Things pets have stolen

[Mouse_Maven]

Over the past few weeks, one of our cats has taken up kleptomania as a hobby.

Astrix has stolen:
Pens
Q-tips
A knitting needle
Mouse_Spouse's wedding ring
My cell phone
A pair of my panties
Bookmarks - many are still missing.

Most of these objects are dropped in his food bowl or we catch him in the act and take them away.

Once, I lived with a housemate who's cat was a notorious sock thief. She would take socks and make a nest out of them, usually under the housemate's bed.

While working at an animal shelter, we had a dog that would try to take hats. He wasn't agressive, but having a 50 pound lab mix jump for your head was disconcerting. If he got his prize, he'd run around like mad, shaking it like a rag.

Any else have crooked companions?

[panache45]

When I was a kid, our dog used to steal my mother's used tampons. I didn't know what they were, or why my mother was so frantically trying to keep the dog from running off with them.

[Beware of Doug]

At dinner at some friends' house one evening, their Abyssinian leapt up on the table and, by the time I turned around, she had my club steak in her li'l kitty jaws and was dragging it off to be leisurely devoured.

[Zsofia]

Always with the panties! My dog used to steal them from houseguests! My younger cat just takes mine. To play with.

[fishbicycle]

I've mentioned before how our first cat stole my wedding ring, and it was missing for about six months!

Not long after she arrived, our newest cat did something with my original, metal-handled Atra razor. I can't find it anywhere. They don't make them anymore, but they still make the blades, so I ended up having to buy a plastic-handled one off eBay, because the metal ones are going for stupidly high prices now.

[racer72]

My Mom had a black poodle that would steal my sister's underwear and chew out the crotch.

[SnakesCatLady]

For some reason, my cats think the nylon-coated rubber bands I use to hold my hair back are articles of currency. The fuzzies will find and hoard them, and if the level of the kibble bowl gets below an acceptable level I will find them in the food bowl. I guess I have reinforced the behavior because I am always going to fill the food bowl when I find them!

We were living in Hawaii when the late Gweniever came to live with us. Gwen was a change thief. If she found change it went on the floor, where she would sweep it under the not-quite-wall-to-wall carpet in the living room. After three years in military housing there was close to $30 in change under that carpet when we took it up to move.

[Bobotheoptimist]

I also have a funny story about a pet that would steal things, but I'll be damned if I can remember it right now.

[supergoose]

One of our cats likes to steal beans or snap peas that are accidentally dropped on the floor, pieces of plastic that have been thrown in the trash can, the mesh sieve-type thing in the bathtub drain (we find it all over the house), and once, an old tube of Desitin. She also once took a piece of lettuce from a salad bowl my mother was adding ingredients to and ran off with it.

Aside from the lettuce, we rarely catch her in the act. We usually either find her playing with it or she gives it to someone to toss for her so she can play fetch.

[StGermain]

My late doberman Simon liked to steal white things - socks, paper, almost anything. And he'd take it to his treasure trove, which was a corner of the yard.

StG

[Santo Rugger]

Originally Posted by Bobotheoptimist

I also have a funny story about a pet that would steal things, but I'll be damned if I can remember it right now.

Did it end up being part Maui-Wowaui, part Labrador?

[Terrifel]

Ferrets.









FERRETS.

[SmartAleq]

Yes indeed, ferrets. FERRETS!

We had two ferrets and a waterbed. When we moved and disassembled the waterbed (it was a queensize--there were two rectangular structures underneath that had drawers in them, with about a foot wide channel in between. At the foot of the bed there was a piece of wood that hid the space between but no such piece at the top, under the headboard--we didn't really think of this when we got the ferrets...) we found in the channel under the bed about thirty sponges, a couple of key rings, quite a few socks, some kid toys, a couple of paperback books ( each of these had to weigh almost as much as a ferret!) and the piece de resistance--ten or twelve insoles from our athletic shoes. I kept wondering where the hell those went!

I never have been able to figure out how in hell they got up onto the kitchen counters to get all those damned sponges!

[Ms. Pumpkin]

Also classified under Things I find Under the Couch

pens
elastics
tampons
those plastic rings from milk jugs; they steal 'em out of the trash
lighters
earplugs

Yesterday I had a bowl of strawberries on the kitchen table, and I watched my big, tough(he thinks), tomcat *ever* so daintily pick one up by the stem, in his teeth, and carry it away. Then he came back and did it again, as I just stood there giggling at him.

[Marlitharn]

I had a ferret when I was a kid. He specialized in shoes. I had a friend over to spend the night once and I forgot to warn her not to leave her shoes in the hallway.

We never found them.

We did find my stepmother's glasses (in their case), a large hoard of dry dog food, my shoes, some small tupperware bowls, some socks, keyrings, sponges, magazines, plastic cups...

[Paintcharge]

I took in a stray cat in college, he had gotten into something nasty and had an eye infection. So, we took him to the vet and got eye drops. Now, he hated the eye drops. He stole the little dropper bottle off the counter and hid. So, I dutifully went back to the vet and got him another bottle. Hid that one too. He also hid the little dropper bottle of cassette head cleaner because it looked like the eye drop bottle.

Clever cat.

[ScareyFaerie]

Shadow likes socks, but he doesn't like mine very much, it's only 'im indoors who is a victim of the sock thief. We've found them all round the house, especially behind the sofa and also in the corner of the shower-room.

Ophelia only ever steals one thing. It's an old elasticated support bandage I had a long while ago when I damaged a couple of bones in my foot. When I'd finished with it, I left it on a chair in the bedroom. She took it away and has since then dragged it all over the house with her. I was going to throw it away once I'd done with it, but she seems to have become rather attached to it. This morning she was half-way down the stairs having a fight with it.

[monica]

When my dog was a puppy, she used to steal hair scrunchies to play with. She also likes to steal underwear. Once, when we were having a dinner party, we put a tray a vegetables on our coffee table- when we turned around, there she was, delicately eating the veggies! She also has stolen gum before, and once took my brother's orange paintballs (we have a white dog.)

[Spit]

Originally Posted by Marlitharn

I had a ferret when I was a kid. He specialized in shoes. I had a friend over to spend the night once and I forgot to warn her not to leave her shoes in the hallway.

We never found them.

We did find my stepmother's glasses (in their case), a large hoard of dry dog food, my shoes, some small tupperware bowls, some socks, keyrings, sponges, magazines, plastic cups...

I have two. I love 'em to death, but they are a pain in the ass sometimes. A sampling of what I have found underneath (and inside of the box spring) of my bed:

Keys
Wallet (MIA)
Remotes (1 MIA)
Condoms
random pieces of trash
shoes
socks
panties
Bras
silverware
video game controllers
watches
1/8 oz of green organic material in a bag (MIA)
Pet Semetary by Stephen King (Odd, that one)
A golf club (I'm not kidding)
A computer mouse, and later a keyboard
$7 in loose change
Sunglasses
Hats
Not content with "random trash"- at one point they had the kitchen trash can wedged underneath the bed.


...and many, many more.


Last night one of them attempted to steal the studded collar off of my SO's German Shepard's neck.

[Anaamika]

Originally Posted by Bobotheoptimist

I also have a funny story about a pet that would steal things, but I'll be damned if I can remember it right now.

I guess he stole your memory?

[Antigen]

My hair elastics. The skinny ones and the fat "scrunchies" disappear on a regular basis and I keep having to buy new ones. I'm sure that if I move the fridge I'd find a few dozen, but I don't have the energy. He wins, I'll just buy more.

[cowgirl]

The only thing my dog ever stole was my Diva cup. I briefly left it on the rim of the bathtub and when I came back it was gone.

Ugh.

It turned up again a month later. No, I didn't use it.

[Savannah]

Originally Posted by Antigen

My hair elastics. The skinny ones and the fat "scrunchies" disappear on a regular basis and I keep having to buy new ones. I'm sure that if I move the fridge I'd find a few dozen, but I don't have the energy. He wins, I'll just buy more.

Our dog Clover takes those too--right out of my hair if she can. I pull back my hair with a scrunchie for bed, and when the lights go out, I feel tug--tug--tug--tug and she has it.

She's done that ever since she was a wee puppy.

[LouisB]

Our little dog steals my shoes and Marcie's underwear. He never chews these things; he takes them to his bed/toy box and leaves them there.

[norinew]

Well, not a pet, exactly; but certainly the most amusing piece of animal thievery I've ever witnessed: Over Christmas, we were vacationing in Colonial Williamsburg, VA. It was amazingly mild for that time of year. We had lunch one day at a Colonial tavern, and as it was very crowded inside, decided to eat in the garden out back. They had tables, surrounded by trellises. There was also a table up front with all the condiments you might need for your burgers and such.

As you can imagine, the squirrels love the garden dining area, because people are always dropping bits of food on the ground that the squirrels can steal. Well, we were sitting there, eating, when a squirrel ran across the trellis, very deliberately ran down to the condiments table at the front, surveyed the packets of condiments, picked up (again seemingly deliberately) one packet of mayo, and ran back up the trellis, clutching it tightly. Hubby got a great photo of the beast holding possessively to the mayo packet!

[ZipperJJ]

fishbicycle - why don't you tell about the cat and the wedding ring again??

My dog isn't very good at hiding things...but she likes to steal hats off heads (she is a large retriever). I wear a do-rag when I work out and when I come home the first thing she does when I sit down is climb up on me and remove my "hat."

Also, every time we go to leave the house she has to pick up a shoe and take it to the door with her, so I have to grab the shoe and toss it through the pass-through in the kitchen as I let her out the door, lest I have a garage full of shoes.

She also likes to steal underwear from my hamper (by opening the lid!) and present it to guests. I have to close my bedroom door when people come over because it seriously squicks us all out.

[Muffin]

Little Buddy stole my heart.

[fishbicycle]

OK. When we were first married, I wasn't used to wearing a ring, so when I came home from work, I'd take it off and put it on my computer desk. One day I got up to go to work, and I couldn't find it. We looked everywhere, for weeks and weeks and it was just gone. About six months had passed with no ring, and one day I was walking to the kitchen, when I saw something gleaming out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, and there was my ring!

The cat played this game where he'd pick things up in his mouth, and carry them over to the bookshelf (open design on four posts), drop them behind it, and then try to bat them out from underneath the bottom shelf with his paw. He'd done this with my ring, except it got wedged between the back rim of the bottom shelf and the wall. So it sat there for half a year, until I spied it by accident one day. I haven't taken it off since then!

[Aangelica]

Pens.

Our cats are fiends for pen-theft.

It's gotten to where we have to leave pens (and all other writing utensils) either inside totally closed drawers at least 3 feet off the floor (or with solid backing with no cracks) or in other, similarly inaccessible locations (like attached to a list pad on the front of the freezer door at people-eye-level) or they Mysteriously Disappear (tm).

Also found missing (and later found in the company of one or more cat):

my panties
my husband's socks (but never mine)
bracelets
straws
milk rings
those clear plastic rings around the tops of Snapple bottles (the boy-cat will fish those out of the trash in order to play with them)

The single weirdest one, though, was the cards.

My husband and I play Magic The Gathering - which (for those of you not so cursed) is a collectible strategy card game. The "collectible" bit means that we have thousands upon thousands of cards in our home. These are generally stored in 5,000 count boxes (big, square, white boxes with internal dividers allowing for 5 rows of 1,000 each in them). We have half a dozen or so of those boxes (as well as assorted 3-ring binders).

Once, after a long period of card organization (and keeping them organized is a non-trivial task, let me tell you), we retreated to the basement and left the lid off one of our boxes, which had the best part of 5,000 cards in it. The cards are about the same dimensions as standard playing cards - and packed about as tightly as you'd find 52 cards in a standard card box.

Some time later, I came back upstairs to get a drink only to find our boy-cat sitting on the box, industriously extracting one card at a time from the box and flipping it onto the carpet - without using his claws for leverage. He had 40 or 50 cards in a little pile beside the box and 50 or 60 more in a state of partial extraction (i.e., mostly pulled out of the box, but not quite fully-extracted for flipping yet.

I spent almost a full minute watching him oh-so-slowly tease a single card up out of the row, then when it was 3/4 of the way up, grab it between his paws and flip it onto the carpet. I was almost to stunned to yell at him. Almost. The little shit. It took me damn near an hour to restore organization.

[cher3]

Not up there with the cats and the ferrets, but we had a poodle when I was a kid who disappeared an entire bowl of those black and orange-wrapped peanut butter taffy things you used to get at Halloween. My mother was afraid she was going to get sick, because there weren't even any scraps of wrapper to be found. It turned out the dog had carefully hidden all of them, each in a separate place--behind sofa cushions, under the couches, in corners. We couldn't say for sure that she'd eaten a single one, but apparently she had long term plans.

[SnakesCatLady]

This one wasn't a pet, either, but another thieving creature - a bird. My husband and I were visiting Kennedy Space Center, and had taken the bus out to the observation gantry where you could see the shuttle waiting for launch. (Fascinating trip - I highly recommend it). There was a snack bar at the gantry so we decided to get lunch and were horrified to discover a hot dog, chips and a soda cost over $6! Well, when you're hungry... . I had picked up more relish packets than I needed, so I got up to return the unused ones to the bin. While I was gone, before Mr. SCL could do anything but stare, a bird swooped in and stole my hot dog! Bun, weenie and all! I was furious!

A few weeks later AP circulated a picture of the Shuttle striking a bird during launch. I felt slightly vindicated.

[Bobotheoptimist]

Originally Posted by Anaamika

I guess he stole your memory?

Who?

Our American Eskimo adores stuffed animals, especially the kids favorite (whatever it might be at the time). Maybe she despises stuffed animals - they rarely survive her attentions.

I once caught our lab mix trying to sneak down the stairs with a cup in her mouth. One of the kids was drinking a bright red fruit punch type thing in the kitchen and left it unattended. The dog carefully took the rim of the cup in her front teeth and made it through several rooms and down the stairs on her way to the doggy-door without spilling a drop. With cunning and foresight, as soon as the dog got off the wood and on the beige carpet, I yelled at her Dropped the cup and spilled bright red fruit punch stuff all over.

[lieu]

Our cat will lift the Chinese Checker pieces out of the board with her mouth, bat them around, do the "front paws lifting throw" thingy and then swat them around until they're against the wall under the heaviest piece of furniture.

Then she'll go get another.

[Muffin]

lieu, I have to admit that I was a bit nervous about reading a post by you describing what you cat has stolen. Turns out my fears were not justified.

[cowgirl]

A friend of mine told me about a raccoon he lived with (it had been rescued from a dog attack by his soft-hearted girlfriend).

It seems that the raccoon really loved weed. He would deftly sneak it out of people's pockets and bags when they came to visit.

Eventually his friends stopped coming over.

[Muffin]

Originally Posted by cowgirl

A friend of mine told me about a raccoon he lived with (it had been rescued from a dog attack by his soft-hearted girlfriend).

It seems that the raccoon really loved weed. He would deftly sneak it out of people's pockets and bags when they came to visit.

Eventually his friends stopped coming over.

Just another narc disguised as a bandit with an eye mask. The RCMP employs a lot of racoons for this: http://www.ocanadagear.com/stuffed-rcmp-mini.htm .

[Mouse_Maven]

Panties are a popular target! I understand the lots of crotch-smelling goodness aspect of it, but why the gender preference? Are panties easier to carry? Do women smell better?

When I was a teenager, we had a cat that loved to steal my (unused) sanitary napkins! Once, much to my horror, she carried a pad into the living room - in front of guests - and started to tear it apart! I wanted to just die right there.

[lieu]

Woah, now that's a scratch pad.

[Q.N. Jones]

My friend has a dog that loves bras. New, old, clean, dirty--doesn't matter. He just loves bras. He learned how to open her dresser drawer to get them out. When I last visited her, the dog managed to unzip my suitcase to steal mine. We call him The Cross-Dressing Lab.

[Little Bird]

My cats stole greenies for my dog.

We had just purchased a new pack of Greenies, the regular size, and put it on top of the microwave to remind us to give one to the Lucy now and then. After a few days it seemed the greenies were disappearing a little quicker than they should, but I didn’t really think about it.

That is, until I noticed a plastic-bag crinkle coming from the kitchen one day. I walk in to see Lucy waiting patiently under the microwave and my cats digging around in the greenies bag--yanking them out and chowing down. I assume once they got tired of gnawing on them they would toss them to the dog who vacuumed them up. No wonder they were going so fast!

From then on all treats, be they for kitties or puppies, lived in the cabinet.

[Mouse_Maven]

Originally Posted by Mouse_Maven

Over the past few weeks, one of our cats has taken up kleptomania as a hobby.

Astrix has stolen:
Pens
Q-tips
A knitting needle
Mouse_Spouse's wedding ring
My cell phone
A pair of my panties
Bookmarks - many are still missing.

Another theft: My MP3 player.

Crazy cat!

ETA: And a book of stamps off of the desk while I was typing this post. What are you on, Astrix? I'd give him cat nip, but it doesn't mellow him out. Our little orange fur ball is a mean drunk.

[SnakesCatLady]

Originally Posted by Mouse_Maven

Another theft: My MP3 player.

Crazy cat!

ETA: And a book of stamps off of the desk while I was typing this post. What are you on, Astrix? I'd give him cat nip, but it doesn't mellow him out. Our little orange fur ball is a mean drunk.

Now you have to lock up the computer so he doesn't do any illegal music downloads!