Does Medicaid pay for this “cat scan”?
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good one.
I win! 
In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl discusses how he could tell when someone was going to die by distinct changes in their behavior. In his case, he is talking about prisoners in a concentration camp, but the idea has been discussed before in many different situations.
I guess I’m implying that it is not the cat that is acting differently, but the patient. I’m not sure why the cat would choose to cuddle up to someone who smells like their liver has shut down, but I can see why it would lay by someone who was seeking comfort.
The story of Oscar originally appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine. But I’ve no idea if that means they take the observation seriously or just like to occasionally run some “light filler material”.
For what it’s worth, it was an essay, not a peer-reviewed paper on a scientific study.
Of course, there’s no proof provided of the basic premise: that the cat spends more time with dying patients than would be expected by chance.
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A cat spends most of its life curled up like a furry lump.
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A cat has a tiny little brain.
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People die in nursing homes fairly often. If a cat wanders around and curls up whenever it feels like a nap, which is most of the time, it’ll sometimes share a patient’s last hours.
I doubt if anybody at the nursing home has kept the kind of detailed records of his movements that would be necessary to determine that; more likely they just remember the times that a dying patient was being used as furniture by good ol’ Oscar.
Alternative hypothesis: cats really do steal your breath.
lekatt: I know this is like talking to a brick wall, but try to focus on my words: you can observe an animal’s behavior, but until we develop trans-species telepathy, you can’t really know what kind of emotions are surging in its li’l head.
Edited to correct spelling (for some reason I keep putting an e on the end of “develop”).
You’re right that we don’t know what’s going on in the cat’s head. But from the article, we know it’s a very aloof cat and doesn’t cuddle up with people on a regular basis:
Which reinforces why it would curl up next to something that, while warm, won’t mess with it.
I’ll agree if it’s staring at a blank wall, but if it bites you it’s either pissed or playing roughly.
I saw this stupid “news” story on CNN, and thought, “One more reason to hate cats.”
I vote for its crap!
I must have missed this on the first go 'round.
[sup]Edited for emphasis[/sup]
I don’t mean this to be a hijack, but I have some basic questions about, “the Oneness.”
[ul]Is it “collective unconscious?” (If so, is the conscious mind separate from it?)[/ul]
[ul]If the Oneness is, predictably, One, how can one leave it? Where, or into what would one go? The twoness?[/ul]
[ul]By what means does one know that animals are or are not in the Oneness?[/ul]
[ul]Assuming humans have left the Oneness, are we able to return to it, or do we simply know it exists by the behavior of animals or objects that are still in it?[/ul]
[ul]Assuming we know that animals have access to information humans do not and assuming that animals organize their behavior based on that information, is there any way for us to tap that knowledge? (If so, would that bring us closer to the Oneness?)[/ul]
Sorry if this a hijack.
This makes sense. Obviously there’s no way of knowing for sure, but if Oscar does know which people are on their way out, I’d guess it was due to something like this, not to any collective unconsciousness or Jungian Oneness.
In this case, what do they mean by “about to die”- within hours? Days? Months?
I can’t answer the questions on Jung’s collective unconscious. You might check out his books.
One can’t really leave the Oneness, but can turn their backs on it by focusing intensely on the physical world. Yes, they can return to the Oneness through meditation among other things.
Animals don’t have that problem. They can do some marvelous things like the dog that was lost during a vacation in Florida and returned one year later to show up at his owner’s home. The distance was over one thousand miles. The media is full of these kind of animal stories. I remember the dog who would seek out veral cats that were injured so the dogs owner could help them. A book was written about it, not sure of the name, something like the dog that loved cats. I am an animal lover and have helped animals most of my life. It is not strange for me to understand them. I know the posters here will find a hundred reasons for everything I just don’t want to engage them it’s not worth it.
I hope you don’t take this as one-of-a-hundred-reasons, but can’t humans do all of the things you mention? Even humans who don’t meditate…
In fact, can’t humans fairly accurately tell when someone is going to die? Rereading some of tomndebb’s comments it sounds like there are some well known pre-death states that terminal patients experience almost as a matter-of-course.
Obviously there are times when doctors and family members are surprised by how quickly a person dies or how long they hold on, but I haven’t seen any indication that meditation improves accuracy in that arena.
I remember reading that it was within four hours.
Edit
Wow. I would think if a real scientist came in and did a real study and it was supported, that could be really important.
Unless an intern with a wicked sense of humor is killing the patients to fool those who believe in the cat…
Er, I don’t know where I got four. The article said a few hours.
Yes, it is, and predictable. My generation was not so quick to doubt everything someone said. They would do some research on their own to see if there was a pattern to be found in the events before they discounted them.