Making Rounds with Oscar

The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat
Hyperion (paperback), 2010, reprint 2011, 256 pp

In a nursing home in Rhode Island, a cat named Oscar displayed a mysterious gift: He seemed to know when a resident was about to die. Oscar would then come to the resident's bed to lie beside him or her, giving comfort to the dying resident as well as to family or loved ones who were in the room for the final hours of life. Between visits Oscar would sit Sphinx-like on a windowsill, "regal and mysterious," simply being a cat.

David Dosa, MD, chronicles Oscar's gifts in his 2010 book "Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat." So the book has been around a while, but I just came upon it recently. A physician friend recommended the book to me, and at first I wasn't interested. Too far fetched. Too weird. But I downloaded the book on my Kindle and was immediately drawn in to the nursing-home world of Dr. Dosa, the nurses and caregivers, and the unique residents they watched over.

As I read, I found Dr. Dosa as skeptical as I was. At the repeated urging of one of the nurses, he interviewed the families of people who'd died on Oscar's watch, trying to determine whether the cat's visits to the dying were coincidental or purposeful. What could a cat know about death?

I also learned that Dr. Dosa's book was about a lot more than Oscar and his fellow cats at the nursing home. Much wisdom about the effects of illness, and the realities of death and dying, is packed into the doctor's review of Oscar's "work."

In cases of extreme personality changes caused by dementia, it seems we have to learn to say goodbye to the person we've known, even before that person is close to dying. I found the insights people had about their loved ones' illnesses and their eventual deaths to be valuable life lessons. In his interviews, Dr. Dosa heard about guilt -- lots of guilt -- and anger and grief, and learned much about how families dealt with these tough emotions.

Having a near relative with a recent stroke made the comments doubly useful to me. Someone with significant physical changes, such as paralysis of limbs or loss of the ability to speak, is also profoundly changed by disease. A different person, the stroke victim, emerges.

The dementia victims Dr. Dosa describes seem to disappear in a different way, as they lose the ability to recognize a spouse or form a coherent sentence. But I do think the obvious changes some illnesses bring require us to redefine the person affected, whether mentally or physically, and grow into a different relationship with the "new" person.

For another physician friend, a neurologist and psychiatrist who had not yet read the book, Oscar's behavior was a bit threatening. "I think I'd be real nervous if that cat even started toward me," he told me. So the catness of the story overwhelms the reality of the many insights the author gives us on attitudes toward illness, how we think about approaching death, and the realities of confronting changed people who are close to us . . . or were.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with a loved one who's challenged by great medical changes, "Making Rounds with Oscar" is well worth reading. Even if you're not sure whether Dr. Dosa solves the mystery of Oscar's gift, you'll come out richer for the read.

A piece in Daily Variety (August 20, 2010) says that a movie about Oscar was underway at that time. You can read all about the proposed film, and get more background, at Feline Oscar heads to bigscreen: Famous cat comforts dying in nursing center, in Variety online.