While on my recent trip to Martha’s Vineyard for the celebration of life of Brandy Wight I visited many friends, including an old friend in West Tisbury. (I should probably say a longtime friend. The French handle this quite reasonably — depending on where the word old is it means either old in age or old as in longtime — une ancienne amie or une amie ancienne.) But I digress.

We had beverages and conversation and then she said she had to feed the cats before we left for dinner. We have been owned by cats and know that if the scheduled feeding is not met there may be nasty surprises upon the humans’ return.

One of the stories Brandy enjoyed telling was of visiting his Mayhew relative Lucy Vincent in Chilmark because she would ring a bell and fish would come to be fed. Coincidentally the Gazette recently ran a story about Lucy and mentioned this.

So here I am in West Tisbury and my hostess says she is turning on the sprinkler because her cats do not come to her call but appear only when she turns on the lawn sprinkler. She does, they do, we go.

Here we are, a century apart, such similarities. Sometimes happenings on the Vineyard change imperceptibly.

Pavlov is alive and well on Martha’s Vineyard!

Bruce A. Blackwell
Gainesville, Fla.