Azhrialilu Dot Com

Oscar the cat appears to be making waves in a nursing home in the US. It seems that he is aware that when residents are in their final hours of life and curls up next to them.

According to the author of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine the cat has been correct in 25 cases so far, but there is no indication out of how many total. But staff at the home now alert families when Oscar settles down next to a resident.

The staff state that Oscar is not an overly friendly cat but appears to “make rounds” like the doctors. But although most families are grateful for Oscar’s “notification of impending doom”, some ask that the cat be removed while they say their final goodbyes to their loved ones. When he’s placed outside the room, Oscar is said to pace up and down meowing.

David Dosa, a professor of Brown University who carried out the research on Oscar, said “He doesn’t make many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die.”

Thomas Graves, a feline expert from the University of Illinois, told the BBC: “Cats often can sense when their owners are sick or when another animal is sick.

“They can sense when the weather will change, they’re famous for being sensitive to premonitions of earthquakes.”

A doctor who treats patients at the home said she believed there was probably a biochemical explanation, rather than the cat being psychic.

Maybe it’s just me, but how would you feel if you were a resident at this nursing home with a cat predicting death every so often? Personally I’d want it gone! What do you think?

Popularity: 45% [?]

On the BBC News website it has been announced that Jordan and Petre Andre have finally given their baby girl a name. The baby was born on 29th June and, being pregnant myself (not for the first time) you’d have thought that as she already had two, she’d have been prepared well in advance with a name this time around. But no, it’s taken this long for her to come up with an appropriate name.

Katie Price aka Jordan has stated that they chose the baby’s name because the little girl was their own “princess”…. brilliant, everyone loves their daughters… I call Shannon my little princess…she calls herself a princess too.

What’s the problem, I can hear you asking. The problem, for me anyway, is that Katie and Peter have actually named their daughter Princess… Princess Tiaamii to be exact.

Peter stated:-

Katie always loved the name Princess, but everyone thought it was a bit over the top. I loved it too but I wanted to name her after both our mums. Then I just woke up one morning and thought, I know! We’ll just put them together!. If people don’t like it, that’s up to them.

Now please, come on! This poor child now has to grow up with the first name of Princess… I’ll give Peter credit for his merging of their mothers names to get Tiaamii – that has significance to the family and a special place, like Shannon’s middle name is Azhria (for obvious reasons) but Princess????

I guess we should be thankful for small mercies, she was going to call her Tinkerbell, but apparently there are too many dogs with the name………….. has no one mentioned there are about a million animals out there with the name princess? And let’s not mention the other choice of Bunny that was waiting in the wings…….

I suppose she could always grow up to marry Prince (Michael Jackson’s son) and they could be the “new royalty” when Prince (the artist who was symbol for a while) King (who I believe is still on vh1) and Queen (now missing Freddie Mercury) are all dead and buried!

Popularity: 12% [?]

I found this funny little site while surfing the net earlier.

LikeBetter

It’s a quirky little site where you make a selection from the two images on the screen as to which you prefer. The more selections you make, the more the site gets to “know” you. When the little brain image turns pink then the site believes it knows something about you. Click the brain for it to make a statement, which you then confirm or deny.

There’s no real point to the site other than for the timewasting factor, but I was amused to find the statements it made about me were accurate nonetheless!

Popularity: 43% [?]

We picked up a copy of the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series on Saturday afternoon and I began reading it almost straight away. Taking time out to eat and sleep, I finished the book Sunday afternoon after approximately 12 hours reading.

I was dubious before I started as to how well JK Rowling would do, considering the amount of hype that has been spread about this last book and, with the amount of supposed spoilers around the internet it was difficult not to miss reading something about it somewhere. Somehow I managed to avoid all spoilers until Friday 20th July and then I flicked onto a site to find a whole mountain of them. I admit I read them – not because I wanted to know how the book ended, but because I was curious to see how many they actually got wrong and, oh boy, did they ever get it wrong!

To say the book was good would be to belittle the writing talent on JK Rowling. She has excelled herself with this final novel in the Harry Potter series, answering most, if not all, questions posed throughout the series. Yes, there are deaths – and while some may say there was little emotion showed about them, people need to remember that this is still a children’s novel and not an epic fantasy written for adults. There were some instances were I disagreed with the reasoning for a death, but I didn’t expect to be in 100% agreement with everything – and why would I be.. we each have our own opinions on what should have happened.

Overall I thought this book was a spellbinding ending to the series and I was pleased to find that the ending was not written in such a way that leaves it open for a million other books – although there could well be a story or three in the offing but not related to the main story of this series.

Wonderfully written and well worth the time taken to read it. A must for anyone’s bookshelf!

Popularity: 10% [?]

My grandfather’s eldest brother Ron died during world war two. Rumour has it his mother woke up on the night he died with a premonition of his death – and told her husband that Ron had drowned at sea; a while later they received confirmation of it.

Anyway, none of his brothers knew any of the details of what happened to Ron – other than being lost at sea, so during my research I decided to make an effort to discover what happened to him.

Thanks to the phenomenal members at the Family Tree forums we’ve managed to track down Ron, the ship he was on and what actually happened.

The ship he was on was a Catapult Armed Merchantman, with 1 Hurricane fighter on board, called SS Empire Lawrence. She served in several convoys before her final, PQ16. Older readers will know that means the Arctic… LINK tells us that her final convoy set sail from Reykjavik on 21st May 1942, bound for Murmansk, Russia. Her cargo on this voyage was explosives and ammunition. On the 25th May 1942, she launched the Hurricane and Pilot Officer A J Hay attacked a formation of Luftwaffe aircraft attacking the convoy. He was himself shot down in that attack. During the attack, SS Empire Lawrence was hit by a stick of bombs from the attacking Ju 88’s, and blew up immediately, with an enormous explosion. The ditched pilot was one of only a handful of survivors of the loss.

There is a first hand account of the event from the captain who picked up P O Hay, at LINK, as well as another at LINK . One of my favourite sites to search is LINK and that turns up some verbatim accounts of PQ16 as well.

From LINK ( go to 218.pdf)
The steamship Empire Lawrence was bombed and sunk by German aircraft on May 27th, 1942, off the North Cape on a voyage from Reykjavik to Murmansk. The captain, 11 crew and three gunners were lost.

Ronald Henry Swift is commemorated on panel 43 of the Tower Hill memorial in London, LINK which commemorates men and women of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets who died in both World Wars and who have no known grave.

My aunt went to Tower Hill a couple of weeks ago and located the panel to take photos. I will upload the pictures as soon as I receive them.

Popularity: 10% [?]