Taking a 'catnap' on Insta
Clue in mystery of stolen B’klyn bodega kitten
The cat burglar is out of the bag! A Brooklyn businessman said he’s located the man he thinks helped kit-nap his bodega cat last year after he brazenly posted pics of himself cuddling what appears to be the cute kitty on Instagram.
Mira Kasham, who runs the Moon Mini Mart in Kensington, told The Post he received a phone call on Nov. 20 from an unidentified woman who said, “I know who has your cat.” She provided him with a name and phone number of the alleged culprit and instructed Kasham to “check out his Instagram.”
Kasham was “stunned” when he saw a picture of a young man snuggling with a cat that is the spitting image of his beloved Takela.
Beside the April 6 Instagram pic is a notation, “No you can’t cuddle with us” and “#FatherSonTime.” Later in the thread, the poster notes, “The best hugs are the tight ones.” There is also a July 28 post with a picture of the furball tagged “#FatherSonMoment.”
“He has my cat!” Kasham fumed to The Post. “I’m heartbroken . . . My cat is in somebody’s house.”
Kasham said the man in the pho- tos, who identifies himself online as 28-year-old Queens resident Justin Alomar, looks exactly like a man who set off suspicious events leading to Takela’s catnapping.
At 8 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2017, a man walked into the Church Avenue bodega, bought some cookies and started playing with Takela. Then he offered Kasham $50 for the cat..
Kasham, who got the 3-monthold kitten to solve a mouse problem in his bodega, told the man Takela was not for sale and offered to find the stranger another kitty.
“I like the cat,” the pushy patron replied ominously. “I’ll be back.”
About two hours later, a young woman wearing black glasses walked into the store. She’s captured on surveillance footage coolly picking up Takela, tucking him under her arm and covering him with a coat before walking out.
Kasham, who filed a police report, is convinced the man — who he believes is Alomar — and woman were working together.
Kasham took photos of the man and woman from the day of the catnapping and the new Instagram pics to the 66th Precinct station house on Friday.
“It’s not the crime of the century, but we will pursue it,” said a detective.
A man who identified himself as Alomar would not open his apartment door in Astoria on Saturday, but told a Post reporter the cat on his Instagram page was “his cat” and “there are lots of cats who look like my cat.”
Alomar said he got the cat, “Drako,” in 2016 from a friend who rescues cats. Asked if he had ever been to the Moon Mini Mart, Alomar said, “I’ve been to Brooklyn a lot of times” and “petted many cats.”
He denied being a catnapper: “I swear on my mother’s life, I don’t know who stole the cat.”
Alomar, who describes himself as a “NYC Luxury Realtor” on his Instagram page, set his account to private shortly after his encounter with The Post.