Cat burglar

Well, what can you call Frankie but a cat burglar? Firstly Frankie is a cat, and secondly he sneaks into people's homes and removes their property without their permission. Got him bang to rights, as the local criminal community used to say of a justified arrest.

The odd thing is that apart from his odd penchant for helping himself to whatever he fancies from the neighbours, Frankie is a model citizen. 'He's a friendly cat' explains Frankie's human, 52 year-old Julie Bishop. In fact Julie has taken it on herself to try to restore the, ahem, purrlioned goods of her felonious feline by putting up posters of Frankie's haul around her native town of Swindon.

Frankie is two years old, and like Raffles, the suave fictional cat burglar, he is elegantly clad in black with a white spot at the bow-tie point. However, your diamond necklaces are safe from Frankie, who is especially fond of fluffy toys. He has been in a sort of competition with someone who is fond of a particular kind of fluffy leopard, since every time Frankie steals one, the owner apparently replaces it with another. Now Frankie has a collection of 15 identical leopards, stolen at the rate of just over one a month. He also has assorted teddy bears and a giant squeaky beefburger - the owner of which should not be hard to trace provided someone is prepared to admit to buying the thing.

Apart from fluffy toys, Frankie will happily add socks to his haul, perhaps assuming that they are a particularly floppy type of toy. Frankie came from a Wiltshire farm in 2006, and as a country boy he's also prepared to add real mice and birds to his collection, which he brings in through the cat flap and carefully deposits on the same place on the carpet. For him the hunt is the thing, as he appears to have little interest in his prizes once he has captured them.

So, if you are in the Swindon area, and own anything small and fluffy, be afraid. Be very afraid ...