‘KLEPTO CAT’ CHARLIE STEALS EVERYTHING – FROM SKATEBOARDS TO DINOSAURS

Source: WalesOnline (Extract)
Posted: March 26, 2022

Meet Britain’s most prolific cat burglar – a cheeky feline that brings home stolen items including toys, cutlery, glasses – and skateboards.

Charlie – dubbed ‘Klepto Cat’ – pinches a random array of swag such as rubber ducks – and plastic dinosaurs. Owner Alice Bigge, 41, spends her time trying to reunite her one-year-old pet’s victims with the stolen loot, as reported by BristolLive.

She has even set up a shelf on her outside wall where she leaves the bizarre items the cat brings home. A sign says: ”Our cat Charlie likes taking things, do any of these things belong to you? If they do please help yourself!”

Alice, of Bristol, first realised her cat was an avid collector of things that didn’t belong to it when she woke up one morning and came face to face with a toy diplodocus on her pillow. Alice, who teaches A-Level film at St Brendan’s sixth form college in Brislington, said: “He’s well into clothes pegs at the moment.

“He brought back a rubber duck recently, which was quite large and I have no idea how he managed that – and got it through the cat flap. He went through a phase of coming back with those little mini-skateboards too.”

Charlie brings all of his ‘finds’ back to the Bigges – who took him and his sister Smudge in as rescue cats after they were abandoned as kittens. Alice admitted: “He wasn’t allowed out for three months or so.

”But it was almost as soon as he was allowed out that he began bringing things back. Over the course of a week or so, loads of toy dinosaurs kept appearing in the house which was really weird.

“I saw a green stegosaurus one day and wondered if one of my mate’s kids might have dropped it here. The following day, I saw a red stegosaurus – and they just kept coming!

“I woke up with a diplodocus right next to my head on my pillow – which made me think of that moment from Godfather. Charlie just sat there looking proud of himself.”

Alice says she has discovered Charlie was nabbing the toy dinosaurs from a children’s nursery at the end of her road. She said: “It turned out he’d been going there and picking them all up and bringing them back here one by one.

”He has never caught a bird or a mouse or anything like other cats do to bring back to me, he just goes off and finds whatever he can.” Her daughter Martha, 11, has now made a sign for their wall headlined ‘Klepto-Cat’.

Alice said: “I think there’s something about the quest that he enjoys. Whether it is discovering something new or just wanting to please me and bring his family a present.

“It’s so funny now that people are loving his story because we’ve been laughing about him for over a year. Whatever it is, we still love him to bits!”