Cat Burglar

I was walking back from the laundry room late last Saturday when our new security guard approached me. He started a conversation, telling me that "we've had some troubles at our complex lately" and that "I should try to be aware of my surroundings". I assumed (who wouldn't?) he was trying to hit on me, because I'm THAT hot, but just to humor him I asked him what kind of trouble we'd been having. He says that there have been some break-ins. Nothing of value stolen. Just a few things out of place.

Crap. I thanked him and scurried away, hoping 1) that he couldn't see how cold I was and that my ass didn't look fat in the jeans I was wearing, and 2) that he didn't notice that my jaw dropped about a mile when he told me about the break-ins. You see, I think I may know who the culprit is....

It's my CAT, Buddy...

He's taken lately to breaking and entering. My husband caught him just last week, in fact, sliding open our neighbor's screen door and entering their apartment. I'm not sure what he does in there, but I do know that he brings us chicken bones, half eaten pieces of very high quality steak, pizza, you name it. Why just last week he even brought me an ice cream cone. Seriously. The ice cream was gone by the time he got it through the door, but the cone was intact. More or less. My Buddy knows how to take care of me!

We've even thought about teaching him to steal jewelry or to extract dollar bills from our neighbor's wallets. Hey, we wouldn't have thought of this before the past year, but we are living in some seriously difficult times here in California, you know?! But really, I shouldn't make light of this at all. Buddy, My Poor Buddy, is on the Wanted List, for goodness' sake! There is a poster up in the Laundry Room offering a $100 reward for information about the break-ins. He could be locked up -or worse! And (because it's always about me....) I realize that I truly have only myself to blame.

You see, I shouldn't have ignored him when he started bringing me bugs. I should have praised him when he made piles of mosquito hawks out on the porch, four piles of three bugs each, one pile for me, one for my husband, and one each for my son and his girlfriend who were up visiting. And I should have sensed that things were escalating in his creepy little mind when he started bringing home the larger prey, giant moths and butterflies and the occasional dragonfly.

I should have praised him when he brought us two baby birds in the same day and dropped them at our feet. (Except that one was not dead and started flying around the house and running into the walls.) All the Pet Psychology books say you must praise your cat when they exhibit this sort of behavior, that they are doing this because they love you and are trying to provide for you or to gain your love and approval. It would have been so simple for me just to reach down, pet him, and say "Good Boy!" But I was too busy, too self-absorbed in my own internal drama at the time to notice his.

Now it's too late. He's a crook and a criminal. A Cat Burglar. I don't know what to do. Buddy's now so deep into his Life of Crime, I feel we are living on borrowed time here at Lost Lake Apts. All I can think of is to pack up and move, to try to make a start in a new town, far, far away. Someplace where nobody knows our name.