47 birds and 1 cat die in the same neighborhood, and no one knows why

For nine years, Sally B the cat scratched at her door early in the morning, her signal to be let out, her owner said. On Thursday, after the familiar morning ritual, her caretakers found the cat clinging to life on the back porch while dead birds rained from the sky, said Willien Pugh.

“My sister fed her. Then like at 8:30 she came to the door and told me Sally was laying there at the back door, and that was it,” she said. “Nobody knows who did it or nothing.”

Lt. Alan Borgal with the Animal Rescue League of Boston said one of the cat’s owners called police and he arrived to find not just a seriously ill cat, but dozens of birds dead or dying.

City officials say 47 grackles were found Thursday in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood.

“These birds were literally falling out of the trees and the fences and stuff,” Borgal said. “We were just catching them so they didn’t hit the ground. It was all around this complex here. And we’ve seen a lot of small birds and they seem fine. It’s all grackles.”

Pugh gave the cat to Borgal, who ran it back to their staff veterinarian as quickly as possible, but it was too late.

Now, he said, vets will look at the cat, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will take a look at some of the dead birds.

Borgal, working with the city Inspectional Services Department, determined that no one in the area was permitted to have poisons. Currently, the cause of the deaths is a mystery.

The birds that died will be sent to Tufts University for testing.

“The cat is an indoor-outdoor cat, so if it picked up a bird ...,” Borgal said. “All we know is this is some sort of environmental event. We don’t know if it’s disease-driven. We don’t know if somebody put out too much poison.”

Pugh said she’ll miss her Sally B.

“We took the cat from outside and we thought it was a girl so we named it Sally – then when we took it to the vet, we found out it was a boy, so we started calling her Sally B,” she said. “Real good cat.”

The Associated Press contributed.

This story was originally published September 9, 2016 at 11:21 AM with the headline "47 birds and 1 cat die in the same neighborhood, and no one knows why."