I'm just trying to beat out a rough synopsis, real time:

An island for gifted or extraordinary animals. Maybe there is a school for training familiars for wizardly types of people. A drop off point for 'sacred' animals with no place to go. Maybe it would be cooler to have as little human interaction as possible? Maybe some of the animals are capable of (at least ) limited speech or telepathy..empathy..

Just thought something like that might be cool but since you're here..wazZah? XD