Oscar was adopted as a kitten from an animal shelter and grew up in the third-floor end-stage dementia unit at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. The 41-bed unit treats people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses, most of whom are in the end stage of life and are generally unaware of their surroundings. Oscar was one of six cats adopted by Steere House, which bills itself as a “pet friendly” facility.
After about six months, the staff noticed that Oscar, just like the doctors and nurses, would make his own rounds. Oscar would sniff and observe patients, then curl up to sleep with certain ones. The patients he would sleep with often died within several hours of his arrival. One of the first cases involved a patient who had a blood clot in her leg that was ice cold at the time. Oscar wrapped his body around her leg and stayed until the woman died.In another instance, the doctor had made a determination of impending death based on the patient’s condition, while Oscar simply walked away, causing the doctor to believe that Oscar’s streak (12 at the time) had ended. However, it would be later discovered that the doctor’s prognosis was simply 10 hours too early: Oscar later visited the patient, who died two hours later.
Oscar’s accuracy led the staff to institute a new and unusual protocol: once he is discovered sleeping with a patient, staff will call family members to notify them of the patient’s (expected) impending death.
Most of the time the patient’s family has no issue with Oscar being present at the time of death. On those occasions when he is removed from the room at the family’s request, he is known to pace back and forth in front of the door and meow in protest. When present, Oscar will stay by the patient until they die, then after death will quietly leave the room.
i find this very interesting as this behavior seems common in many cats that reside in mental and nursing homes. Often sharing the bed of the soon to be deceased. In the ancient world cats were revered by many cultures, most famously Ancient Egypt, as guardians of the underworld, keepers of the gate of death, and sometimes even harbingers of death itself. This makes me wonder whether this behavior was observed during ancient times as well and perhaps prompted this belief and many practices surrounding it.
no matter how many gross facts you tell me about McDonald’s i’m still gonna eat it
Man. One of those mcflurry things sounds so good.
dude I think I’m gonna start one of these too. Not today because I’m in the worst mood, but hooray for inspiring friends!
Yay! Make sure you send me the link when you do start it. I’m so determined to make this happen this summer. Best of luck to you!
Hey everyone!
So Chantal’s weightloss blog has motivated me to start my own for the summer. I’m shooting to get around 145-140 lbs. Fingers crossed! If you’re interested in my journey you can find my blog here.
Warning: If you’re not interested in seeing my belly then I advise you to not follow the blog….
![goodbodiesareallbodies:
[ image is of a Tweet reading “here’s a tip: every body is a ‘beach body’ if you bring it with you to the beach” ]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/853cf962dd83f4ab1aec86f023a9e0c6/tumblr_mlmklsO28d1sn6vpko1_500.png)
[ image is of a Tweet reading “here’s a tip: every body is a ‘beach body’ if you bring it with you to the beach” ]
Well
Here we go again. Every summer when I come back home I run into the problem of not being able to find a job. I finally have experience for applications and now it’s more of an issue of “Oh. You mean you’re only going to be here for the summer? In that case we don’t need you.”
Ok no one has said that exactly. But that’s pretty much what I’ve run into. And I thought about just lying about going back to school in the fall but then I feel bad, or just not putting my college education at all, but all my work experience is from the University.
Sigh
I don’t know what I’m going to do and to top it all off I couldn’t get a subleaser for my apartment so if I can’t find a job I need to magically come up with $500 for my July and August rent.
