I like things that leave the scientific community baffled and “Oscar the Death Cat” has managed to do it paws down.

Two-year-old Oscar has lived at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, Rhode Island since he was a kitten. In that time, he’s come to be respected (by many) and feared (by some) for his uncanny ability to detect…The Stench of Death!

Da na na naaaaaaa!

As the grim reaper grinds his way towards the next nursing home victim, Oscar will unfailingly saunter round the corner, grey and white striped tail waving, and hop up onto the dying person’s bed, purr up a storm and snuggle down to wait for them to pass. He’s managed to do it unerringly at least 25 times!

Dr. Dosa who published an essay on Oscar in the New England Journal of Medicine said, “This is a cat that knows death. His instincts that a patient is about to die are often more acute than the instincts of medical professionals.” Oscar apparently sulks outside the door when freaked out relatives don’t want him in the room.

It’s really rather odd. And I confess to feeling as baffled as the white-coated geeks.

So because everybody and their dogs are bouncing cat/death theories off the morgue walls, I thought I’d follow suit with a few of my own:

1. Maybe people on the edge of death feel like mohair, a hot water bottle or polar fleece beneath the paws
2. Oscar might be an enlightened Buddhic soul;
3. Or perhaps, and really now I think of it this is far more likely, Oscar is in fact a furry “Kitty Goth”. And, while I didn’t see any references to painted claws or dramatically applied eyeliner, one of the nurses did mention that he took “himself very seriously and wasn’t really what you would call “a friendly, people kind of cat.”

However, if Oscar is not in fact a cat of the gothic persuasion, he may well be the new pin up boy in revising the unjustified branding of cats as “callous”. Popular veterinary behaviourist Nicholas H Dodman thinks this could be so.

When questioned by bug-eyed journos whether cats in fact had a sixth sense, heightened smell or could pick up on death in the metabolism, Nicholas simply said “It may just come down to empathy.”

And while my Goth theory appeals to my head, Dodman’s theory appeals to my heart — an organ with a far more reputable character…