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By now you’ve probably heard of Oscar, the magical Rhode Island cat who can smell death coming hours away. Just in case, here’s an excerpt from CNN:
“The 2-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.”
This is one of those slightly morbid yet fascinating topics that’s perfect for a virtual cocktail party like ours. Maybe your pets have never been harbingers of death, but I’ve heard amazing stories of dogs and cats predicting hurricanes, sniffing out cancer and becoming serene around just-barely-pregnant women. We’ve yet to see anything like this from Bailey, but she’s not even two and always very busy.
Do your pets have magical powers? As always, this is just a jumping off point. The conversation will go where you take it.
Comments (47)
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i still think my brody (10mo. old golden retriever) is cuter.
but i’m sure he’d love to take bailey out to dinner. perhaps spaghetti and meatballs? that would be freaking adorable.
posted by kat on 7-27-2007 at 8:43 am
Not sure it’s a magical power…but our cat Ducky doesn’t like people, but when you are sick (even before you know you’re sick) she’ll be all over you like white on rice. When she starts sitting on my lap…I get tissues, cold medicine, and lots and lots of lysol.
posted by Regallily on 7-27-2007 at 9:00 am
I don’t personally have a pet that has any sort of view into the future other than when there is food coming to the table, but I have been hearing for years about the dogs that people keep as seizure dogs. These creatures are amazing, they can predict before a person gets a seizure and they let them know, and alot of times work to control the person so they don’t hurt themselves.
posted by Gussie on 7-27-2007 at 9:12 am
I have a cat that knows when I’m going to have a migraine. She becomes more persistant about being in my lap about 24 hours ahead of time and then will sleep beside me until I’ve slept the migraine off.
Like the doctors, I believe it’s because my cat can smell the chemical changes that occur in my body during the period before the migraine. So far, she hasn’t been wrong.
posted by Mike on 7-27-2007 at 9:15 am
my roommate has a cat that can sense when he’s going to get an allergy attack. 5 minutes after she comes into the room, and rubs up against him, he starts sneezing and wheezing. It’s sort of uncanny how she knows exactly when one’s going to occur.
posted by Mangesh on 7-27-2007 at 9:21 am
I had an Australian Shepherd (she passed only a few weeks ago) who was able to tell if our other dog, a black lab, was about to have seizures. She would lay beside him, lick him, and keep him company through the episode.
Once she even herded him up the stairs to where we were beforehand.
A beautiful dog and a great friend.
posted by eurudite on 7-27-2007 at 9:43 am
I have to agree with Mangesh here. Let’s apply Occam’s Razor, or remember Carl Sagan’s warning about confusing correlation and causation.
We assume that Oscar the cat can be trained to follow the same route as the doctors he observes; is it impossible that Mike has been trained to have a migraine 24 hours after his cat sits in his lap?
No offense, Mike. Unconscious (or is it subconcious?) cues and psychosomatic responses are complicated things. Obviously, some of these animal predictions are real, but let’s be careful about which “prediction” is cause and which is effect.
posted by Flying Saucer on 7-27-2007 at 9:48 am
Hey Mangesh,
Maybe your roomate is allergic to the cat and the cat rubbing up against him triggers the allergic response (lol)
posted by JaneM on 7-27-2007 at 9:48 am
That’s hilarious Mango!
And yeah, the seizure dog phenom was new to me, until Jodi Picoult featured one in My Sister’s Keeper (great book).
Back in 1994, Portland area had a pretty strong earthquake early one morning. Our cats were one moment sleeping soundly, then both sprang to life and ran around the house howling. About 2 minutes later the quake hit.
posted by Johnny Cat on 7-27-2007 at 9:50 am
My Pug (Georgina Hoover) magically knows when its mealtime….spooky…..
posted by Christoff on 7-27-2007 at 9:59 am
I’ve also heard of animals knowing when their owners, who are miles away from the animal, are in danger or are hurt. They start going crazy or something like that. Personally, I think that my dog wouldn’t really care if I fell down or something like that. Unless I had food on my head or some other place that was unreachable while I was standing. Only then would she come to me…and only to get the food from the now reachable place.
posted by Lindsay D on 7-27-2007 at 10:38 am
Pet Trick/Stupid Human Trick
I have a large black Dog
I have a black rug
Dog likes to lay on rug
I am always in a hurry
Human zips thru living room, does not see dog, trips over black dog, does a full force face plant right into afrorementioned black rug
Ended up at St Claire’s E/R getting x-rays on now fat fat nose.
Dog feels bad
Nose feels worse
Still love my dog, now hate my nose
posted by JaneM on 7-27-2007 at 10:46 am
My friend’s cat started trying to put his head into her mothers armpit all the time. When she went to the Dr, they discovered a tumor. Turned out that it wasn’t cancerous, but we were all pretty amazed that he seemed to know about it.
posted by Gail on 7-27-2007 at 11:08 am
We had a dog when I was young, would know when my mother had just vacuumed the carpet or washed the kitchen floor. One or the other would be marked soon thereafter.
Strange!
posted by WizardBoy on 7-27-2007 at 11:12 am
I have a cat who knows the precise spot where I’m about to place my foot when I’m walking through the apartment, and he makes certain to place himself in that spot about 2 seconds before I get my foot on the floor.
Haven’t ended up in the ER yet, but expect to at any time.
posted by TaTa on 7-27-2007 at 11:37 am
If animals can sense all this stuff before it happens, have people done research to make machines that can do the same thing?
What if in the hospital, they hooked machines up to terminally ill people, and the machine could detect death coming a few hours before it happened. Then the machine would have little key fob/pager things that family members would get, so they’d be automatically alerted and could head to the hospital to be with the dying relative in the last couple of hours. Would that be good or creepy? I wonder how many car accidents would be caused by people trying to hurry to the hospital to see their relative one last time…
posted by Molly on 7-27-2007 at 11:38 am
We all remember how the animals ran away from the shore just before the tsunami hit – not a single animal was killed, but lots of humans actually ran into the water instead of away from it…we don’t seem to have the same instincts as animals do..our logic has probably smothered our sense of doom…
My cats can always tell when I’m feeling bad emotionally…they will come up and spend time with me..and one of my cats goes crazy if I get excited and talk loudly..she does everything to try and get me to calm down…she’s the only one whose bothered by the noise, tho…
I like Oscar, and I believe he has the death sniffer…
posted by Donner on 7-27-2007 at 12:04 pm
I wonder if this only applies to domesticated animals? I’m fairly certain that possums (or opossums) and armadillos haven’t yet learned how to sense when a car is coming down the road.
On a side note, we set up a video camera for a week to watch our dog and it would get up off the couch (which it wasn’t supposed to be on) and wait at the door 5 minutes before we would get home from work… even when we got home early or late that week.
posted by Jud on 7-27-2007 at 12:07 pm
My boyfriend’s dog completely freaks out and trys to hide if there is going to be a tornado. No matter how bad the storm gets, or how right the conditions are, if he isn’t freaking, neither are we.
A friend of mine in high school had an assistance dog who was trained for siezures and sleep apnea. If he was about to have a siezure, the dog would signal him and he could take medication to lessen the severity of it. If he stopped breathing at night, the dog would wake up and nudge him until he started breathing again. Smart dog.
posted by Tru on 7-27-2007 at 12:15 pm
my ex-boyfriend’s sister had a very agressive, enormous german shepherd that would always bark at me whenever we would visit for dinner. about 2 years ago my ex had to have his dog (a german shepherd/rotwieler mix)put down and i was an emotional mess. his sister invited us over for dinner that night and when we got there the shepherd didn’t bark once and as soon as i sat on the couch he came over and rested his head in my lap. it was like he knew that i needed to be cheered up.
posted by itsabecky on 7-27-2007 at 1:41 pm
My two border collies, Romy and Jake, have the amazing ability to destroy and/or damage anything. When I say anything, I mean it. A few of the inexplicable items have been:
the water main
a gas line
a solid brick bbq
a metal wheelbarrow
a mature grapefruit tree
Romy is also smart enough to open unlocked doors by turning the knob with her front paws and teeth and pushing or pulling the door accordingly.
I secretly think they’re trying to kill me…
posted by Jason! on 7-27-2007 at 1:44 pm
Am I the only one who thinks the cat might be killing those people? Cats are known to be psychotic…. just a thought.
posted by Scott on 7-27-2007 at 1:59 pm
Jud – that is wild! I think I may do something like that. I noticed that my dogs go to the window about couple of minutes before any household member pulls into the driveway. I know my dogs are on my bed when I am gone. They haven’t been able to figure out how to get the dog hairs off the blanket.
posted by JaneM on 7-27-2007 at 2:02 pm
Jason! I would watch out if I were you – I too think that your dogs are conspiring against you.
posted by Lindsay D on 7-27-2007 at 2:07 pm
Can’t we just accept that our pets, in some ways, are far more perceptive than we are? I believe they are. My former dog would lay at my cancer-stricken father’s feet and keep him company (when she normally wouldn’t) and my current dog watches TV with me and barks at all animals (especially horses)- okay that isn’t anything too special, but she even barks at human conflict on TV — she uses her warning bark so I know there is danger. I think I love my dog more than any boyfriends I’ve had.
posted by Artemis on 7-27-2007 at 2:21 pm
my roommate has a cat that can sense when he’s going to get an allergy attack. 5 minutes after she comes into the room, and rubs up against him, he starts sneezing and wheezing. It’s sort of uncanny how she knows exactly when one’s going to occur.
-maybe he’s allergic to cats.
posted by Memebiscuit on 7-27-2007 at 2:25 pm
How much space do I have to describe my pets’ abilities?
I have a 10 year old female cat. I got her at 2 hours old and she has attacked someone I thought was going to be a potential boy friend. He was preparing to rape me and Phoenix (a tiny cat) lept to the back of his neck, sunk in her claws and bit into the side of his neck seriously close to his carotid!
Same cat attacked my std poodle when my dog felt the new kitten was really a stuffed toy! Phoenix hates that kitten but loves me!
I can ask Phoenix to find any other cat, dog, or ferret by name and she will lead me right to the correct animal without fail!
I have a severe anxiety disorder. My std poodle can sense when I’m going to panic (I’m sure I give signs but nonetheless) and he stedies me and protects me no matter where I am.
My dog also can bring me the correct remote control whether i need the one for the sattilite dish, cable, dvd, dvr, or vcr…… now if he could only teach me how to program them! My dog also sings along with certain commercials on TV and loves Five for Fighting…… a new CD came out, I had no idea it was a song by Five for Fighting yet but the dog did!
My ferrets can find which ever object I am most likely to need and hide it so well that I won’t find it again until I have already bought a replacement!
My cat Tucker leaps up and down the stairs all night long. He brings all the dog toys upstairs, leaping over a doggie gate and brings all the cat toys downstairs to the dog. I think he knows that the cat toys will choke the dog and he’s out to kill my Gus! “Maybe Mom won’t notice I switched the toys again!”
posted by Sheila C on 7-27-2007 at 2:32 pm
Sounds like a load of bull crap. They’re in a hospital, the cat sits next to people, some of them end up dieing. Does anyone on this site REALLY believe a cat can someone predict when a person is going to die? Cuz ive got a bridge in brooklyn id like to sell you…
posted by T on 7-27-2007 at 2:44 pm
I have a cat who stockpiles food before long periods of bad weather. Not kibble or canned food, she’ll go out and hunt before a bad storm front comes through, and hide her kills on the second floor. She only does this when the weather is going to be bad for more than a day or two, if rain is predicted all week, or a snowstorm is coming, she’ll hoard. If it’s just an afternoon rainshower, she doesn’t. We don’t need the WeatherChannel, we can predict the weather by counting the dead mice on the second floor landing.
posted by Maggie on 7-27-2007 at 2:46 pm
Jason!, why don’t you take your border collies over to Jason’s house to get rid of that gigantic rock?
posted by TaTa on 7-27-2007 at 2:48 pm
I read a book about dogs who know when their owners are coming home. I think that was actually the title of the book. They tested the theory that the dog really just listens for the sound of their owner’s car engine or footsteps before reacting by filming the dog’s activity in the home, and havign their owner arrive by all sorts of different methods, walking, driving their own car, driving different cars, riding a bicycle, etc. Most of the time, the dogs were waiting by the door several minutes before their owner got near the house, long before they could have heard anything.
posted by Maggie on 7-27-2007 at 2:56 pm
My schnauzer knew when it was time for my mother to pick us up after school. If my mom wasn’t ready at 3, the dog would find her and bark until mom realized what time it was and came to get us. The dog was otherwise completely, stubbornly untrainable…but she did love a car ride.
posted by Jane-o on 7-27-2007 at 3:40 pm
I think some people are new to the concept of sarcasm, based on responses to Mangesh’s comment.
T:
Sometimes there are clear signs someone is going to die. Like chain-stokes. It’s not so unbelievable that a cat exposed to a lot of deaths can find the unifying signs that someone might die.
posted by Beth on 7-27-2007 at 6:41 pm
My cat knows when I’m coming home. Since I walk everywhere and have an irregular schedule, I know it has nothing to do with the sound of my vehicle or learned habits. Perhaps, though, I’ve got killer BO that wafts blocks ahead of me and penetrates brick walls.
T, yes I do believe the cat can sense when people are going to die. I even think that the cat may be perceiving things that humans haven’t even thought of. We’re so hung up on measuring the observable and verifying facts. While a cynic, I’m not so far gone that I’ve surrendered my sense of wonder. There is more to life than what can be seen, measured, and calculated. I’d buy your bridge, but I spent my last dime on a swamp in Arizona. I’m gonna go check it out tomorrow.
posted by Adam on 7-27-2007 at 7:31 pm
I sometimes babysit my neighbors’ Havanese (little black and white dog, very smart). She’s very well-trained, and a joy to be around. She ignores the telephone, except when it is her owner. She goes wild when the phone rings then. I now know to pick up the phone and say, “Hi, Kevin.”
BTW, will you please do an article on “lie” and “lay”? Even mental-floss readers can’t seem to get them straight.
posted by Barbara on 7-27-2007 at 10:54 pm
I’m kind-of embarrassed to say this but it’s true.
I had an old cat that other people named “Cashew.” I noticed that when I wondered where she was, in the house, she would show up at my feet as if I had called her. I realized that I would do that at approximately the same time of day so I thought it must be a coincident. One day, at a different time, I tried something. I called Cashew without making any sound, I just thought, “Cashew, where are you, where’s the kitty cat?” Just then, She came walking up to me, as if she had heard me call her. Like she was psychic.
posted by Tdave on 7-28-2007 at 2:15 am
I’m a big believer. I took early retirement from the firm I helped found to care for my best friend, Bravo. A Shepherd-wolf who was diagnosed with cancer. When I began researching homeopathy the world of the human/animal bound unfolded before me. Check out E.O. Wilson, the Harvard, two-time Pulitzer winner who wrote Biophilia – The human bound with other species. I was so captivated, I even wrote a book, Catalyst about a place where no people are allowed without pets – get the free e-book version at my website.
posted by Bob Harvey on 7-28-2007 at 7:30 am
I had a dog who alerted my husband a minute before I pulled into the driveway after work. It wasn’t at the same time every day. We’re pretty sure she could hear and identify the vehicle sounds from a quarter-like away. There is another green minivan in the neighborhood that fooled the kids when they saw it, but never the dog.
posted by Miss Cellania on 7-28-2007 at 10:15 am
There is a book completely on this subject that I was actually assigned to read for a philosophy class “A Language Older Than Words” by Derrick Jensen. If you are interested I believe the book is out of print now and you’ll probably have to find a used copy.
posted by Melanie on 7-28-2007 at 5:29 pm
I used to work in a nursing home that had two resident cats. One was very friendly and you never knew where you’d find her. The other one was a typical cat – aloof unless you had food – and would generally stay over on the west wing of the home. If we ever found him on the east wing (severe dementia and neurological problems) we knew someone was going to be in serious trouble soon. Maybe not always a death, but serious problems like strokes and heart attacks. It’s possible that the cat triggered these attacks, but I prefer to think he could smell/sense/hear a change that indicated upcoming misfortune.
posted by Lynnderella on 7-29-2007 at 5:15 am
Animals have an acute sense of smell. I used to work in a nursing home and learned what “the sweet smell of death” was, it’s something you’ll never forget. I’m sure that an animal can pick up on earlier chemical changes that occur in the human body that we can only detect by instruments or actual observation.
Our five senses are incredibly crude instruments, yet we rely on them to determine “what’s real.” This doesn’t meant that other creatures who have higher sensitivity levels in some of their senses can’t pick up on real (read: scientifically provable) symptoms that humans can’t “read.”
posted by Renee on 7-29-2007 at 8:07 am
My dogs Puck and Trouble AND our cat mimi are loving every day but when I got my wisdom teeth pulled i had to stay in bed for a few days since i was all doped up from the vicadin. They never once left the room though, all 3 of them layed on the floor around my bed and refused to go out or eat unless i came with them. It made me feel quite loved.
posted by amanda on 7-29-2007 at 8:32 am
I don’t think it’s the sound of the car engine when pet owners come home, it must be the *smell*. Or some other uncanny ability like x-ray vision. My cat Bella runs like MAD to the front door when my boyfriend comes over (he doesn’t live with me so he comes over at different times, and sometimes not at all) and I live in an apartment building. When I was sitting on the couch, I heard footsteps in the corridor, and I thought it was him, but she didn’t take any notice. Then I heard keys jangle and the neighbor’s door slam shut. Other times, when the lift door opens, she SCRAMBLES to the door to greet/hardly let my boyfriend in through the door. How does she KNOW????
posted by linabeena on 7-29-2007 at 3:58 pm
If you consider clearing a room in half a second whenever someone sneezes, then my cats are quite talented.
posted by heather on 7-30-2007 at 1:43 am
My cockatiel, who is situated in the back of the house, will chirp VERY loudly if someone is walking up the front walk. She’ll know someone is approaching the house before my dog does. She can’t see to the front, nor can she hear- it’s about 100 yards away.
That’s all that bird is good for.
posted by Sue on 7-30-2007 at 12:02 pm
This is for “7″. You are very short-sighted and rigid.
Animals have powers we don’t–or at least we have lost with the advent of “civilization”. Simple technologies such as clocks and calendars have robbed us of the ability to tell time by the position of the sun and a sense of when the seasons will change.
I feel sorry for you–you have obvioulsly never had a pet to whom you were close. I’v had dogs and cats all my life, and they understand what I’m saying. They understand some words, but they can also sense when I’m feeling bad either physically or emotionally. They also know when something is necessary.
I’ve tried to crate them during the day without success. However, when we were staying with friends after Katrina, they didn’t fuss at all at being crated when we left the house. Apparently, they knew it was necessary and didn’t cut up like they would at home.
I’ve also had dogs understand what I’m saying, even though they had never heard me put those particular words together. I could tell Fonzie to go get Pepper’s ball and give it to her (they were both avid ball chasers, but Pepper was getting old and blind) and she would–dropping her ball, getting Pepper’s and dropping it in front of her, then coming to me and giving me her ball to throw.
Yes, the rat psychologists and behavioral “experts” say this isn’t possible–but then I doubt that they spend as much time with their subjects as I have with my dogs. You don’t communicate well with any animal unless there is a strong bond between you and the animal.
posted by Mory on 8-5-2007 at 3:49 pm
My dog, and his mother, have uncanny abilities to sniff out tumors. When they sense cancer they try to be with the person as much as possible, ignoring everyone else, and they lie down on or lick at the area where the tumor is. We noticed this behavior first with my grandmother, and when we saw that my mom’s friend was getting the same treatment, it wasn’t much of a shock to learn she had also developed a rather large tumor.
posted by Lauren on 11-11-2008 at 10:00 am