North Star Writers Group

He is Oscar, a two-year-old adopted feline supervisor at a Rhode Island hospice care unit. The tabby cat made national headlines recently when his story was posted on the website of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Oscar’s story is available at this URL: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/357/4/328.pdf. Read it and weep – not tears of sorrow, but of joy and gratitude.

Next comes word of Scamp, an adopted schnauzer with similar duties at a Canton, Ohio, nursing home. Like Oscar, Scamp always seems to know when a resident of his facility is close to death.

We human beings don’t seem to know what to make of the animals’ abilities to predict and indicate imminent death and their devotion to the person dying. Inane and inaccurate headlines drone on about “ominous talent” and “first grim cat, now grim dog.”

What a tragedy. Death holds such terror for us, and we are so divorced from our spiritual natures, that we react to the compassion and empathy shown by these two creatures with fear, distrust and even a tinge of loathing. Yuck. How creepy. Stay away.

Perhaps we should take a hint from the people who care for the elderly and the dying on a daily basis and are familiar with Oscar and Scamp. The staff at the Rhode Island facility awarded Oscar a plaque of thanks for “his compassionate hospice care.” A staff member of the Ohio nursing home told a local TV station that Scamp brings “great joy” to everyone there.

And, typical of dogs and cats, Scamp will try to comfort residents of his facility who are grieving, but not yet dying, while Oscar pays his attentions strictly to those whose death is within several hours, and otherwise remains aloof while he makes his daily rounds. No nose-licking, tail-wagging namby-pamby for this self-respecting feline.

Even so, Scamp and Oscar are on a mission – to ease both the dying and their loved ones through the transition erroneously known as death. The animals’ presence at a resident’s bedside alerts staff to contact the patient’s family in time for them to say their good-byes. Being able to do so provides a tremendous amount of comfort to the dying person’s loved ones. And for those without family able to arrive in time, Oscar and Scamp make sure that none of those they watch over dies alone.

There are several scientific theories about how the animals can sense impending death. These explanations focus on chemical smells, called pheromones, that animals can detect, but elude human nostrils.

That may be so, but it does not exclude another interpretation of these events. The dying most often are comatose, unconscious or too far in mental collapse to be aware of the animals’ presence by what we consider normal methods. They cannot use their physical senses to see, hear or feel the animals’ fur or slight weight next to them.

Even unconscious, however, the dying are still capable of sensing and benefiting from the vibration of love. Detecting love’s presence is a gift of the spirit that precedes physical life and remains once it is over because it is the essence of the energy-spirits that we are. Love does not depend on physical life or physical senses to exist and be given or received.

And surely it is love that Oscar and Scamp are giving those at death’s door. Love without any demand for something in return. All of us long for that kind of love and we need not wait for it until the end of our physical lives. It’s available to us right now, if only we open our hearts and souls to the possibilities, and take a hint from two humble animals that are here to show all of us, not solely the dying, the way to love.

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