Why did this story make me think of Tao?

Oscar the cat makes his grand entrances just as life is about to leave.

A hop onto the bed, a fastidious lick of the paws, then a snuggle
beside a nursing home patient with little time left. Oscar’s purr, when
keeping close company with the dying, is so intense it’s almost a low
rumble.

"He’s a cat with an uncanny instinct for death," said Dr.
David M. Dosa, assistant professor at the Brown University School of
Medicine and a geriatric specialist. "He attends deaths. He’s pretty
insistent on it."

In the two years since Oscar was adopted into
the third-floor dementia unit of the Steere House Nursing and
Rehabilitation Center in Providence, he has maintained close vigil over
the deaths of more than 25 patients, according to nursing staff,
doctors who treat patients in the home, and an article in tomorrow’s
New England Journal of Medicine, written by Dosa.

When death is
near, Oscar nearly always appears at the last hour or so. Yet he shows
no special interest in patients who are simply in poor shape, or even
patients who may be dying but who still have a few days. Animal
behavior experts have no explanation for Oscar’s ability to sense
imminent death. They theorize that he might detect some subtle change
in metabolism — felines are as acutely sensitive to smells as dogs —
but are stumped as to why he would show interest.

     Maybe it makes me think of Tao because it shows how some beings, in this case the cat, have access to certain elements of Tao, in this case the transition of human life and death, that other beings, in this case people, do not.  It is not a matter of "knowing," but of being open to all of the possible expressions of Way.  The cat can, perhaps, smell death in ways that we can’t.  Or maybe there are other very subtle changes he picks up on.

     It brings Chuang Tzu to mind, the last passage of the first chapter, where Hui Tzu inquires about the useless tree and Chuang Tzu replies:

Haven’t you eve seen a wildcat or weasel?… It crouches low, hiding, waiting.  Suddenly it springs up and bounds east and west, uphill and down, centering its trap, and finally it makes the kill there in its net…

     He compares the wildcat to an ox, which cannot even catch a mouse but which has certain advantages of immensity.  The point here is that each element of Way has its own unique experience and place in the vastness of Way.  Only by recognizing the uniqueness of each thing  (could we call this  te – Integrity?) will we begin to apprehend the possibilities of the useless tree and the fullness of Way. 

      We cannot, then, simply rely upon human science to define and explain human death.  Our gaze must open up to include more of Way.  The cat can show us how to follow Way and learn something more about our own mortality.