The internet is composed of about 75% cat pictures and 20% unbelievable stories to amaze your friends.* So it's no wonder Oscar, the cat who predicts death, captured the imagination of cyberspace last week. Oscar lives in a nursing home, and only curls up with patients who die within the next few hours. You can read the entire report in the New England Journal of Medicine, or the shorter Associated Press story we linked here.

There are many theories about how Oscar knows who is going to die, and some (mostly joking) remarks about how he may be causing the deaths. Those who work with him consider him a hospice hero. But that's not what I'm posting about. This is about the immediate and predictable flood of art and humor inspired by Oscar's story.



More "death cat" images after the jump.

Fark forum members raced to post LOLcats of death, some of them previously produced,



and some are pictures of Oscar, including the first one in this article.



My brother put together and sent me this one, unsolicited, as soon as he read about Oscar.

Apelad posted the kitteh of death from his Laugh Out Loud Cats collection.

Oscar is an attractive cat. With LOLcat Buildr and some captions that were posted in the comments on Neatorama, these were easy to produce.

Joey did this one.

I Can Has Cheezburger? had one.

The Flicker Can Has Cheezburger pool has several, like Poor Oscar from dominocat.



Oscar has a plaque at the nursing home that commends him "for his compassionate quality end-of-life care." Now he is also enshrined in LOLcat history.

*Leaving 5% useful information, found in other mental_floss posts.