{"id":120,"date":"2007-07-25T16:24:42","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T23:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/?p=120"},"modified":"2007-07-25T16:24:42","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T23:24:42","slug":"oscar-the-furry-grim-reaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"Oscar, the &#8220;furry grim reaper&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Associated Press brings the story (via Seattle&#8217;s <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.king5.com\/\">King 5 News<\/a><\/strong>) of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/hosted.ap.org\/dynamic\/stories\/D\/DEATH_CAT?SITE=KING&#038;TEMPLATE=STRANGEHEADS.html&#038;SECTION=HOME\">Oscar<\/a><\/strong>, a cat who lives at a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. Oscar apparently can predict death. The feline &#8220;harbinger of death&#8221; makes daily rounds of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center&#8217;s dementia unit. Oscar has been known to &#8220;sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours &#8230; Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there &#8230;&#8221; This scenario has played out 25 times so far, with patients dying within two to four hours of Oscar&#8217;s visit.<\/p>\n<p>Things to ponder:<br \/>\n1. Given that the cat works in a dementia unit, isn&#8217;t it possible that people are &#8230; shall we say, <em>mistaken<\/em> about Oscar&#8217;s predictions?<br \/>\n2. Most cats have a low opinion of humans. Does Oscar merely predict deaths, or does he actually cause them? Maybe he steals patients&#8217; breath. See <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cat's_Eye_(film)\"><em><strong>Cat&#8217;s Eye<\/strong><\/em><strong>, by Stephen King<\/strong><\/a>.<br \/>\n3. Even if Oscar truly can sense a patient&#8217;s imminent demise, shouldn&#8217;t the medical staff be <em>at least as astute in these matters as the cat<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Associated Press brings the story (via Seattle&#8217;s King 5 News) of Oscar, a cat who lives at a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. Oscar apparently can predict death. The feline &#8220;harbinger of death&#8221; makes daily rounds of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center&#8217;s dementia unit. Oscar has been known to &#8220;sniff and observe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}