Cocoa the Klepto

My nightstand is a glass-topped table, where the glass is not attached to the metal base. I woke up this morning at a quarter of five to:

BANG! BANG! BANG! ... BANG! BANG! BANG!

So I sit bolt-upright in bed. In my disorientated semi-sleep state, I'm thinking either the cats - Cassie now calls them my preschool class - are breaking into something or someone's breaking into the house.

I see these glowing green eyes from my left and I look over to see Cocoa avec une Guimauve on my nighstand, hovering over my covered rubber band. As I watch her, too surprised to say anything, she takes the rubber band into her mouth and jumps off the nightstand.

Do you remember that story a couple years ago about that cat that became a kleptomaniac after his owners had their first child? It would go through other people's yards, pick up their toys and stuff, then carry them back to the child's crib? Disgusting, I know, but that cat and Cocoa must share DNA.

Yesterday my pen somehow went missing. On Memorial Day, it was a bunch of little flag candies. Cassie says her cat Dixie gets up on her desk chair to play with pens and little knick-knacks on her desk in the morning, but never takes things, so she can't figure it out. Over Easter, Cocoa consumed a whole Peep on her own - and bounced off the walls for two days - while she hid the row of carefully detached Peep bunnies that were supposed to go on the buffet display, a chicken that gets wound up and clucks, walks, and lays gum "eggs", and one of my cousin's Barbies. We found the wind-up chicken and her clutch spread all through my bed (Coax even tried to chew on one of the eggs to the point that I had to pitch one of my pillowcases because I couldn't get the gum out) and something like all but one of the Peep bunnies, but that Barbie is still MIA. We've found its bunny-ear headband and both shoes, but, as to the rest of its ensemble and the Barbie itself, we've got no clue....

I have Buster, who thinks the party starts and ends with her, Locket, who's just a love and a dear, D'Artagnan, the kindest little sweetheart, and Godiva, the mother hen (no pun intended). Then there's the kleptomaniac, Cocoa.

Anyone else got a klepto as a cat? Anyone?