Look what the Frigiliana felines dragged in

The case of the thieving felines of Frigiliana sounds like something straight out of T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

Mum Dora and her two offspring Daisy and Manchita, who live with their owner Rachel in the Axarquía town, have become part of an international research project to look into why cats steal things and bring gifts to their owners.

The feisty felines have been helping themselves to small items of clothing (mainly underwear) from their owner Rachel's neighbours' washing lines.

In fact their antics were the focus of an art project by Rachel's friend Dutch photographer and artist Anne Geene who divides her time between Frigiliana and The Hague.

Geene held an exhibition during the town's Art Walk in October through which she hoped to reunite the stolen goods with their rightful owners. Anne photographed the items the cats had helped themselves to and hung her photos on a washing line in the patio of the space that she used for her exhibition, as well as scattering them on a bed.

It wasn't until Anne, 41, explained the story during the Art Walk that this unusual exhibition made sense. The artist also had copies of her book, Low Hanging Fruit, which shows a collection of the photographs which includes an introduction by Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist based at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, who studies animals' behaviour and how they interact with artificial material.

In the introduction Hiemstra also refers to other cat thieves who have made the headlines: there's the case of Bridget in New Zealand who had a particular thing for men's underwear, Charlie from Bristol in the UK whose owner once woke up with a toy dinosaur he'd stolen from a nearby nursery on her pillow (a scene reminiscent of the horse's head in The Godfather) and Dusty the Californian cat who is said to have stolen over 600 items from neighbours over the years. Her fetish apparently is bras and knickers.

And it's not just cats who are getting their revenge on humans. In summer 2023 the case of crows making nests from long metal spikes used to stop birds from setting up home on buildings in the Netherlands and Belgium was widely reported in international science journals and this also captured Hiemstra's attention.

The Frigiliana felines, the other international cat thieves and the cunning crows have all featured in articles not just in science journals, but have also hit the headlines in newspapers in France, Holland and the UK.

Anne has been able to add her own observations about the Frigiliana cats' behaviour to the study. She explains: "When I was first photographing the socks, the cats were super nervous and they didn't bring anything in for one week." Owner Rachel has even worked out that their miaow is "different" when the cats have brought something home.

As a collector herself, Anne was particularly drawn to the cats' behaviour. Through her own art she has explored why people "can't stop collecting things", so when she met Dora, Daisy and Manchita (who she says are very affectionate, despite their thieving ways) she decided it was something she could "relate to".

The exhibition had partial success in terms of reuniting the stolen loot with its rightful owners; around one third of it belonged to just one neighbour who identified about 20 items.

Now, Anne and Rachel are looking at ways of advertising the rest of the items either through social media or posters around the town. Anne is also planning to set up an art group along with the book's illustrator Rita Eid, in the town, through which they hope to hold a regular secondhand market and exhibitions.

Perhaps they are not quite as smart as T. S. Eliot's Macavity the mystery cat who managed to "defy the law", as Dora, Daisy and Manchita have been caught red-pawed, but it hasn't stopped their crime wave. Anne says they are still stealing, which is leading to "awkward" interactions between Rachel and her neighbours.

However, in an effort to bring some kind of justice to the town, the photographer hopes to organise another exhibition of photos of the remaining unclaimed items in the hope that more people will recognise their missing belongings.