Most cats enjoy bringing deceased animals or food to their owners but, Jordan, a little cat from Altoona, Pennsylvania, collects something very different: shoes.
In fact, the feline has become a local celebrity due to his peculiar hobbies.
Jordan’s latest pastime is sneaking out after dark to retrieve shoes stolen from neighboring homes. To find his trophies, the cat can travel up to seven miles. BJ Ross, the cat’s owner, explains on Facebook:
“Last year, he would sometimes bring in dead mice or birds. But since January, I’ve noticed that shoes have suddenly started appearing in my yard.”
When the shoes first appeared, the cat’s owner paid little attention to them. Instead, she threw them out, along with “the empty bag of chips and a rubber glove” Jordan had also previously brought home.
But soon there were more and more of them. At one point, Ross’s mother advised her to keep the shoes, as people had surely lost them and might be looking for their belongings.
The mystery is solved
The number of shoes continued to rise, soon there were almost fifty on Ross’s deck; by this time, she suspected that her cat had something to do with it.
She attached a small tracking device to the cat’s collar and installed a camera in their garden. The data gathered proved beyond a doubt that Jordan was the infamous shoe thief.
The crafty moggy didn’t just snatch random shoes; Jordan cared about symmetry. It didn’t matter if he could only carry one pair of shoes at a time because the kitten always made a point of returning to complete the set.
To help her neighbors find their lost shoes, Ross created a Facebook page to get in touch: Jordan The Feline Cat Burglar. Soon, the number of subscribers was increasing.
Two thousand folks joined the group in one week. Today, the page counts more than thirty-two thousand members. On the page, members can see video footage of Jordan bringing back his stolen goods at night and pictures of the bounty.
WTAJ TV, a local television channel, also reported the phenomenon, giving Jordan the shoe stealer additional exposure. This craze for her puss amuses BJ, she states:
“I’ve been getting messages from people all over the country telling me how much it brightens their day. With everything that is going on in the world right now, it puts a smile on many people’s faces.”