I’m feeling a tiny bit guilty about not reporting a crime. The trouble is the perpetrator is so cute.

I have to confess I am living with a ‘cat burglar’ and we have so far been hiding his crimes.

You’d never guess by looking at him that this sweet little almost one-year-old cat, with his butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth, big golden eyes could possibly be up to no good. But the evidence is there as clear as anything just outside our front door.

He started his criminal career with small items, but he’s now progressed and I can see the slippery slope of a life of crime ahead.

At first it was the odd hair bobble left on the arm of a chair, that was surreptitiously picked up in his mouth and taken off to a corner of the room to play with and eventually ended up under the settee. Then he moved on to slightly larger items, like pens or bracelets or necklaces, anything that jangled and has string and tassels.

This wasn’t so bad if the stolen goods were from our own house and we’d usually track them down in a corner of the room or with a pile of hair bobbles under a chair. But the other day we heard a clatter through the window. Looking round we saw him prancing through the room with a string in his mouth and behind him he was dragging a very large paintbrush. It was brand new and smelt of animals – probably the badger hair bristles. The special find was taken away to be stored with all his other stolen goods in a bush by the front door.

Ethical dilemma… do we try and find the owner of the brush? Or do we just let him keep it?

I’m thinking, keep it…. partly because we don’t know whose brush it is and no-one has reported one missing. And also who would ever think, that new brush they left by the back door could have been picked up and stolen by a cat? But then, they don’t know Simba.