The history of oscar cat appears recurrently on social networks, despite the fact that the little animal passed away in 2022. During his years of living in an American nursing home, he gained great fame, as he supposedly had the ability to predict death. He was a surly cat, who didn’t usually enjoy human contact. However, every once in a while he would choose one of the residents’ rooms to take a nap. What soon caught the attention of those responsible for the center is that he did not seem to choose the rooms at random; Well, shortly after, the resident died.
Such was the success of Oscar the cat that the workers at the residence began to call the relatives of residents those that the little animal chose to take a nap. This way, they could say goodbye on time. The family members were grateful for the gesture, as it gave them an opportunity that, otherwise, they would not have had. They were all advantages.
One of the doctors at the nursing home, David Dosa, published in the New England Journal of Medicine an article in 2007, when Oscar the cat had already predicted the death of 25 people. However, after that it is estimated that he anticipated the death of more than 50 residents. The publication of the article gave him great fame, bringing him to the headlines of media outlets around the world. Now, as is logical, at this time many skeptics have also emerged about the animal’s abilities. As he did? Wouldn’t it just be coincidence? We can’t know, but let’s see if there really was any chance that Oscar could predict death.
The role of smell in the detection of diseases
In reality, Oscar the cat is not the first animal capable of detecting something related to diseases. Many dogs They have been trained to detect diseases such as cancer or diabetes and they have done so through smell.
In the cells of all people, chemical reactions occur to obtain energy or substances necessary for their proper functioning. The set of these reactions is called metabolism and it can vary from one individual to another, especially with the presence of certain diseases. During these reactions, some Volatile compounds. That is, substances in a gaseous state that pass into the air through the breathing. They can even go outside through fluids such as sweat.
These compounds have an odor that generally goes unnoticed by humans. However, other animals with a very keen sense of smell, such as dogs, can be trained to detect them and differentiate the metabolic profile of a healthy person and another with a disease.
Cases have even occurred in humans, although it is very rare. The most documented is that of Joy Milne, a Scottish woman who spent years warning that her husband’s sweat smelled different. She did it many years before he received a diagnosis of Parkinson’swhich confirmed that she was capable of smell the illness. By the time he was diagnosed it was too late, but since then Joy has helped scientists detect compounds that could help make Parkinson’s diagnoses long before symptoms begin.
The case of Oscar the cat
The scientists who support Oscar the cat’s predictions believe that his case may be similar to that of Joy or the trained dogs. Perhaps the animal had a great sense of smell that detected something in the air. But what?
In 2016, palliative care specialist Piotr Szawarski wrote an article in which he questioned the abilities of the cat Oscar. He pointed out that the workers at the center where he lived should have bought a Mass spectrometer to detect the volatile compounds in the air that the animal was somehow sniffing. That way, they could have checked if something was really happening.
It should be noted that in that center there were elderly people with a wide variety of illnesses. Although the majority had Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’sthere were also other pathologies, such as cancer. Therefore, the variety of volatile compounds derived from its metabolism would be very large. What could be unique about death? Something associated with apoptosis or cell death? Some scientists bet on ketones, which can accumulate in cases of diabetic acidosis or sepsis. But you can’t know for sure. The ideal would be to have acted as Szawarski explains. However, the center’s health workers let their intuition guide them.
In fact, in his 2007 article, Dosa relates that the cat would sometimes enter a room with a very sick patient, he sniffed her and left. His time had not yet come. That was his argument that it really wasn’t a coincidence. Proof that the cat knew what he was doing. But there is no evidence beyond that.
Confirmation bias
Detractors of Oscar the cat’s divination skills opt for a confirmation bias. That is, attention was only paid to cases that actually ended in the death of the resident. After all, they were all very sick and the chances of success were high.
There are also experts in animal behavior what do they believe that perhaps the residents close to death had the room heated to give them more comfort and that, somehow, that was what caught the cat’s attention. The worst thing is that we will never be able to know, because Oscar died in February 2022. There his guard ended. Now only guesses can be made. What is clear is that, whether by science or by chance, he accompanied many people during his death. At this point, that’s what we should take away from the story.