About a week ago, I was the unsuspecting victim of a cat burglary. It’s worth noting, and is perhaps integral to the story, that these weren’t your average cat burglars.
They didn’t take any of my jewelry, and they didn’t dip into my meager stash of waitressing tips. They weren’t wearing skintight bodysuits or patent leather heels – they weren’t even wearing masks or disguises of any kind.
You would be quite justified in wondering what features, then, could possibly define these thieves as “cat burglars.” I’ve labeled them as such because they quite literally stole my cat.
After making sure the little guy was safely tucked away and locked inside my apartment, I returned some time later to find him inexplicably missing. My initial shock never actually subsided, so I remained in hysterics while I continued to tear through my apartment, tracing and retracing my steps. I called my mom and began wailing to her, as if she could do anything to help me from two hours away.
After hanging up, I started to execute the manhunt to find Bruce Wayne, which is ironically the name of the 4-month-old kitten. I began by texting my upstairs and downstairs roommates, which led to attaining my first concrete lead.
The girl downstairs responded that our dastardly, kitten-loathing landlord had been by earlier, and that she had heard helpless mewing outside her door along with a gruff voice saying, “She knows it’s not allowed in the lease.”
Yeah, we aren’t supposed to have cats, but we’re also supposed to have 24-hour notice before our apartment is entered. Guess all parties broke a couple rules that day.
However, when I phoned my landlord and asked if anyone had been in our apartment, he denied it vehemently and suggested that my cat had somehow found his way into the walls of the house. This remark swiftly earned him an unceremonious dial tone.
In the span of four hours, I put together a two-man rescue party, which included myself, to scour the streets around my house and printed off flyers with a picture of my missing feline and my phone number. I tearfully secured the flyers to any telephone pole I could, and scattered kitten food in a trail leading back to my house.
After realizing there was nothing more I could do but wait, I resigned myself to my couch with a box of tissues and mug of tea.
Until I received a phone call that changed everything.
My upstairs roommate called, and his nonchalant words immediately saved me from the jail time I would have endured after executing some malicious prank against my landlord that I had already begun to plot.
“Hey, uh, I have your cat.”
Since he’s safe, I don’t care how it happened, but somehow my cat had wound up in the garage of my house. He had apparently learned to unlock, open, relock and close doors on his own. As if I believe that.
But with a name like Bruce Wayne and the mask-like markings of the caped crusader himself, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that he went looking for a cat burglar. It’s only too bad that he found a grumpy old landlord instead of Anne Hathaway.
