A mystery that captured the attention of a tight-knit Bangor neighborhood this summer remains unsolved.
This past summer, Jennifer Delano, who has lived in Fairmount on Bangor’s west side for 15 years, said she noticed a string of reports of cats disappearing without a trace on the neighborhood’s Facebook page. As more cats vanished, Delano made a map of where the missing felines lived.
At least 22 cats were still missing when Delano stopped tracking the disappearances in October. However, she estimated at least 30 vanished this year in total. Of those, only one cat has returned home.
While the number of cats going missing has slowed in recent months, the disappearances sparked debates about what could be causing it. Meanwhile, posts of cats who haven’t returned home still occasionally appear on the neighborhood Facebook page and the community is no closer to an answer.
Several predators that are known to be in the area, including coyotes, fishers, foxes or even birds of prey, could be responsible for the lost cats, said Trisha Bruen, Bangor’s animal control officer.
Coyotes are “always on the suspect list,” Bruen said, especially considering several residents have reported seeing coyotes in recent months.
Delano noticed most of the cats went missing between June and October. The sudden spike led Shevenell Webb, a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, to believe wild animals that have been in the area for years wouldn’t be responsible.
“This is an unusual spike that you wouldn’t see with a natural predator,” Webb told the Bangor Daily News in August. “You’d also see some evidence because predation isn’t always clean.”
The 2,300-member Facebook page devoted to the Fairmount neighborhood is now filled with reports of residents spotting coyotes in the neighborhood and on the nearby municipal golf course. Occasionally, residents post pictures and descriptions of cats who didn’t return home while others share photos of cats they see outside, hoping to connect it to one of the missing.
An animal resembling a coyote was spotted near two local Bangor elementary schools earlier this month while students were outside for recess. All students were ushered inside immediately and no one came in contact with the animal, the school department reported at the time.
This past fall, a male fisher was hit on Union Street near Vermont Avenue and 15th Street, according to Bruen.
In September, a car struck and killed a female bobcat on Buck Street near Bass Park. While Jennifer Vashon, a game research supervisor for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, said a single bobcat likely wasn’t responsible for all the missing cats in the area, Bruen said the species “could certainly contribute to the missing cat story.”
Some residents, however, were stumped by the lack of evidence suggesting a wild animal was attacking cats. In most cases, the animals seemingly vanished without a trace, leaving owners wondering what happened to their beloved pet.
To this day, Delano remains the only missing cat owner who has closure. She found the body of one of her cats, Max, in September after a neighbor posted in the community’s Facebook page that the body of a cat matching his description was found near Delano’s home.
“At this point with Max’s remains found [and] coyote sightings and interactions, it’s definitely a coyote,” Delano said. “I also don’t think anything will be done to remove or deal with the coyote until something really bad happens.”
Regardless of what wildlife experts suspect is behind the increasing number of missing cats, all have said keeping pets inside is the best way to protect them from predators, weather or other harm.
