Cruel Weird Awful covers stories that are bizarre, upsetting, even morbid.
So naturally it was only a matter of time before a cat showed up here.
But even if you like cats, you probably didn’t want this one sitting near you.
Dozens of times, when Oscar the cat sat next to somebody, that somebody soon became a body.
Oscar was a shelter cat who was adopted by a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island.
They wanted him to be a therapy cat, but at first he was mostly a scaredy cat.
He spent his time hiding in closets and under beds, occasionally biting a doctor or two.
After a few months, he started to do what he was brought in to do, and spend time with the patients.
But that’s when things got weird.
The staff noticed that Oscar would choose to sit next to people, and not long after that, they were dead.
It was almost as if he could predict who was on their way out.
The staff put the cat to the test: they set Oscar next to a patient who they were sure was a goner, but he got up and moved over to a different patient.
And that person died before the first patient.
Oscar was on hand for the demises of more than 100 patients.
And he wasn’t clawing them to pieces or spreading a disease, so what was going on?
Was he the living embodiment of death?
Could he see the future?
Did he just like sitting next to humans who weren’t moving a lot?
Scientists figured Oscar was probably just responding to some kind of chemical that only he could sense.
But some of the families of Oscar’s chosen thought he was more like he was a feline angel, who showed up at just the right time to see their loved ones to the other side.
They thanked Oscar in some obituaries.
And when one of the doctors wrote a book about this unusual cat, demand grew for people to get into his nursing home.
Oscar continued his work until his own passing in 2022.
Obviously he was there for that one too.
The iconic painting Washington Crossing The Delaware was the work of a German painter, which is interesting because it showed Americans on their way to a surprise attack of German forces who were working for the British.
In 1942, the original version of the painting was in a museum in Bremen, Germany.
The British launched an air raid against their then-enemy Germany that ended up destroying the painting made in honor of their then-ally, the United States.
Good thing there were other copies.
Classic cases revisited: Oscar the cat and predicting death (National Institutes of Health)
Did You Know?: ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ painting (Purdue University)