Bee-Dub, I had a cat for awhile that would drag anything off the dining room table, the counters, the top of the fridge....including beef and pork roasts, cooked chickens and turkeys, pies, anything. She had been an alley cat in her youth and she was always desperate for food and willing to do anything to get it and wolf it down. She was the worst feline thief I have ever seen or ever wish to. You think dogs are bad? This was simply intolerable.

I would never have had the damn thing in the first place except that I had a girlfriend who insisted on rescuing "lost" animals she found...many of whom turned out not to be lost at all...but rather kidnapped by my obsessive partner. Their owners from down the block or across the street would arrive to pick them up after she put up the "found" posters.

The aforementioned cat I spoke of above, however, did NOT turn out to have any owner. Much worse luck for us! The accursed thing would steal any food it could get hold of if you took your eyes off it for one second...so when meals were served this cat had to be locked outside or put in the basement.

To stop the little wretch from stealing food off the top of the fridge, I eventually placed some cake tins up there full of water. The cat leaped up on the fridge 20 seconds after I left the room to see what was there, landed right in the middle of the booby trap I had laid for her, and water flew everywhere while the cat departed the scene like a cork shot out of a bottle. Ha! Got the depraved little monster. She never jumped up on the fridge again after that incident.

I eventually broke up with that girl...and she took the cat with her. It proceeded to drive her next boyfriend out of his mind. I used to visit them now and then, because we were all still friends...all on good terms, and as far as Samantha the cat went nothing had changed. She was still wreaking havoc in the kitchen, but it wasn't my kitchen, so I didn't particularly care. One Christmas, though, I was visiting them, and the cat managed to pull the Christmas turkey off the table while we were all at the door for 30 seconds meeting another visitor who had just arrived.