They say cats are capable of sensing things inaccessible to humans. Pain, anxiety, the approach of trouble. The nurses in the ward had long since ceased to be surprised—the furry guest, a gray-and-white cat with amber eyes, came to her owner every day. The elderly man had been lying there for over a month. Relatives had forgotten about him; no one wrote letters. Only the cat—his only solace—patiently stood vigil by the bed, like the guardian of his heart.

She would lie down exactly where it hurt the most—on his abdomen, where the man had old wounds and chronic inflammation. It seemed she sensed the pain better than any instrument. The doctors fed her, jokingly calling her “Nurse Murka.” Even the most gloomy patients smiled when they saw her purring and settling next to her owner, wrapping her tail around his arm.

But one day arrived that changed everything. The man was being prepared for a complex surgery. He understood—his life was at stake. Before he was taken to the operating room, he asked for only one thing: “Allow me to say goodbye to my cat.”

They allowed him. Murka habitually jumped onto the bed, snuggled against his abdomen, but suddenly… froze. Her fur stood on end. She arched her back, hissed, and began to scratch her owner’s hands, as if trying to push him away from something invisible. The doctors were perplexed—the cat had never behaved like this. But one of the nurses, Marina, noticed: the hand the animal was looking at was starting to turn blue. “Doctor! Now!” she cried out. Within seconds, the anesthesiologist and surgeon were at the bedside. An examination showed—the man had suddenly developed a blood clot (thrombus) that could break off at any moment. If the operation had begun, he would not have survived the anesthesia. Thanks to the cat, the procedure was postponed, and the clot was urgently removed. Only after this was the man operated on as planned. A few days later, already conscious, he stroked his savior, who was sitting at the foot of the bed. “You knew, didn’t you?” he whispered to her. “You felt that I was in pain…” Since then, she was known in the hospital as none other than “the cat who senses death.” But for the man himself, she was simply a friend who once saved his life—quietly, without words, in her own way.