Wow, I read the article and this sounds so close to how my cat Thurston acted when my mother was in her last hours. Although starting out as a kitten who loved everybody, after being neutered Thurston came home being very wary of everyone except for my mother and I. Can't blame him, I probably would be too if some strnger stuck something up my butt and then cut my nuts off, lol. I was taking care of mom, who had emphysema and end stage COPD, and the house saw more and more visitors as her condition worsened. thurston spent this visiting time moslty hidden, never out in ful view. The day before mom passed, the house was filled to capacity with family that Thurston has never seen, yet there he was on the bed with mom, purring louder than he ever has and trying to cuddle and snuggle, oblivious to the amount of people that filled the room. We couldn't have kept him off the bed if we had tried.
As soon as mom was gone, Thurston returned to his normal, "scaredy cat" self and hides whenever somebody comes in the door. This story brought tears to my eyes as I remember him forgetting his fear of people because he had some very important business to tend to...and to think, some people will still say, "they're just animals."

My Persians were not snuggly cats -- they were always in the same room with me, but rarely on the bed, etc. When I had a miscarriage, both cats were waiting for me in the bedroom when I came home and they both slept in the bed with me that night. It really helped.

Cathy, yes, actually, your thoughts and feelings do affect your body's biochemistry--and vice versa.

I had a dog with fibrosarcoma. Near the end of his life I decided on a Friday night to have him euthanisized on Monday. That night every single cat came into my bedroom when I went to bed. Even my live-in-the-house feral who I couldn't touch. Normally only my old cat was my bed cat, with perhaps another one of the bunch coming in to visit for a short while before I went to sleep. He wasn't a long-time resident either, as he was a stray with a huge tumor on him and he only spent 14 months with me.

So while biochemistry and their sense of smell may be part of it, it sure isn't the whole story, unless many of our thoughts are translated into smells.

Animals *do* know things that we mere humans cannot perceive.

10 years ago my father was in his final days at a nursing home. One of my kitties, Frankie, had met Dad a few times over the years, but never paid him much attention. I'd been spending a lot of time with Dad, observing the amazing and awe inspiring process of passage, and had been with Dad until about 11 pm of the night before he passed. At about 5:45 a.m., Frankie woke me by gently patting my face with his little paw. He'd never done anything like that before; he never did it again. At 6:15 a.m. I received a call from the nursing home - my father had passed at 5:45 a.m. Somehow, Frankie knew.

Animals just "know" things we don't understand. Before my beloved black Lab Dixie died,(and before I even knew she was sick) my Sadie never left her side, even though she was, at that time, just an adolescent dog, and usually just an annoyance to Dixie. But she suddenly became loving and gentle, grooming and cuddling with her and not showing her usual exuberant personality. After Dixie died, we let Sadie spend some time with her before she was buried under an oak tree in the backyard. To this day, six years later, I sometimes find Sadie lying under the tree, at the edge of the grave, as if she is visiting and grieving for her old friend.

Animals know things. Of course, some cats use this power for evil by insisting on being as close as possible to the allergic person - but I have a secret weapon! I like cats, thus they won't come near me despite being allergic.

In all seriousness, I think it is the height of conceit to believe that animals don't sense things we don't. I know that some things can be explained by our scent changing, etc. But I really think that this phenomenon is worth studying.

Pax,

MLO

Cindy~
That's an amazing story......what a wonderful cat.

Another good element to this story is that apparently Oscar isn't a people-oriented cat. He -only- hangs out with patients when they're circling the drain.

Fortunately, this is a place that takes care of terminal dementia patients. If it was a different kind of place, imagine how freaked out you'd be if Oscar came into your room!

The authors point out the behavior could reflect non-mysterious factors, for example the cat being interested in sitting on the heating pads that are placed on the patients who have begun to focus their metabolic energies on dying. I think it's probably more mysterious than that: the cat is hoping to figure out how to speak so that he can ask that age old question: "Can I have your stuff? Hm? Huh? Where's the tuna collection, old man? Where did you stash it? Don't hold out on me!"

That article made me cry -Oscar is a wonderful cat. I know first-hand that cats know things like this.

When my fist son was born, my cat, Mouse, hated him. Absolutely loathed him - she pooped in his cloth diaper stack and on any clothing or receiving blankets she could reach, and would even pee on my lap if I was nursing him. This baby never slept for more than a few minutes at a time, but one night, he fell into a deep sleep. I was hesitant to go to sleep myself, knowing that he would just wake up crying in a few minutes. Finally, though, exhaustion won and I went to sleep next to him.

Just before I fell asleep, Mouse came up to him and began mewoing. I shipsered to her to hush. She meowed again, loudly. I hissed at her to leave. She howled at him, howled in my face then howled at him again. Then, she began running up to me, biting my face then howling - not at all like my normally gentle cuddle kitty. I sat up to reach for a slipper to throw at her. Then, I glanced at my baby to see if he was waking up - and saw that he was pale, his lips a dark purple. I waited just to make sure he was breathing, and waited - his tiny chest wasn't moving. Finally, I picked him up and began screaming and shaking him gently, he took a gurgly gasping breath and began crying - and he turned pink again!

We nearly lost him to apnea that night. After that, Mouse was always right beside him, whether he was in my arms or sleeping in bed. She would groom his head as he nursed. If we went out in the stroller, either she came along (she was terrified of the outdoors) or she paced inside my house until we returned. She even sat in the bath tub with him, growling at the water!

Our pediatrician told us that she saved his life and that we had only minutes left when she began howling. Cats know.

My husband told me about his former dog getting upset while he was visiting with his neighbors. The dog whimpered and payed a lot of attention to the neighbor wife, then she had a seizure. Hubby said his dog detected a few more of her seizures too.