cats

On commuter rail to Worcester this morning.

Looking out the window.

Earlier:
Furor on the Red Line over Strollercat.

Meghan M. spotted a pair of cats by the South Station tracks today, wonders "Why are there a bunch of homeless cats hanging around the tracks?"

Earlier:
Remember Kenmore the Kitten?

Calamity Shazaam reports from Columbus and Northampton in the Lower Roxbury/South End area that her neighbor and a couple of other folks responding to plaintive meowing from a storm drain this morning to find a cat under the grate:

Apparently they had to pry open the grate to get the cat out. At which point the cat hopped into my friends arms and that was that.

It's a very clean, VERY friendly kitty - maybe 6 months old?

She has him safe and sound, but kitty probably is missing Mommy or Daddy.

If kitty looks familiar, write calamityshazaam [at] gmail.com.

Concord Town Meeting voted last year not to regulate cats, but proponents of cat herding go before Town Meeting again this year.

And thanks to the Animal Rescue League of Boston, the answer will continue to be "no." Just ask Tommy the Dorchester Cat:

Neil the roving UHub commuter e-mails this account:

Robby snapped this photo of a cat on the Red Line this evening. A cat in a stroller. A big-ass stroller, apparently. He tweeted:

What's wrong with this picture? Many things ...

Another commuter, AH, also took to Twitter, around 6:20 p.m. and was more specific:

Lady with a cat in full-sized/meant for children stroller preventing me and 8 other saps from going on T. #wtf #catbitch #mbta

Ah, but the cat owner tweets, too. In fact, Coco Koh has blogged about her adventures on the T with Jacoby the Abyssinian. So she tweeted right back:

FYI snippy woman on the Red Line: cats (& dogs) ARE allowed on #mbta as long as they're properly contained!!!

MzKeating chimed in:

[H]ave you ever tried to get a cat to walk on a leash?

Robby answered:

No, that sounds ridiculous. That was her rationale as well, along with cat does not like the escalator. ... Let's recap, cat, stroller, peak hours, capacity train. No, still not reasonable. Thing was gigantic.

Keep up to the minute by doing a Twitter search on #strollercat.

R.S.Y Buchanan spotted this sidewalk memorial on Beacon Street in Somerville yesterday:

I'm not sure why this particular cat merits a sidewalk shrine, but as a cat lover I feel their pain.

A report on a cat on Cape Ann that survived getting chomped by a coyote. Complete with photo of the tooth hole the coyote left behind in the cat's head.

Hillary, who took this photo, has another suggestion:

Dear sir, perhaps you should ask your cat to be less friendly.

Posted under this Creative Commons license and in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Jason Scott's cat, Sockington, has the sort of Twitter following marketers would kill for. Well, not literally. That we know of. In any case, Scott reports some company offered to pay him for tweets on the feed. He explains why he turned the offer down.

Birds will just have to fend for themselves, Town Meeting decides (but recall it took four tries to get a ban on plastic water bottles).

The Animal Rescue League of Boston to the, well, rescue.

Channel 4 reports.

The Globe reports on cat regulations proposed by a resident tired of being "a victim in my own yard to terrorist cats that kill everything in sight."

Susan B. asks:

My New Year's resolution: finally adopt kittens. Any suggestions on shelters?

The Brookline Health Department is warning residents to stay away from wild animals after a raccoon suspected of having rabies attacked a north Brookline resident's pet in daylight hours - a few weeks after a rabid raccoon was picked up in Jamaica Plain.

Two bats captured in Brookline also recently tested positive for rabies.

UPDATE: Judge set bail at $750, declined request by Suffolk County DA's office to revoke his bail on the earlier drug charge.

Boston Police report officers responding to a call about a man throwing kittens out a second-floor window at 102 Blue Hill Ave. in Roxbury early this morning found a man witnesses said was throwing kittens out the window.

Police say officers found two kittens and that a city animal inspector said they were OK.

Earlier this year, the man charged with tossing the kittens, Thomas Gonzales, 47, was arrested on drug-distribution charges just hours before Mayor Menino stood in front of 102 Blue Hill Ave. to declare it one of the most troubled properties in the city and the target of a city task force aimed at cleaning up such places. Between May, 2010 and July, 2011, police responded more than 100 times to calls related to the triple decker.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today upheld the animal-cruelty law used to send Luigi Epifania of East Boston away for 2 1/2 years.

Epifania had appealed his sentence for his 2007 flaming-cat tossing by arguing the cat didn't belong to anybody in particular and so was not covered by the state law, which only covers animals owned by "another person."

Channel 5 has several photos of a kitten at the top of a utility pole on Munroe Street, where it had climbed to escape a dog. The Animal Rescue League sent somebody there today to try to get the cat down.

The Boston Public Health Commission reports a cat in the Mascot Street area tested positive for the potentially fatal disease.

In addition to the six people now receiving shots, the commission urges anybody who came into contact with a roughly 10-year-old orange cat there between Oct. 2 and 17 - or whose own pet tangled with the cat - to call 617-534-5611.

Public health officials say the case shows the importance of updating pet rabies shots - and of avoiding contact with wild animals:

Avoid any animal that is acting strange or sick. Do not keep wild animals as pets, touch, or pick up any dead animal. Do not attract wild animals to your house by feeding pets outside or leaving garbage cans open.

For more information about rabies, contact the Infectious Disease Bureau at 617-534-5611.

The Animal Rescue League of Boston reports a technician was summoned to Lynn this afternoon on a report of a kitten with its head stuck in a tire rim. Workers at a local animal hospital disengaged cat from wheel without any apparent damage to either, the ARL reports.

Peaches and Dr. Martha Smith

A Dorchester kitten is recuperating at a veterinarian's home from serious wounds caused when she got entangled in the fan belt of her owner's car when the woman started the engine not knowing the young cat had crawled into the engine compartment for warmth.

Here's why you never see a cat skeleton up a tree: The Animal Rescue League gets them down first. Here we see a technician saving Brisket, Jeff and Gretchen's cat, who'd been up a tree in Hingham for 26 hours:

Channel 4 reports.