Can You Spare One of Your Lives ? ☠

Do you ever wonder where cats get their nine lives?
It comes from the belief that they know more than we do.
Which makes sense. Every cat I’ve ever owned has been privy to my most private moments. I’ve freely gotten undressed in front of them, cried, and occasionally talked to myself with no shame as they stared at me. I’ll even admit that I’ve impulsively slipped a few fingers inside myself before drifting off to sleep, and didn’t bother to kick Mistoffelees to the floor.
They see. They just don’t talk.
Well, not unless we listen closely.
We could spend a lifetime learning from one of theirs.

I don’t have any pets at the moment, so my bond with Oscar was stronger than it otherwise might have been.
I work at a nursing home. The specter of death is omnipresent, like a coworker that’s tucked behind a corner and slipped out of sight.
Sorry, Clark Kent, you just missed Superman. But I swear he’s real, even though I don’t understand the truth.
Death is a hell of a companion. Yes, sometimes he’s welcome, and frequently is overdue.
Other times, though, he’s a rotten little bitch. No matter how much you’re watching for him, he knows that your back is always turned in at least one direction.
Which is why I listen to Oscar. He’s one of the nursing home’s resident pets.
He’s not a particularly friendly cat. At least, that’s how people interpret his behavior.
The truth is that he’s just a guy who sees things for what they really are, and acts accordingly.
Did you come to pet him when he felt like being left alone? Here’s a hiss for you.
How about being picked up by a stranger and lifted into the air? How would you react to that?
Well he feels the same way.
I don’t blame him for his lack of patience.
Especially when considering the stress that comes with watching death all day.
I don’t know how he does it. No one does. And no one can explain why it’s only him that seems to react.
But maybe that’s why no one understands: because they think it’s their place to do so. Life’s journey toward understanding must, by nature, end with knowledge. Perhaps we do live until human voices wake us, and we drown.

Oscar gave no explanation.
He was simply there, on a regular basis, when our patients approached the end.
People started calling him “The Angel of Death.” That wasn’t accurate, of course. He didn’t bring death, which is inevitable. He simply preceded it.
Dealing with Oscar’s presence eventually became part of the endgame protocol. Monitor vitals constantly, keep the patient under regular surveillance, call the family, make sure Oscar didn’t get in the way.
And if we listened closer, Oscar would tell us even more.
Imagine he’s in the room. Stop for a second. Where do you picture him?
Don’t dismiss that detail.
When a patient was dying of stomach cancer, he was curled up on her abdomen in the final hours, softly rising and falling with her stilted breaths.
One patient with dementia finally, mercifully, succumbed to brain cancer ten years after his last visitor hand closed the door behind himself. But he didn’t die alone. Oscar sat atop his dome like a furry hat when no one else was there. We came to check on him one morning and Oscar dropped to the ground and scurried out the door the second we opened it.
The man was still warm.
The last of the Doubting Thomases was convinced when one of our doctors confidently predicted the imminent demise of a resident despite Oscar’s absence. In the end, that resident decided to hang on a while longer. She persisted for some time, finally giving out shortly after Oscar made his presence known.
So instead of trying to understand Oscar – which would have meant demanding something from him – I listened, which required giving of myself. I earned the fleeting purr or nuzzle, which would be his only gift before retreating back to the corners of a life that was mostly hidden.
He’d go to work if need be. And if his rounds were clear, seeing it safe once again that night, would curl once about the house, and fall asleep.
It got to the point where his in-room visitations would trigger an immediate phone call to a patient’s family. We would tell them to come immediately, that their parent or grandparent had taken a turn for the worse.
It was easy enough to explain with medical terminology. It was simply better than saying “Oscar has informed us that your grandmother is going to die.”
Who would listen to that?

It all made sense. I had things figured out better than anyone else. Oscar spoke, and I understood.
Or at least I thought I did. I’m not sure what to believe now.
Because I just woke up in my bed at home, where I live alone.
Oscar was curled up, asleep, on my neck.