say no. I pointed out that we already had two kittens and that the older cat might not take to them. But my friends were desperate. Desperate enough that they said they would deliver her around to our house in half an hour. It left us no time to think, so somewhat reluctantly I agreed.
    When Richard arrived he was very grateful, but he issued me a warning. ‘This cat is a very self-willed being,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure she will get used to you.’
    They were in a hurry to leave, and so Richard ran through the garden to his car to fetch the already traumatised cat. He held the struggling, glowering beast tightly in his arms. No sooner had he entered the house than she escaped from his arms and immediately dashed from one corner to another in utter confusion and panic. All we could do was stand still, watching her frantic behaviour, hoping she would calm down before tearing the curtains to pieces. Suddenly she disappeared. After a long search we found her: