AnnaBell Washburn, a longtime Edgartown seasonal resident whose devotion to saving animals earned her many citations and awards, including from a U.S. president, died on August 12.
Someone was searching for a friendly black cat, missing in rural southern Vermont. Someone who had never been to the Vineyard. So how did Boxer end up in Oak Bluffs?
The Vineyard has a long history of being dog-centric. There are dogs on boats, dogs on beaches, dogs at offices. At the top of Circuit avenue there’s a shop dedicated to all things dog. And, of course, there’s the Island’s most well-known canine — the Black Dog.
A Vineyard organization devoted to spaying and neutering feral cats will be closing its feral cat shelter at the end of the year.
Laurie Huff, the founder of Cattrap Inc., said the organization will lose its lease on a barn sheltering rescued feral cats in December. Cattrap is scrambling to find homes for some of the 15 to 20 cats, now semi-feral, who call the barn home, including Holiday, a friendly calico who was found with a distended colon; Frasier, a big black cat who lived under a porch, and Misty from Katama.
A two-car collision on Tea Lane last week has raised questions about
speeding on the single-lane, two-mile-long, unpaved historic byway that
connects North and Middle Roads in Chilmark.
A pickup truck rollover in July and two pet deaths this month,
possibly due to speeders on Tea Lane, have also been reported. The
posted speed limit on the road is 15 miles per hour.
It may have been a Christmas miracle or just a lucky break, but Oak Bluffs resident Christopher Dacunto was reunited with his pet kitten Harabe over the holiday weekend under unlikely circumstances following a major car accident on the highway just outside Old Mystic, Conn.
Tuesday before Christmas, Mr. Dacunto was driving on I-95 to see his family in Hamden; in the car with him was 15-week-old Harabe, an exotic Serval-Bengal mix. He hit a snowbank and lost control of his Volvo, flipping it several times before coming to rest on the side of the road.
Summer visitors are beginning to arrive. I have a few reminders for them and for locals as well. It is important to keep your cats inside. There are several bird species that nest on or very close to the ground on the Island. Ground nests containing young birds are very vulnerable to cat predation. Adults are fair game for cats as well. You say you feed your cat well and therefore they don’t hunt. Not so! Cats have a hunting instinct and no matter how full they are, they will hunt birds. And the bell you put around the cat’s neck does not effectively warn birds of cat strikes. A bit of information from the American Bird Conservancy: “Indoor cats live an average of three to seven times longer than those that are outdoors.”
