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bibliocat's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
This book was a discount find, to be added to my section on feline non-fiction books.
Oscar is a cat residing at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island, and he seems to have the unusual ability of knowing when one of the facility's residents is about to pass. Oscar was described by the author, a doctor, as being a bit stand-offish with him, but Oscar would take up vigil on the patient's bed within hours of their passing. How does he know? Does he really care? No one is ever going to be able to answer those questions, but at least there was a tiny amount of discussion about this in the afterword.
I'm glad we did get to understand how resident cats came to live at Steere House (they had 6 at the time of the book). Only Oscar seemed to have the instinct to be with the actively passing patients, and unfortunately we didn't get to hear much about the others beyond their names. Approximately half of the book is about Oscar, but the half that is the emotional center of this book revolves around the lives and stories of the patients in the nursing home. The prose flows well from one patient to another, day to day, and how the families of the Alzheimer's patients react to seeing the decline of their love ones. It got to be quite a tear jerker experience by the end.
This book is certainly not a technical journal on Alzheimer's, but I did learn some new terminology and explanations of the disease, which was interesting.
Oscar is a cat residing at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island, and he seems to have the unusual ability of knowing when one of the facility's residents is about to pass. Oscar was described by the author, a doctor, as being a bit stand-offish with him, but Oscar would take up vigil on the patient's bed within hours of their passing. How does he know? Does he really care? No one is ever going to be able to answer those questions, but at least there was a tiny amount of discussion about this in the afterword.
I'm glad we did get to understand how resident cats came to live at Steere House (they had 6 at the time of the book). Only Oscar seemed to have the instinct to be with the actively passing patients, and unfortunately we didn't get to hear much about the others beyond their names. Approximately half of the book is about Oscar, but the half that is the emotional center of this book revolves around the lives and stories of the patients in the nursing home. The prose flows well from one patient to another, day to day, and how the families of the Alzheimer's patients react to seeing the decline of their love ones. It got to be quite a tear jerker experience by the end.
This book is certainly not a technical journal on Alzheimer's, but I did learn some new terminology and explanations of the disease, which was interesting.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Chronic illness, Death, Dementia, and Death of parent
Minor: Antisemitism