vomeronasal organ – Pain In The Bud

There’s a scene in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep that shows Ewan McGregor’s character, Danny Torrance, working the night shift as a hospice orderly when a cat jumps up onto the desk and nuzzles his hand.

“Hi, Azzie,” Torrance says, and watches as the cute feline pads down the hall and enters a patient’s room.

doctorsleepazzie — Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) pets Azzie in Doctor Sleep.

When Danny pokes his head in, the patient is distraught. He knows he’s going to die.

“Cat’s on the bed,” the man says. “I knew he would be. That cat…always seems to know when it’s time. Guess it’s time.”

Danny shakes his head.

“No,” he reassures the old man. “It’s just Azrael being a silly
old cat.”

“Nope. Been that way since I got here. The cat knows when it’s time
to go to sleep, everybody knows that. I’m gonna die.”

It’s a pivotal moment early in the movie because it marks Danny’s evolution into Doctor Sleep, a man whose innate ability to “shine” allows him to comfort the dying. (Yes, Doctor Sleep is the sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Do yourself a favor and watch the Director’s Cut, which is the definitive and most satisfying version. It’s a long film, but worth it in every sense.)

It turns out Azzie is based on a real cat: Oscar, the resident feline at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island.

Oscar, who died in 2022 at the age of 17, had an uncanny ability to sense the imminent deaths of patients. When someone was near death, Oscar would leap onto the person’s bed and stay with them until they passed.

oscarthecat1 — Oscar at the nurse’s station in the Rhode Island nursing home where he lived.

When his story was first publicized in a 2007 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, Oscar had “predicted” the deaths of a few dozen patients.

“Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone. For his work, he is highly regarded by the physicians and staff at Steere House and by the families of the residents whom he serves.”

In a follow-up story by Reuters in 2010, Oscar had snuggled with more than 50 dying patients.

To be clear, no one’s suggesting Oscar is peering into supernatural realms. Cats are known for their remarkable hearing, but they’ve also got an exceptional sense of smell. In fact, they have a unique olfactory organ in their mouths, the vomeronasal organ, that allows them to “taste” scents.

We know very little about what kind of information they’re able to glean from scent alone, but we do know animals can sense things that would otherwise require sophisticated machines for us to detect, including cancers and other diseases.

Cat_giving_Flehmen_response — A cat’s Flehmen response looks like a disgusted reaction, but actually indicates cats are processing a scent through their vomeronasal organ.

It may be that the most unusual thing about Oscar’s case is that he was allowed to live in a nursing home. The vast majority of medical facilities have strict prohibitions against allowing animals due to potential allergies and the perception that they’re dirty, despite the fact that they have significant therapeutic benefits. Even the facilities that do allow animals typically do so under controlled circumstances and for short periods, as when therapy dogs or cats are brought to visit patients.

Perhaps we’d hear about Oscars all the time if they were resident cats in hospitals and nursing homes.

“I don’t think Oscar is that unique, but he is in a unique environment,” Dr. David Dosa told Reuters. “Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don’t, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed.”

It’s a reminder that just because we can’t see, smell or hear something, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. When dogs “bark at nothing,” they may have caught the scent of a stranger in the neighborhood. When a cat stares at a wall, it could be picking up mice making sounds that are too high in frequency for human ears to detect.

There are likely thousands of sounds, smells and even forms of tactile feedback to which we remain oblivious, but are noticed by animals. Migratory birds, for example, have magnetoreception abilities. That is to say, they can detect Earth’s magnetic field and magnetic dips, an ability they put to use when navigating as the seasons shift.

And then, of course, there’s Buddy and his incredible ability to detect catnip. Little man could be in a deep sleep in another room, yet the instant I open the sealed container of the good stuff, it’s a matter of seconds before he’s at my feet, meowing happily. In fact, it’s a reliable way to find him when he’s in some novel hidden napping spot, doesn’t respond to me calling for him, and I get worried because I haven’t seen or heard him in some time.

So next time your cat freaks you out by apparently staring at a corner of your living room, remind yourself she’s probably been alerted to something you can’t sense — and be wary of any cats who aren’t snugglers but suddenly climb into your bed.

That’s a question posed in a new article in The Conversation, and it’s something I’ve never really considered before.

It’s generally accepted that our little buddies are more or less equivalent to small children in terms of intellect and emotional intelligence. In fact kittens develop much more quickly than human children and come to certain understandings — like theory of mind and object permanence — considerably earlier than young kids do.

They also seem to possess some sapient qualities. My niece was born a year before Bud, for example, but in their early interactions he understood she was still developing motor skills and did not intend to cause him harm. I have photos of a young Buddy, still a kitten, cautiously allowing her to touch his fur and being uncharacteristically gentle with her.

There’s growing evidence that pet cats are “kittens in perpetuity.” Not only do their behaviors toward us mirror their behaviors toward their mothers — like meowing and using us as a “secure base” when faced with uncertainties — but they depend on us completely. We care for them, in turn, at least in part because they have neotenous (baby-like) features, which trigger our protective instincts.

Bud is basically a “kid,” so is it ethical for me to give him a potentially mind-altering substance?

Catnip isn’t really a drug

While some catnip companies lean into the whole “marijuana for cats” thing, naming catnip after famous marijuana strains, selling it in gag pharmaceutical bottles and even calling themselves “dispensaries,” those are marketing efforts aimed at us servants. As the authors note, it’s not accurate to consider catnip the equivalent of a drug.

It’s not physically addictive, its effects only last a few minutes and cats can’t overdose on the stuff. In fact the primary “danger” of giving too much catnip is your four-legged friend getting desensitized completely to the effect, which is why it’s an occasional treat, not a routine pick-me-up.

Meowijuana Catnip Company really leans into the whole “weed for cats” thing with catnip packaged like marijuana.

Catnip “won’t induce psychosis and won’t lead to addiction or withdrawal symptoms,” wrote authors Anne Quain, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Sydney, and Mia Cobb, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Animal Welfare Science center.

We don’t have to worry about cats driving on the stuff, and they have no responsibilities to speak of so catnip and silver vine can’t impact important decisions. If they have any deleterious social effects, they end at making our furry friends drool, look silly and rendering them even more drowsy than usual.

The mysteries of the nip effect

But what about a kitty’s subjective experience? How does catnip make your feline overlord feel?

We don’t have a very good answer to that question other than what we can observe, which is that they love the stuff. (Some cats don’t respond to catnip but are put in a state of bliss by silvervine. Some respond to both. A small number may not derive much pleasure from either of the plants.)

Even when they aren’t technically impacted by it, cats seem intrigued by the scent and use their secondary olfactory receptor, the vomeronasal organ, to do that odd-looking “mouth-sniffing” thing they do.

Buddy loves catnip and silver vine. I keep his ‘nip in an out-of-reach cabinet, inside a sealed container, which is itself inside an air-tight plastic bag. Bud can be in a deep sleep yet within seconds of opening it he’ll appear like an overly enthusiastic djinn who thinks the wish thing works in reverse, meowing impatiently and trilling with anticipation as I set the good stuff down for him.

That’s as close to consent as we’re going to get from cats, and I think we can safely conclude Bud’s response is “Hell yes! Gimme that sweet ‘nip and silver vine blend!”

He gobbles the stuff down, by the way, so YMMV on your feline overlord’s reaction. The conventional wisdom is that cats who sniff catnip get more animated while cats who eat it tend to roll around in bliss and meow.

Making life more interesting for your fuzzy liege lord

Which brings us to the final point: catnip and silver vine are ultimately enrichment tools that help make indoor life more exciting for our little buddies, like toys, cat furniture, boxes, intriguing smells and most importantly, time playing with us.

We don’t talk about it enough, but keeping our cats stimulated and happy indoors is important, especially as pressure mounts for everyone to keep their felines inside. If your local area isn’t enforcing curfews and outright bans, it seems only a matter of time before they follow states in Australia, New Zealand and Europe in passing new laws. Every day there are news articles detailing the efforts of city councils and town boards to deal with outdoor, unmanaged feline populations, and it’s a safe bet that most of those elected officials will not have the welfare of the animals high on their list of priorities.

If we want to avoid cruelty toward cats, getting our own pets comfortable with living indoors is a good first step to making sure government doesn’t become involved.