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This blog needs more death kitties

spreadytoes.jpg

I find the spready toes irresistable. My cats know this, I think. They never waste an opportunity to drop and spread ’em. Good morning! Yoink! My bowl is empty! Yoink! I hacked up a furball in your underwear drawer! Yoink!

I’ve been holding this picture for several days, waiting an opportunity. You can thank Uncle Badger for this.

July 26, 2007 — 5:16 pm
Comments: 11

It’s not one of mine, I swear!

oscarthecat.jpg

Oscar is a two-year-old cat adopted as a kitten by Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, RI, where I be at (Providence, not a nursing home. Not yet, bucko). Oscar isn’t an especially friendly cat. Doesn’t seem to like people that much, in fact.

Every morning, Oscar makes the rounds of the dementia ward, checking up on everybody, just like a real doctor. Say, Dr Kevorkian. Because, every once in a while, Oscar will hop up on the bed and curl up next to somebody. And when he does this, that old coot is going to die today.

So far, he’s gotten it right upwards of 25 times, which is a better track record than the doctors. When Oscar cuddles up to somebody, they call that person’s family and a priest. One ungrateful wretch asked that Oscar be put out of the room while he said goodbye to his mom. Oscar paced up and down the hall, mewing.

Sender-inner thinks they’re overlooking the obvious explanation: when no-one’s looking, Oscar bumps people off (presumably by the classic feline method of breath-stealing). Me, I think it’s adequately explained by the “special relationship” between cats and the Man in Black. The one with the sickle, not the one with the guitar. Eh. Either one, at this point.


The New England Journal of Medicine started the story, but they only have a one hundred word excerpt online. This blog seems to have transcribed the story from the print edition (it’s a much-typo’d telling that begins with the same hundred words). Also covered by the BBC, CNN and everybody else. Update: Awww shoot! Now Drudge has it. That always makes me feel so…common.

— 8:43 am
Comments: 23