People in Echo Park and surrounding don't seem to have to buy dogs and cats. They just show up, ready to live with you for 20 years, or you steal one. My cats showed up. To name two: There was Flipper the Maine coon whose previous guardians caught on that the FBI was staking out their house: They fled, but they left Flipper (whose name at the time was Calvin) as well as at least one car and a houseful of furniture and other belongings. We had Flipper for 15 years, until he died. There also is Monkey, a manx, who began a siege upon our house the day we moved in. No matter what door you went to, Monkey was there, trying to get inside. She clung to window screens like a bat. Being fed wasn't enough: She wanted the keys. And, yes, as I type she is laying comfortably on my her bed with her paws in the air. I tried to give away Monkey and Flipper, but fate resisted until I wouldn't have parted with them for anything much less than a million dollars.

I didn't have to buy those guys (or any of the nearly one dozen -- no joke -- that have showed up and needed homes over the last few years). But I didn't steal them either.

I make the distinction because there's a cat-theft story developing on an Echo Park list serv. A couple of weeks ago, I started noticing postings that read: "Have you seen Sonny?" Apparently there were phone-pole flyers, too. I always think coyote when a cat is missing, so it was a nice little surprise when I saw that Sonny's owner, whom I do not know personally, reported that his cat was back after five days absence.

But that was not the happy ending. A few days later, Sonny's owner wrote on the neighborhood list serv that he had received a call from a neighbor who said Sonny liked to stake out his bird bath (read: cat-snacker) and that the neighbor had been feeding him. According to Sonny's original owner, the neighbor "also threatened that if I did not get Sonny a collar and a tag that 'we'll find a new home for him."'

Story goes: next time Sonny was allowed out of the house, he disappeared for a day and returned with a bandanna tied "snugly" around his neck. His guardian then bought him a collar and tag (he was already micro-chipped). Latest news is that Sonny has disappeared again and is not responding to the whistles and calls that usually bring him home on the quick.

Sonny's owner put up a post asking for constructive suggestions -- and wondering if anyone thought he should call the police. One community member recommended a pet detective (she included the gumshoe's phone number). Another sensibly suggested a face-to-face discussion with the suspect.

Another possibility: Perhaps Sonny should be placed between the two houses -- equal distance to each -- with each neighbor standing in their doorway calling; then Sonny can decide. That is, if he can't live in both places, belonging only to himself.*

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*There actually was a case many years ago in NYC -- reported by The Village Voice, but told to me by the dog's owner -- in which a sheepdog that was tied to a parking meter was stolen by an NYC cop. The "real" owners of the dog spotted him a few months later, and the case ended up in court, the cop claiming both that the dog had been abandoned and that his kids loved the dog too much to give back. The dog was ordered to be brought to court, where he ran to his original people, who regained custody. I met the dog at a farm in New Jersey, where he was obsessed by the pond, running at the water and then backing off repeatedly, whimpering all the while. "Oh, he has hydrophobia," I was told when I asked what was wrong. We all have something.