Grim Reaper Kitty

by Barry ORegan | July 26, 2007 at 05:22 am

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Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor

This story is a shining testament to animals uncanny abilities, and shows how little we know about our Pets. A previous story I posted about a puppy whose ability to detect cancerous tumours and impending heart attacks in humans is another medical marvel. Animals are simply amazing, too bad they are considered disposable by many.

My Final Thought
As a patient in this Nursing Home, You know you're going to have a bad day when this puppy saunters in for a visit, and the cat soon follows.

Now Public Readers interested in the Puppy story can read the story below after this story.

Both worth a read.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours.

His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. "He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The two-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

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Puppy diagnoses owner with breast cancerMartha Tropea,
CanWest News ServicePublished: Saturday, June 16, 2007

NANAIMO
- Two-year-old Freeman, a rare catahoula leopard dog with boundless
energy, might very well be the reason his owner Darcy Ingram is alive.

"He's my peach," said Ingram, after Freeman smacked her with a wet lick on the cheek.

In
December 2005, at just six months of age, Freeman sniffed out what
Ingram's doctors assured her was not there - a cancerous tumour in her
right breast.

"He kept hurting me and hurting me," said Ingram, a glowing picture of health. "He wouldn't leave that breast alone."

One day, Freeman's powerful snout knocked Ingram's breast: "It swelled up like a cantaloupe."

"That's when all the fun started."

A
whirlwind of doctors' appointments quickly followed, leaving Ingram,
41, without a right breast and without a combined 12 centimetres of
multiple tumours, some of which were more than a year old.

For
decades, anecdotal evidence has pointed to dogs' ability to sniff out
cancer and, last year, researchers found further evidence to prove the
theory.

Scientists tested ordinary household dogs with basic
puppy training and discovered they could detect cancer just by smelling
the breath of lung and breast cancer patients. The findings were
published in the March 2006 journal Integrative Cancer Therapies.

The day before Ingram's mastectomy, she withdrew from her creative writing courses at Malaspina University-College.

Through
the fatigue, pain and what she described as a "fractured mind," Ingram
managed to write more than 30 poems, some describing her condition.

In
them she writes of her fear of recurrence, about her cold spine, and of
her sick cells, shedding some light on what the effects of chemotherapy
are like for the thousands of people who are diagnosed with breast
cancer annually.

Her cancer treatments ended last summer and, although still recovering from chemotherapy, she signed up for school in the fall.

Nanaimo Daily News