All Ears: A Different Type of CAT Scan

Oscar the Cat apparently can predict when nursing home patients will die. He simply wanders into their rooms, curls up on their beds, and bingo...the patient will die soon.

He is a good-looking cat. I sort of expected him to be black and evil-looking. I can tell you right now, if I was a patient in that nursing home, my door would be locked and a big, 'ol pit bull would be guarding the door against cats. Oscar is either unusually intuitive about such complex matters as impending death, or the nursing home is charging Medicare for a CAT scan. What next? Maybe they will have a Labrador retriever come by and sniff you every twelve months or so and call it the "Annual Lab Test."

What kind of nursing home allows cats to run around? I am not opposed to animals that visit nursing home patients. I strongly believe that animals are very therapeutic, but I don't think we need resident cats living at nursing home (unless they are being used to control rats). Nursing homes are having enough issues dealing with human pathogens. They don't need cat-scratch fever, and other animal-borne diseases.

I am a pet lover myself with two dogs, two cats, and a parrot, but I sure don't bring them in to the clinic. We do have an odd podiatrist in our area that has a cat that lives in his waiting room. Maybe he uses them to predict who has plantar warts or ingrown toenails. Hopefully, this cat does not predict impending death.

My two cats, Claudia (pictured) and Six-Toed Minnie, seem to have the ability to predict death as well. I often see them staring at birds, only to find the observed bird dead a short time later. Apparently, they predicted the bird would be killed, playfully tortured, and partially eaten. While I don't condone my cats killing birds, I do respect their instinctual right to do so as a sport or dietary augmentation.

We are just scratching the surface of these mysterious animal behaviors. Miners use canaries to predict toxic methane leaks. Animals seem to know when earthquakes are about to happen. My brother-in-law was actually in a pet store in San Francisco when suddenly all of the birds stopped singing. A minute later, an earthquake seriously rocked the area. Lassie was able to effectively communicate with emergency personnel when Timmy would fall in a well. Flipper the dolphin could do most anything, except drive a car.

Animals have an incredible sense of smell. When we walk our dogs, they will smell every telephone pole and hydrate, apparently "checking their messages." Dogs are used for drug and bomb sniffing. Many years ago, we were returning from a medical mission in rural Jamaica. When our direct flight arrived in Detroit, there was a busy Beagle sniffing everybody as they walked by, much to the horror of the young man walking behind us that was singled-out. There is nothing like a drug-sniffing dog jumping on your backpack to ruin your day.

By: Jeremy van Bedijk

The French use trained pigs to find truffles. As a child, we always had bird dogs for pheasant hunting or rabbit dogs for rabbits, of course. In some areas, dogs are trained to hunt bears, deer, or raccoons. There are specially-trained dogs that are used to find buried bodies (cadaver dogs). Bloodhounds in the South were always tracking down escaped prisoners. There are ongoing studies that indicate that dogs can even smell melanomas - highly malignant skin cancers. If dogs can act as pathologists, then why not have cats trained to detect impending death? I predict that life insurance companies will start using these "CAT scans" as part of their underwriting procedure.

"I am sorry, but we won't be able to approve your $1 million dollar life insurance policy. However, as a gesture of goodwill, you can have this cat."

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