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Yeah, so i can has cheezburger and hobotopia beat me to the LOLcat-ifying punch. I have a day job people! This might shock you, but kenspeckle here isn't raking in $4,000 per week per ad like your favorite LOLcat fix is.
Anyway, by now we've all heard of Oscar, the nursing home cat featured in The New England Journal of Medicine for his tendency to curl up with patients a few hours before their death with an uncanny consistency [via drudge, boing boing].
The scientific explanation is that cats and other animals are more in tune than humans with the chemical and hormonal ebbs and flows of life through their sense of smell. Which explains *how* Oscar might know of patients' imminent death, but "what the cat might get out of it" still puzzles the veterinarian interviewed in the Daily Mail article (quoted right above the "official witch" of Salem, MA).
I like to think that some cats just have an instinct to comfort at these mysterious biochemical signs of distress, and I have a hilarious, albeit highly personally embarassing story, behind that belief.
Sometime in middle school, my best friend (proud owner of two cats) had a slumber party for her birthday at which we watched a handful of movies rented by her mother for the occasion. At this point I still wasn't really allowed to watch television in my own home, so I was pretty unaccustomed to the pretend violence and special effects most kids are completely inured to at that age. Knowing this, my friend and her mother had purposefully chosen movies from the comedy section.
Among them was License to Drive, which is officially supposed to be a "teen comedy/adventure," but for some reason a few of the chase scenes evoked pure terror in my ultra-innocent psyche. Right before I (*cringe*) started crying, one of my friend's cats, usually aloof like Oscar, jumped directly into my lap and started purring his little heart out.
It's one of the few things I remember from middle school at all.
Alberto said,
I have always had the idea that cats are very sensitive towards distress signals from the people around 'em. There are five cats at home, and most of them tend to become excesively mellow when someone is sick or just feeling down.
Whenever my mom or one of my brother feels ill one of the cats curls up in bed to keep company. I remember that the elder of these cats used to sleep over my stretched arm or curled behind my legs whenever I was down with a cold, so I guess there must be something to it.
Anyway, just wanted to stop by and say hello…
comment posted on July 27, 2007 at 17:03