CAT CRIMINAL Floyd's paw-fectly wicked!

Kathy’s grabby ginger Tom is stealing hearts and bringing their community closer together

- Cloe Willetts

For people living on Kathy Gabriel’s quiet street in Levin, just north of Wellington, it’s not uncommon to find socks and t-shirts suddenly missing from clotheslines or the odd shoe taken from their back step in the dead of the night.

Thanks to Kathy’s small ginger cat Floyd, the sculptural artist wakes most mornings to find random items from her neighbours’ homes sprawled across her lounge.

“It started off with Floyd bringing in twigs and leaves when he was a kitten, but once he worked out how to use the cat flap, it was all on,” says Kathy, 53, who adopted her beloved orange cat and his brother Teddy, now 18 months, just after the first Covid lockdown last year.

“Other things started appearing in my lounge, like socks, beanies and merino thermals. Once there was even a men’s size 13 steel-cap boot! I have no idea how he dragged it over the fence.”

Kathy, who moved to Levin from Upper Hutt three years ago after a marriage breakdown, doesn’t know how her mischievous kitty manages to pinch so many goods in the night, including items that appear to come from inside people’s homes.