Blog Posting August 1, 2007
Oscar the Death Cat
Rhode Island’s Feline Familiar Makes the News
Last week all the media was abuzz with the story of Oscar the Cat. Did you see it on CNN? Oscar is the cat that lives in a Providence, Rhode Island nursing center. He has never shown much interest in hanging out with people but when a person is about to die, Oscar comes out to curl up next to the person and support him as he lets go to ‘the other side.’ In the past 25 cases, Oscar’s predictive abilities have been so accurate that the nursing staff has taken his presence with a patient to be sufficient reason to notify the family. The patient that is chosen for Oscar’s attention generally has only hours to live.
One of the Nursing Centers geriatricians who is also an associate professor of medicine at Brown University, reports that most family members appreciate Oscar’s compassion for their dying love one. “He seems to understand when patients are about to die,’ Dr. David Dosa wrote in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine. Ocsar was adopted two years ago as a kitten by a Province Nursing and Rehabilitation Center where a medical team specializes in late stage Alzheimer’s, Parkinson and other serious illnesses. Oscar makes his rounds just like all the doctors and takes his work seriously. According to Dr. Jean Teno–who became convinced of Oscar’s abilities after he accurately predicted his 13th case–the two year old feline is more accurate about a patient’s death time than most of the doctors who treat and monitor the patients. When a physician says someone is about to die and tells the staff it is time to call the family, that patient typically lives on a few more days if Oscar hasn’t made his presence known. The patient doesn’t leave the world until Oscar makes the final pronouncement with his appearance on the patient’s bed Should a family member want to put Oscar outside the room just before their love one departs, Oscar doesn’t understand and starts to pace and meow in front of the closed door voicing his displeasure.
No one at the Nursing Center has any explanation for this behavior but Oscar’s place in the Nursing Center is acknowledged and appreciated. According to one AP wire service account last week, Oscar has now received a wall plague commending his ‘compassionate hospice care.’
Oscar has generated considerable interest in the medical field among certain researchers who may now begin clinical studies to somehow get to the bottom of this. There is speculation, of course, about how Oscar’s predictive abilities are possible and studies are being considered in order to understand more.
In the interest of scientific study (which I commend), I offer a few theories myself. Somewhat unconventional, I know, these theories are suggested with all due respect to people’s deeply held beliefs and certainly it is not my intention to offend anyone’s faith about death and dying.
Some doctors that have watched Oscar perform have speculated that Oscar, like all cats in our world, may have certain sensory perceptions not yet discovered by science that make possible his uncanny forecasts. I would suggest human beings have undiscovered senses too—fourteen altogether rather than the five we know about—and that as the human race learns to access its full sensory equipment, we may also come to possess some of the ‘mysterious’ Oscar talents as well. I also believe Oscar is not working alone. His talent involves the assistance of others.
Oscar the Cat is what historically has been described as a ‘familiar.’ Many healers have understood the value and abilities of familiars in their healing work throughout the ages. Familiars are able to walk ‘two worlds’—the world of the living and the world of the dead. To understand Oscar in scientific terms is going to also require new scientific understandings about the world of the dead.
I use the term ‘dead zone’ to describe this hidden realm and give credit to Stephen King who first coined the phrase and to the current TV series that made it popular. The dead zone is the place people go when they die. It would be helpful to human evolution if one day our science could understand this place—where it is and what goes on there—and in the process perhaps assist our religions and cultures to embrace the authentic story about the ‘dead zone’ rather than some of the historic misunderstandings and outdated belief systems that currently prevail. Perhaps through our feline friends like Oscar that invite our science to study his ‘two world’ talents, science may one day discover and penetrate this hidden subject. Until that time, science will never comprehend the full story of Oscar. This is a cat whose talents are supported by human beings with residence in the dead zone.
Such suggestions, of course, can cause careful scientists to pull back from a discussion, shaking their head in disbelief. Everyone know that scientists don’t deal in the realm of science fiction so how can they possibly take seriously the idea that a cat like Oscar and the dead zone are somehow linked? Perhaps one day that will change, thanks to future Oscar type clinical studies that uncover Oscar’s invisible associates. Before that can ever happen, however, science will need first to discover what is the dead zone? Where is it located? How exactly is it possible for dead people (who are still aware) to connect with animals like Oscar in order to assist a cat’s special nursing home talents?
All I can say is that incredible information and new theories are currently pouring into our world filled with insights into such mysteries. Before dismissing such information that often comes to people from dreams and invisible worlds, it is perhaps helpful to remember that Albert Einstein developed his theoretical framework with the assistance of others, receiving much of his valued theories about the universe through the dream state. Mozart was another, writing perfect sonatas at age 7 in a first draft in which no note was changed to withstand the critics for 300 years. Just like Oscar, Mozart had his invisible helpers too. Some of the best theories for possible scientific investigation and clinical studies into the Oscar the Cat perplexity may be found in this time honored lineage in which information arrives from unseen realms that subsequently contribute to human understanding.
The dead zone is only one section within our world of physicality. If you were to see physicality as a whole, the dead zone would have been assigned most of the real estate. About 95% of our physical world is on the dead zone side and 5% on the living side. The dead zone plays a far greater role in our physical world than most people realize. The address of the dead zone is the outer layer of the earth’s atmosphere—the stratosphere.
The people who are assisting Oscar are people who have passed over into the dead zone. These associates of Oscar previously laid down their physical body but their awareness and biofield (the electrical/chemical matrix emitted by their skin organ that held their mind, data and other systems) lived on. At death, the human biofield is pulled into the body to travel up the spinal column and out of the mouth. Some doctors who have worked with people ‘who died’ and then watched them inexplicable returned to live again, have heard them describe their ‘near death’ experience as traveling through a tunnel of light. What they are experiencing is that brief journey up the spinal column—their ‘tunnel of light’—and then out of the mouth and into the room where they can look down on where their body is laying before jumping back into it.
Because the physical world is actually a psychological construct and human beings aren’t yet able to see themselves without a body, when a person dies, they simply image a body in as they step out of the mouth. Their new dead zone body can look the way they want it to look so most people create a sleek, younger version of how they use to appear and off they go to the stratosphere. In their new location in the dead zone, some take up the task of supporting familiars like Oscar the Cat.
There are animals in our world that have an ability to connect to human beings who are dead, especially certain cats and horses. Like Oscar, these familiars are able to walk on both sides of physicality. All cats are not familars but when you happen to have one, it can be special. Someone like Oscar working side by side with doctors in a nursing home or practitioners in a healing practice provide that practitioner with some of the benefits available from healers who have died without having to engage the downside of that decaying energy in the dead zone. When you are fortunate to be associated with a cat like Oscar, it’s not just a person’s ‘imminent death’ that an Oscar-type cat can sense. That’s just one of Oscar’s talents. The familiars of our world can touch into diverse fields of medicine and many healing data banks to create unique avenues for heath and healing. When people die who once were exceptional healers while alive, whether they were medical doctors, herbalists, acupuncturists or naturopaths, a familiar cat is able to connect to the suggestions offered by that healer or doctor who has taken up residence in the dead zone and bring their healing energy or wise suggestion into their owner’s health practice.
We all know there is a ghost controversy in our world. Do ghosts really exist? That is an off limits question to many scientists although most normal people would like to know. If you think you might have a dead person hanging around your house and you decide to conduct a ‘scientific inquiry’ into the matter, one of the few available approaches at the present time is to ring up some high tech ‘subtle energy’ wizard guy who can take ‘pictures’ and make ‘recordings’ to ‘prove’ the existence of such a phenomenon. The realm of the dead is similar to the human biofield in that it involves subtle energy fields with properties similar to the recently observed dark energy phenomena that no scientist can see or measure but can observe its effects. You can only measure the effects of subtle energy. To the scientists that may eventually study the Oscar phenomenon, our current subtle energy recording instruments are considered in the category of pseudo science. There is no accepted device or methodology as to how to observe and measure the human biofield, dark energy, the dead zone or fields of ‘subtle energy’ even when the results of such non-measurable fields are observed.
Are their deads in your house? In the present limited world of scientific instruments, it’s probably best to save your money to find out. Your familiar has already figured it out anyway. Just watch your cat. When the ‘spook’ is sitting at your dining room table where he lived before he died, your Oscar the cat will want to stand up on his back two feet attacking and punching the air in front of him ‘for no apparent reason’ because he clearly sees someone has invaded your space. For the time being, human beings can only observe the results of the invisible connection between familiar cats and the dead.
Nevetheless, familiars are able to assist any healing practice with the help of their dead zone friends. Let’s say you wanted to make up an herbal remedy for your ten year old that just came down with the flu. You are missing an important ingredient and wondered if it might be growing outdoors in that nearby grass field or woods. Ask your familiar to go into the woods as you tag behind and she may lay down right on the herb you need. She might even lay down on a plant or two you didn’t know about but later came to realize were the perfect missing ingredients. A massage therapist that has a familiar could invite her cat to assist her client by laying on the person at the end of the massage in just the right spot for the final touch to untie those blocked energy grids or balance, clean and open the body’s natural energy system. The cat knows something the therapist probably doesn’t see and what the cat see can definitely aid the client.
The best instrument to find out if your own cat is another Oscar familiar is your own human body—another one of those ‘pseudo scientific instruments’ that nevertheless seems to work most of the time. If you have the ability to ask your own body intelligence a question and get a clear yes or no, by muscle testing, holding a pendulum or receiving your own knowingness, you can ask if your present cat is a familiar.
All cats are not familiars so if you don’t have one, you can also set your intentions at night before you sleep for a familiar to enter your life. That may take awhile, even up to two years, but when you hold the understanding that your personal Oscar the Cat is alive and well in today’s world just waiting to find a place where she can do her valuable work, she can show up in your arms to become a member of your personal healing entourage. Just remember, it’s not just Oscar that has come to aid you. A familiar is able to harness the knowledge and wisdom of some of the best human healers who ever lived and by their two-world bridging talent bring a unique healing support to your own healing mission.
Familiars are a gift. We should all tip our hats and send our appreciation and gratitude to Oscar the Cat as this week’s humanity hero. While we’re at it, let’s not forget Oscar’s large familiar family everywhere on earth working seriously on their healing craft too. We should thank them all for their beautiful supportive love and healing aid to the human race (even when they’re grumpy.)
Based on the teachings of Sheradon Bryce. Copyright 2007 Rennie Davis. All rights reserved