To Catch A Thief

In one of these blog postings I know I've written about the cartoon I once saw in 'Playboy' magazine that showed a trio of beatniks who have stopped a FINK bread truck. There are robbing the truck, but are extremely disappointed when one of them emerges through the back doors and tells the others, "Hey man, it really is bread." I don't know why, but I still laugh whenever I think of that cartoon.

And think of that cartoon I did when I read the NYT story about some thuggish customer who stole one of the rabbits from an animal shelter in East Harlem. Her name is Sunny, and there is a $1,000 reward for the return of Sunny to any one of the city's five shelters.

But within that story is also a tale of an earlier theft at the same shelter that involved a cat. It seems a woman wasn't content to learn that a cat she wanted was already slated to be adopted by someone else. So, the Persian cat named Snow was whisked off by the rejected owner. Both are still at large.

There might be those who are familiar with the Cary Grant movie, 'To Catch a Thief.' Grant plays a so-called "cat burglar," a specialist who dresses in black and sneaks across rooftops and drops into hotel rooms from the windows and filches any expensive jewelry the old dowagers have left laying about. There are certain to be old dowagers and expensive jewelry because Mr. Grant does his best work in Monte Carlo. There's way more to the story than that, but that's enough.

Andy Newman, the reporter who brings us the NYT story about Sunny the stolen rabbit, refers to the prior incident of the Persian cat theft at the shelter as "a high-end cat burglary."

Detectives from the 23rd Precinct are busy, but did catch the case.  Hey man, there really is a cat thief.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com