Throughout the Auckland suburb of Glenfield, shoes have been going missing — big ones, lefts and rights, even Crocs.
And as Lucas de Jong discovered, the finger can be firmly pointed at one very small purr-petrator.
Daniel Eades isn’t mucking around with accusations of thievery in his neighbourhood. He knows who’s behind the crime wave.
“It's taken my shoes. It's stolen my boot and a couple of jandals before.”
His boots aren’t small. “Five hundred grams each,” he said quickly, as though he’d prepared the facts for anyone questioning his story.
Because Eades is adamant he’s being robbed, almost weekly, by a cat.
“We caught him in the act,” he said with a glint in his eye.
The teen can see the funny side of the situation — although his mum may not. Hiking boots are expensive, after all.
Caught on camera
Next door, Mike Frecklington has the evidence to back up Eades' story.
“[I] went to go for a run, and I normally leave my shoes outside. [I] went for a look, and they were gone.”
His first reaction was to question his sanity before realising he had a security camera.
In the monotone glow of night vision, you can make out the shape of a black cat.
It eyes his size 10 runner and then stumbles away with it in his mouth.
“I wasn't expecting to see a cat taking my shoes.”
And then, in an act of sheer dominance, it returns 45 minutes later and passes over much smaller shoes to take Frecklington’s other runner.
The return robber
At Wendy Yang’s house, it’s a similar story.
“One of my shoes disappeared! I was shocked.”
Her left pink jandal went missing from the front doorstep, and again, CCTV provided the answers.
The biggest question was who owned the cat, but it solved itself when a post appeared in her Facebook feed.
“Our mischievous cat has been on a stealing spree. Do these shoes belong to anyone?”
There was Yang’s pink jandal — with a few added teeth marks for good measure.
She requested the jandal be dropped in her letterbox and, upon receiving it, considered the case closed. Instead, the klepto-cat returned that night to acquire its loot for the second time.
The victims were stacking up — as was the evidence.
Meet Zuma
Down a long driveway, in a home surrounded by victims, you’ll find Zuma, the famous thief of Glenfield.
“Aside from the stealing, he's not a very exciting cat. He eats, he annoys us, and then he goes out at night and steals,” said Zuma's owner Kimberley Rees.
She’s as apologetic as she is embarrassed about her active one-year-old who has devoted his life to crime.
“I think on his worst night, we had five shoes. I found three around the house, and then on the drive, I found another two.”
What started as an attraction to left shoes quickly developed into more.
“Then he started bringing home the right shoes. It's like he's trying to match them up and find the pairs.”
Now she has a washing basket overflowing with nibbled-on shoes.
Her efforts are now directed at returning the shoes to those around her, but it isn’t proving easy.
With no way of knowing how far her boy is roaming, she’s dropped flyers and left the basket on various streets with a sign explaining the underhanded activity.
Her Facebook posts are often met with humorous responses: “The klepto-cat is the content I need!”, “I love this guy so much!” and “It’s impossible to be mad when it’s this funny.”
Rees is glad the crime wave is creating smiles around the area, but she’d also love not to have a house full of shoes.
“If he's not going to give it up and no one’s claiming them, maybe we teach him to go for the newer shoes in my size,” she laughed.
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