Cat Thief

As if I needed another reason to dislike cats. Here comes Jack the Thief.

This world seems to be split, black or white, no grey, when it comes to certain things.

Coke or Pepsi?

Democrat or Republican?

Boxers or briefs?

Cats or dogs?

I never liked cats. Mainly because I don't trust them. Cats are the one animal on this planet that can, at the same time, make me paranoid, give me an inferiority complex, and cause me to sneeze and make my eyes water.

I'm allergic to cats, physically, and afraid of them emotionally.

I distrust any pet that gives off an air that they could survive just fine whether you were there or not. My dad didn't like cats either. I remember him telling me why, back in the day.

"They always look like they're up to something," my dad said. "They sneak around."

They do. And they're arrogant. They come and go out of the house as they please, sometimes disappearing for hours. Then they saunter back in, as if daring you to ask them where they've been.

Well, Jack the Thief really WAS up to something.

In Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, Jack, a one-year old cat, has been, for months, pilfering other people's clothing at night. You heard me.

"I don't know how to stop him," his owner, a sweet old lady, told the local news in this video. "I heard that there's a lady who charges $60 an hour to talk to your cat. Maybe we should hire her to talk to Jack.

"It's his fetish," the owner added.

In the video, there's a clothesline strung, and it's occupied from end-to-end with various items of clothing: socks, gloves, a pair of man's underwear, scarves, etc.

Jack apparently commits these crimes at night.

"He's so cat-like," the owner said, and she didn't appear to be joking or sarcastic.

Where Jack gets these clothing items, I have no idea, except that they're obviously from within the neighborhood.

There's even a handmade sign attached to the clothesline.

THESE ITEMS WERE BROUGHT HERE BY MY CAT. IF YOU SEE ANYTHING THAT'S YOURS, PLEASE LET ME KNOW

Joking? I couldn't make this up if I tried, bunky, and I've been writing fictional stories for decades.

The crime spree doesn't end with the clothes stealing. Like many petty criminals, Jack has moved on to bolder and more violent crimes.

"Well, I'd rather he didn't kill birds," Jack's owner says. "But that's his thing."

Jack the Thief is now Jack the Bird Killer. Of course, killing birds is more "cat-like", truthfully. Much more so than snatching skivvies from the neighbors.

Cats. They're plotting. They're sneaking around. They leave and are gone for hours. Now, they're stealing.

I was RIGHT!

Comments

Post a Comment

As you will...

Popular posts from this blog

Life, Interrupted

Image
I don't take in late night television too much anymore, which actually follows a pattern I have throughout the rest of the day. If it's not sports, or a special about the JFK assassination, I pretty much don't watch it. But I happened upon the David Letterman show a few years ago---I remember this distinctly---and I was taken by the bubbly, perky young woman chatting up Dave to the audience's, and Dave's, bemusement. She was breezy without appearing loaded. Engaging without being ditzy. She just seemed like a lot of fun; there was nothing bimbo about her. It wasn't very long after that when I caught her in a movie with Ashton Kutcher, a comedy called "Just Married." She was terrific in it. That's how I remember Brittany Murphy. Murphy, who died suddenly at age 32 yesterday in California, wasn't typically mentioned when the discussion turned to America's finest young actors. She had her moments, though. There was her turn in "8 Mile,&qu
Read more

Del--icious?

Image
Another taco place is opening up near me and suddenly it's 1979 again. Taco Bell was a mostly unexplored food experience for me and my friends when word got out that they were constructing one on Merriman Road in Livonia, just north of Plymouth Road. We'd been, but always via car, somewhere else, and on precious few occasions. But this new one would be only a nice, worth-it bike's ride away from our houses. So it opens, and if we didn't go on the first day, it was pretty darn close to it. My friends were amazed at how much Taco Bell I could consume. Kind of like today, when my wife and daughter are amazed at how much Taco Bell I can consume. Still. It's a great bang-for-the-buck, really. You gotta love any fast food place anymore that has items on its menu for under a dollar. We wore out that new Taco Bell for a period of time, enamored with its newness and novelty status. And I typically ordered the most food. Back then, I could probably gorge myself for about thre
Read more

Murder in the Backyard

Image
Twenty-four years ago, I read a book and it scared me half to death. That's what'll happen, when you read about gruesome murders that took place right in your own backyard. The book was titled "Michigan Murders," by Edward Keyes, and it chronicled---sometimes in gory detail---the killing spree of one John Norman Collins in and around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti in the late-1960s. Collins, who's still in prison up in Marquette, was only convicted of one of the murders---that of Karen Sue Beineman---but it's widely believed that Collins was responsible for the deaths of up to six girls, mostly college students from Eastern Michigan University. What made the book so stark in its reality was that I was foolish enough to read it while attending EMU, in my senior year. Many of the events took place in Ypsilanti, near the EMU campus, and Keyes describes them in detail---sometimes with addresses---so it was damn near impossible not to get the creeps reading it, consideri
Read more