So, what is it that cats actually do?

Grim Creeper: Cat senses when patients will die

From Providence (a coincidence??) comes this unusual story about a cat named Oscar who so far has foreshadowed the deaths of 25 nursing home patients by curling up beside them in their last hours. That track record has led staff at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to call family members whenever the otherwise aloof Oscar takes up his watch. It usually means a patient has less than four hours of life left.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," Dr. David Dosa said in an interview with the Associated Press. "Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one."

Dosa, a geriatrician and an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University, describes the phenomenon in tomorrow's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The 2-year-old Oscar was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the facility for people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/07/the-grim-creepe.html