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 his stolen loot.
She has even set up a shelf on her outside wall where she leaves the bizarre items he 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 a thief 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 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 kid’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!”
