I stole my neighbour’s cat... but don’t you dare call me a criminal!

As a new law aims to make it a serious offence to pinch a pet...

IT WAS a moment of mad recklessness. I took one look around me, picked up my former neighbours’ cat, slipped him under a blanket on the back seat of my car and drove off.

It was exhilarating. And, at the time, I knew I was doing the right thing. But as I sped away, I felt a nagging sense of guilt.

Had I just committed a dreadful crime? Was I now a thief on the run from the law?

I could well have been, under proposed amendments to the Criminal Justice Act which had its third reading in the Dáil at the end of last year.

And I could have got at least ten months for my actions. Because if and when the Bill becomes law, the theft of cats or dogs will be treated as serious and specific crimes, rather than simply the taking of property as it stands today.

But before you lump me in with the increasing number of heartless criminals stealing pedigree pets for financial gain, allow me to explain.

The story begins in 2005, when I was living in a ground-floor flat, with direct access to a vast garden.

One morning, I heard a sharp rap on my patio window and presumed it was my friend Steve who came round for coffee most mornings.

But I looked up to see my American neighbour instead – glaring at me. Though I went out to ask him what was the matter, I already had a fairly good idea.

It was about his cat Drexl, named after a Gary Oldman character in the Quentin Tarantino film True Romance. Drexl had been visiting me most days for about a year and a half, finding his way in through an old cat flap. Of late, he had been popping home for his dinner, then coming back to me and even sleeping over.

THE main reason Drexl – a black and white domestic shorthair – liked being with me was because he was terrified of two husky dogs his legal owners had recently taken in. Whenever he heard them bark, he ran under my bed.

I tried to explain to my neighbour – let’s call him Guy – that I had done nothing to encourage Drexl. I’d never fed or even called him. He just kept turning up. After all, cats are sentient creatures who, with their independent spirit, can never truly be ‘owned’.

But Guy was having none of it: ‘You’ve stolen him. You are a thief, Lynne. Do you walk into someone’s house and take their DVD player? Or take their car from their front drive? It’s the same thing.’ I was shocked, offended and, above all, scared by the tall, 40-something man on my patio, whose voice was shaking with anger. As Guy walked away, he told me he was moving house – and he’d be taking Drexl with him.

The news left me heartbroken. Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to admit it because he wasn’t ‘mine’, but I loved Drexl.

And, in all truthfulness, I hadn’t exactly discouraged him from his little visits.

Some months before, Guy had asked me to shut my cat flap at night to stop Drexl getting in.

After all, I had no pets of my own. I told him I’d think about it. But really, I knew I couldn’t. I wanted Drexl to have somewhere to escape if the big dogs scared him.

The fast-approaching prospect that I would never see him again was too much to bear.

But a couple of weeks after my run-in with Guy, removal vans did arrive and by lunchtime that day, the family was gone – along with two loud, boisterous huskies and one adorable, yet unhappy, moggy.

As time wore on, I missed Drexl more than I could have imagined. He had become part of my life.

Then, a miracle happened. A week after Guy and his family had moved out, I was woken at night by the cat flap opening – I knew that could only mean one thing. My boy was back!

He was a bit thinner and filthy dirty. No wonder – the family had moved five miles away and the only route back to me involved crossing a motorway.

The next morning Guy arrived to take Drexl home. But over the coming days, the same charade played out. Each time he came to collect the cat, Guy insisted Drexl was happy in his home.

Around this time, I also moved house. I knew I wouldn’t see Drexl again, but I was grateful for the time we had spent together. He’s a brave, resourceful cat, I told myself: he’ll pull through.

To secure the property, I had to close the internal wooden shutters, blocking the cat flap.

But a fortnight later I returned to collect some post. And who was waiting for me outside the patio door, looking utterly forlorn?

That was when I snapped. I couldn’t take it any longer. So I scooped Drexl up and we made our bid for freedom.

I’ve since heard from another former neighbour that Guy has returned to the area several times to look for Drexl.

I’ll leave you to judge whether or not I’m a criminal.

But to my mind, the thought that I might be prosecuted for this act fills me with indignation and horror.

DON’T get me wrong, the theft of animals from loving homes – motivated by financial gain – is inexcusable. According to statistics around 244 dogs were reported stolen in 2021 and according to Direct Line Pet Insurance only one in four gets returned to their owners.

Cat theft has been rising by an average 18% each year since 2017.

Right now the law takes no account of the strong emotional bond between pet owners and their animals, and the immense sense of loss when they are gone.

For so many of us, pets are infinitely more than property – they are part of the family. The new Bill recognises this and has to be seen as a good thing. However, the proposed legislation is opaque when it comes to cats, whose lives are, of course, peripatetic.

However, animal behaviour expert Dr Anne McBride, is still unsure whether, when it comes to pets, one Bill fits all.

‘Issues of luring and detaining are straightforward for dogs, but cats cannot be captured and detained in the same way,’ she explained. ‘Dogs need to be part of a social group, but cats are more based on location than an attachment to an individual person.’

My beautiful, loving and resilient Drexl died in 2016 aged 14.

I was bereft and I still think of my darling boy to this day. But it brings a wistful smile to my face to remember that for nine happy years he enjoyed a home with me where he felt safe and loved.

Am I a thief, a criminal? It’s too early to tell how this new Bill might treat someone who finds themselves in my situation, but let’s just say, I don’t regret taking him one bit.

THE attack began in the early hours on Tuesday week. Residents woke to the rattle of gunfire, which continued into the day. Four powerful blasts, thought to be from explosives dropped by drones, shook their houses.

By the end of the terrifying onslaught, no one knows how many had died, as the casualties were dragged away by the two rival cartels whose gang war had spilled so bloodily into the streets of the small Mexican town of Buenavista.

Yet this savagery was not over the huge profits to be had from smuggling illegal drugs, but for control of the region’s production of limes.

Mexico is the world’s second biggest producer of the fruit, exported around the world where they flavour margaritas, salsas and tacos and much more besides.

Gangs are fighting a deadly turf war to control that lucrative business, running protection rackets to impose ‘taxes’ on farmers trying to earn a living. Workers defying their threats and extortion demands run the risk of being killed, kidnapped, losing their homes or banishment.

One prominent local figure suggested to me that up to 3,000 lime farmers may have been slaughtered in Michoacan, the western state that includes Buenavista, in the past decade.

It is believed 150,000 people have fled the state’s bloodletting and into America. ‘The whole of the lime industry is controlled by the gangs and there is a lack of freedom for producers,’ Buenavista’s mayor Sergio Baez, 59, told me. ‘So in a way when people buy their limes, there is a contribution to organised crime.’

The fighting for this market is so intense that landmines and grenade launchers have been used by gangsters. Last week, security forces in the municipality seized at least 130 home-made explosive devices to be dropped by drones.

According to Michoacan’s governor at least 14 organised gangs operate in the state, but a defiant Baez said: ‘We cannot be betrayed by fear.’

One lime farmer told me: ‘Criminal groups have taken control of our town, control of our economy, control of our lives. This is not a life, living under the rule of a criminal enterprise in the face of authorities who seem complacent.’

Last week’s nocturnal attack involved hitmen tied to the Tepalcatepec cartel trying to oust Los Viagras, a group notorious for its savagery reputedly led in the town by a man nicknamed La Sirena (The Mermaid). This gang won national infamy with a video entitled No Mercy In Mexico, showing the gruesome execution of a father and son accused of collaboration with rivals. The gangsters cut off the head of the father before ripping out the heart of his son.

ARIVAL clan released videos six months ago of a new armed wing named Lime Special Forces. These showed gangsters in armoured vehicles with badges on military-style uniforms featuring two pistols and a skull set inside a yellow lime. Such is the state of terror that the farmer said if Los Viagras were driven out by rivals or by the military, they might be replaced by even more deranged gangsters – as seen so often in Mexico’s tragic recent history.

‘The Viagras got too ambitious, too nasty and aggressive against the people,’ said another source in the town, adding that many locals supported the insurgents in the hope of reducing the extortion and violence inflicted on them.

‘But why do people have to choose the least evil?’ they added. ‘There should be no evil at all – no quotas, no extraction of wealth, no controlling of people’s lives and the economy.’

The cartels also have their claws into the avocado business, having initially seen the trade in both fruits as a way to launder drug money. But they rapidly realised the potential for hefty profits from the control of these agricultural

Intimidating: An armed member of a gang controlling Michoacan

markets. With Buenavista producing 220,000 tons of lime a year, the gangs’ levy on producers and packers earns them €26million annually from this single scam in this single municipality.

‘The equation is very simple: you pay up or run the risk that the criminals will stop your next shipment on the road and burn it,’ said one farmer. ‘So it is cheaper to pay the extortioners.’

Most victims are poor rural labourers without the resources to escape. Gangs dictate pricing, transport and even which days of the week farmers are allowed to harvest crops The workers, who typically earn about €23 a day selling their limes to packing plants, are permitted to harvest their fruit only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

‘It is all about control,’ said Gregorio Lopez, an outspoken priest and lime farmer from Buenavista who wore a bulletproof vest during services before being forced to flee for his life. ‘It’s a show of power. They call the shots.’

He said the harvesting ban allowed gangs to impose penalties such as taking over cars or homes if disobeyed, with landmines sometimes planted to prevent work on prohibited days. Lopez, said the lime growers felt ‘betrayed, abandoned and at the mercy of crime’ and that they were ‘disposable cannon fodder’ in the gang wars ravaging so much of Mexico.

He added that four years ago the entire 5,000 population of one lime-growing town left overnight after threats intensified and gangsters began using drones armed with explosives. About 500 have since returned to the ‘ghost town’.

At the end of our conversation, he asked if I wished to buy his lime grove – an offer I easily refused. When I was in Michoacan four years ago to investigate the gangs taking over avocado plantations, nine people, including boys as young as 12, were slaughtered by gunmen who sprayed bullets around a video game arcade near my hotel.

A study last year found that drug cartels behind such massacres are Mexico’s fifth biggest employer with about 175,000 members.

OTHER analysts have identified almost 200 armed gangs in the country, the number soaring after a crackdown on kingpins led major cartels to splinter. The violence is expected to intensify ahead of forthcoming elections as gangs fight for influence. The drug cartels first muscled in on the lime trade in 2010 by burning down packing stations, demanding protection money and stealing land. This sparked a revolt three years later by armed vigilantes led by a farmer named Hipolito Mora, which drove the cartels from the region and caught global attention. His self-defence movement was quickly corrupted and his son killed, but he remained a vocal critic of both the gangs and the government’s insipid response. The narcos finally managed to assassinate Mora last June, shooting him and his bodyguards in an ambush as the vigilante leader drove to his home which had been strafed by gunfire three days earlier. The bodies were torched in his pick-up truck in a grim display of strength by the cartels. Mora’s killing sparked national condemnation, followed by another flare-up of the extortion and terror rackets inflicted on lime and avocado farmers. Despite the risks, Mora’s younger brother, Guadalupe, has returned home after almost half a century in California to continue the fight against the cartels, seek justice over his sibling’s murder and tend to his own lime groves. ‘Hipolito was killed since he raised his voice. He spoke out about how organised crime was once again taking over the entire economy,’ said Guadalupe, 64. ‘Now I am speaking out.’ He knows the danger he faces, but says. ‘I am willing to risk my life for this just cause. There is no other way.’ Such is the life of a lime farmer in this land soaked in blood.