The thieves went after specific items. Day after day they roamed the neighborhood and returned home to dump their loot. Before long they had amassed an impressive collection: socks, underpants, a baby vest, gloves and more socks.
It’s not uncommon for cats to bring in dead or petrified mice and birds, but turning up with random objects is harder to explain. Researchers suspect a number of causes, but tend to agree on one point: the stolen items are not gifts.
“We’re not sure why cats behave this way,” says Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a museum in Leiden. “There are cats all over the world that do this, but it’s never been studied.” He now hopes that will change.
The clothing crimes committed this year by a mother and her two offspring in the small town of Frigiliana in Spain have made interactions between the neighbors somewhat awkward for their warden, Rachel Womack. But for scientists like Hiemstra, it provided new impetus to study the animals. “I want to know exactly why they do it,” he says. “And documenting cases like this could be the start of more research in the future.”
Hiemstra heard about the klepto cats from Dutch visual artist Anne Geene, a friend of Womack’s who mentioned the cats’ antics. Intrigued, Geene flew to Spain to photograph the draw for a book, Low hanging fruit. Hiemstra, what the contested terrain where animals and humans clash, wrote an introduction, noting: “This is their collection, their criminal record. But why would a cat collect such trophies?”
More pressing for Womack is how to return the stolen goods. Daisy, Dora and Manchita can bring in over 100 items per month. One recent arrival was a small stuffed bear. Before that, a baby’s shoe. Returning the items, without knowing the rightful owners, is not easy. “She’s just annoyed,” says Geene. “There are so many that she doesn’t know how to return them.”
The Frigiliana trio are repeat offenders, but they’re not the only cats being buzzed. Charlie, a rescue cat from Bristol, was baptized most prolific cat burglar in Britain after bringing home plastic toys, clothespins, a rubber duck, glasses and cutlery. His owner, Alice Bigge, once woke up to a plastic diplodocus, one of many grabbed from a nearby nursery, next to her head on the pillow. It reminded her of the infamous scene in The Godfather. She puts the items on a wall outside for owners to reclaim.
Another cat, Dusty from San Mateo, California, had more than 600 known thefts and once returned with 11 items in one night. His transportation included Crocs, a baseball cap and a pair of swimming trunks. The bra found in the house was luckily seen on a video of Dusty coming in. In a feat of accidental social commentary, another cat, Cleo from Texas, came home with a computer mouse.
Hiemstra and Dr Claudia Vinke, a behavioral biologist at the University of Utrecht, brainstormed a few managers who could feed the cats’ antics. They may be looking for attention or want to play; to expand their searching and hunting behavior, just as cats bring animals to the house; or want to remove particularly smelly items, such as worn socks, or freshly washed socks that smell of detergent, from patches of soil.
Cats have small stomachs and tend to bring prey to the center of their territory to feed when they are hungry. The same instinct may lead them to bring objects home where the response they receive encourages the habit. “If you pay attention to the cat, you reinforce the behavior,” says Vinke.
Dennis Turner, a private faculty member at the University of Zurich, believes attention is key, but adds that cats are attracted to some wool and plastic items because they contain lanolin. To break the habit, he recommends leaving the room quietly when the cat drags something in, and throwing the object out when it has moved on.
“Animals, including humans, respond to very simple stimuli,” says Daniel Mills, a professor of veterinary behavioral medicine at the University of Lincoln. “Something blowing in the wind can trigger hunting behavior. After ‘catching’ some strange items, cats may decide to bring them back. I don’t think they think of them as gifts. These are the simple rules of life by which the cat brain works.”
Jemma Forman, a doctoral researcher at the University of Sussex who studied cats playing fetch, agree that the pets do not come bearing gifts. She says, “When it comes to cats, the explanation is usually that they’re doing it for themselves.”