In 2005, a nursing home in the United States welcomed a six-month-old kitten named Oscar. They originally intended to train him as a therapy cat, but gradually discovered his mysterious trait: he usually preferred to be alone but would suddenly jump onto a patient’s bed and curl up beside them with his soft body.
The most astonishing thing was that every time Oscar cuddled up to someone, it was like a silent prediction: the elderly person he chose would often pass away within a few hours. At first, the staff thought it was just a coincidence, but when the twentieth prediction came true, they finally realized that this cat seemed to be able to sense the presence of death. From then on, whenever Oscar jumped onto a patient’s bed, the staff would immediately notify the family: “Come quickly, he is providing the final companionship.”
Animal behaviorists speculate that Oscar might be able to detect the special biochemical signals released by dying cells, which is why he would actively approach those lonely souls. Once, medical staff determined based on the monitor that an elderly person had entered the terminal stage, but Oscar stubbornly lay beside a seemingly healthy elderly person in the next bed. A few hours later, the person “pronounced” dead by the monitor was still in a light sleep, while the one chosen by the cat had already passed away.
In 2022, this cat who had accompanied over a hundred elderly people through their final moments closed its eyes. With his fourteen years of life, he wrote the most mysterious footnote on the white sheets of the nursing home: while humans were still relying on machines to measure the scale of life, this cat had long read the code of death with his sense of smell and built the last warm island for the dying with his body temperature.
