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CBS and NBC both selected the story of Oscar the cat as its closing feature. And both saw the feline's role in sentimental terms. Oscar prowls the halls of the Steere nursing home in Rhode Island. On 25 occasions over the past 18 months, the cat has decided to curl up on the bed of one of the patients--and in each instance the bed has been a deathbed. "It is like clockwork," declared CBS' Richard Schlesinger. "Two to four hours before someone dies, Oscar shows up." The case has been written up by Dr David Dosa in The New England Journal of Medicine as an example of compassion and the cat has been cited by a hospice association for its benevolence. "Oscar is not so much a Grim Reaper as he is a comfort," NBC's Lee Cowan argued unconvincingly. What attributes has Cowan discovered about a beast that only arrives to announce that one is at death's door--and stays away the rest of the time--that do not belong to that self same Reaper?
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