Cat says I smell dead people

An article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine chronicles dozens of cases where Oscar the Cat predicts when nursing home patients are going to die - in most cases, less than 4 hours. Doctors started noticing that the cat began making his own rounds, and staff started calling the patient's family once the feline made his diagnosis.

According to http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/357/4/328 , the smelly cat will sniff and observe patients, and then sit beside people who wind up dying in a few hours. It gives new meaning to the saying that cats always pick out the person in the room who least wants them in their lap.