The cat, Oscar, now five and generally unsociable, was adopted as a kitten at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, Rhode Island, which specializes in caring for people with severe dementia. Five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death. Since writing an article on the cat’s ability in 2007 the cat has gone on to double the number of imminent deaths it has sensed and convinced the geriatrician at the nursing home 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 judgment was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.