A burglar in his 40s knocked on the door of a house. The elderly resident open the door and the man told him that he had just hit a cat on the road whilst driving and that the cat had run into his back garden (backyard in USA).
The house owner agreed to look in his back garden for the cat. While he was doing this the burglar went into the house and stole the house owner’s wallet. The resident must have left his front door unlocked while he went to the garden.
It is as simple and as straightforward as that and it was highly effective mainly because the victim was elderly. It happened in England during Halloween celebrations.
Opportunist burglars are very effective at getting into and out of houses very quickly even when the occupier is at home. It is the first time that I have read about a cat being part of the burglary and being used as a way to get inside the house.
In fact, it is important to lock your doors even while you are in the house. And if a person knocks on the front door and you answer it you should make sure that you either know who he is or that he presents to you some identification to confirm that he is what he says he is. And don’t get caught up in the cat scam.
The story is on the Shropshire Star website.
This angers me because I’ve had to knock on doors to ask people about stray cats and kittens, and I’ll have to do it in the future. As people become wary of these incidents, they will be even less likely to cooperate with or even believe that I’m legitimately looking for cats in need. It’s hard enough to help them. Police also already suspect people who look for cats to be pedophiles or just mentally ill… especially men, and they warn people likewise. I never talk to children about lost or stray cats. That’s the world we live in but the cats suffer for it.