Oscar (c. 2005 – February 22, 2022) was a therapy cat who as of 2005 lived in the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, United States.
According to Dosa, Oscar appeared able to predict the impending death of terminally ill patients by choosing to nap next to them a few hours before they died.
Hypotheses for this ability include that Oscar was picking up on the lack of movement in such patients or that he could smell biochemicals released by dying cells.
[7] Oscar made international headlines in 2007 after the New England Journal of Medicine published an article about him by Steere House geriatrician Dr. David Dosa.
[11] Teno and Dosa hypothesized that Oscar was responding to the smell of chemicals released when someone died[8] or some other odor emitted during death.