One day I’m sitting in the living room and I answer a knock at the door and it’s a guy holding my cat. He lives next-door in a halfway house. He says to me, “Hi, is this your cat? Because he was walking around my yard.” I told him that that’s Wellington and he’s an inside/outside cat, he has a little door out back. We shake hands. He puts the cat in my door and walks away.
Three more times this happens over about a two month timeframe. Telling him the cat was an inside/outside cat had no bearing on him knocking on my door and bringing my cat back.
About eight months later, I get a knock at the door… Nope, don’t get ahead of me. I open the door a man standing there says, “Hi. I’m with the FBI. I’d like to ask you some questions.” I invite him in thinking … OK, the lawn guy was about $600 less than I put on my taxes and I’ll just confess and go to jail.
Nope, he shows me a picture of some creepy man, and ask, have you ever seen this guy?
I blurt out, “ Yeah that’s Wellington‘s friend. He lives next-door, but I haven’t seen him in about eight months or so. Why? What did he do?”
He says that he’s a convict from Alaska and he’s been on the run!
I told him I can ask around about him if he wants and he said, “Absolutely not! Do not get involved”. I said, “No, you don’t understand… if I ask one person and you can get the FBI to cut me a check for $10 then I can say I work for the FBI! See my point?” No laugh. So I just said, “yeah, I won’t get involved”.
OK, so about six months go by and I get a knock at the door… Yes, you’re very smart. It’s the guy holding Wellington!! I tried really hard not to gasp!
He said, “Here’s your cat…” I’m like, “Yeah, right, right, right, so where are you been? How are things going? Are you hanging out for a while? You’ll be around? Wellington misses you!”
He put my cat in the house and walked away. I called the FBI. “Hey I never got my check. So the guy’s back. He said he’s hanging out for a couple weeks! Want me to go knock him out and tie them up for you?” The FBI agent thanked me profusely and begged me not to do anything else. I reminded him about the check again and then hung up.
Two days later at 7am… I heard some commotion next door, and holding my cat in my arms, we peered out the window, and saw a bunch of officers with the letters FBI splashed all over their bulletproof vest, walking him out in handcuffs. Like 7 AM. Very creepy.
They got the bad guy. Wellington got to be an honorary FBI agent. I’m still waiting for the check.
Tom from Los Angeles