July 27, 2007

Caregiver or Killer?

If you think cats are aloof and uncaring, I have a story for you. According to an Associated Press account, there is a cat who lives in a nursing home and has made it his mission to comfort dying patients. Oscar resides in the locked dementia unit of a care facility in Providence, R.I., and has the ability to sense when a patient is on the verge of death. He jumps up on the bed, curls up beside the patient and keeps a vigil, purring loudly.

Oscar's ability to tell when a patient is within hours of death is so unfailing that when Oscar curls up on a bed, nursing home staff call the patient's family to come say goodbye to their loved one. So far, Oscar has accurately predicted the deaths of more than 25 patients.

Doctors speculate that Oscar is sensitive to metabolic changes that may occur when a person is dying. Oscar has been lauded by a hospice organization for his compassionate care.

To some, however, the words "compassionate" and "cat" should never appear in the same sentence.

Reading Oscar's story reminded me of an encounter with a superstitious neighbor when my first son, Jason, was a baby. It was a hot day in Tucson (is there any other kind?) and I put 6-month-old Jason in his playpen in our covered carport, thinking he might catch a breeze. He was happily lying on his back and playing with his toes, so I went inside to do the dishes. I kept an eye on him through the screen door.

I had just finished washing a sinkful of baby bottles when I heard a knock on the back door. Peering through the screen door was my neighbor, a septuagenarian whose husband was fond of firing up his power tools at dawn.

"You hoo!" she cried. "Anybody home?"

I greeted her and stepped out onto the driveway. Jason had lost his fascination with his feet and had moved on to blowing spit bubbles.

As I leaned over the playpen to wipe some drool from Jason's chin, my neighbor said, "I just thought you should know, my dear. You shouldn't leave the baby alone outside. There are cats loose in this neighborhood."

I straightened up and looked at her, my eyes narrowing. Was she going to say what I thought she was going to say?

"They'll suck his breath, you know."

"That just an old wives' tale," I said to the old wife in my impertinent fashion.

"Oh, no! It really happens! You've got to be careful!"

I'll have to admit that, 32 years later, when I read the story of Oscar the nursing home cat, it occurred to me that maybe he wasn't predicting the patients' death, he was causing it. Was it truly a compassionate instinct or was it, instead, a murderous, breath-sucking impulse?

I consulted my own in-house expert on feline behavior, Mr. Bobo the Wonder Cat. He was hard to read, but I sensed that if cats were indeed capable of sucking the life out of someone, Corky the French Bulldog would be a goner.