There’s a cat burglar on the loose in a Richmond suburb, and it appears it’s developed a penchant for crocs.
The four-legged thief slips in during the dead of the night - the purrfect crime.
Haycock Place resident Hannah Sangster says her family first began to notice shoes disappearing back in March.
“We got home from Christchurch where we’d been for seven weeks for my husband’s cancer treatment, the kids got brand-new Harry Potter crocs while we were there and one of them just vanished.
“We thought ‘what the heck’, we had been to Speedway and they were muddy and left outside, one was there and the other wasn’t. So we had a devastated child missing a brand-new croc, then later on that week our son’s new Gryffindor croc was in our driveway,” Hannah recalls.
“I know he leaves shoes everywhere, but not in the middle of the driveway.”
Hannah asked her neighbour, whose cat had previously brazenly nicked soft toys of her children’s bunks beds, but no shoes had arrived next door.
They had, however, also had shoes taken, and one left behind. This prompted the kids to go door knocking around the neighbourhood in search of their missing shoes.
It turns out probably five or six other people were hit, too.
“One guy had a work boot missing, but mostly crocs, because they’re light, I think.”
The second Gryffindor croc is now also missing, as are Hannah’s freshly-washed white sneakers.
It prompted her to post in a local community Facebook page, hoping shoes would’ve turned up on someone’s doorstep – but nothing.
However a resident who had recently moved in to Alfred Sheat St, just a few fences over from the Sangsters, chimed in, saying the night after they moved in a pair of crocs and a single shoe had been taken.
Since then, he has had two Adidas scuffs turn up, although as a replacement offering.
“I set up a camera and caught three different cats, but none with shoes,” he says.
“A lady on Waverley St also had a croc taken and someone on Staig St, so it’s quite big,” Hannah adds.
The purr-pertator has allegedly been caught on camera – a black and white thief slinking through the night.
With shoes disappearing before their eyes, the Sangsters decided to try and track where they were ending up.
“We got a croc that was too small, a tracking chip from the Warehouse and glued it to the bottom.”
Sure enough, the croc soon disappeared. The property it appeared to end up at hadn’t seen it, so the family ventured further round to a Cautley St.
“She wasn’t home, but she told us to come and have a look round her yard, she’s very invested.”
The croc was found over her neighbour’s fence, but no sign of the other missing shoes.
While she harbours no ill feelings toward the cat burglar, they would like to know where to retrieve their missing shoes.
“We have thought about trapping it to see if it’s microchipped and figure out where it lives and be like ‘hey, you might have a mountain of shoes that you’re unaware of’.”
Hannah wonders if the thief is simply dropping them between a fence and a shed, or something similar.
“It can’t be anywhere obvious, because you’d notice that many shoes, we’re missing probably 20 shoes now, but it’s funny some are turning up in different spots.”
Could the cat burglar have an accomplice?
