News Photo by Julie Riddle Lucey, the cat burglar of 1st Avenue, keeps an eye on his purrfectly pilfered footwear.

ALPENA–Blanche Jozwiak’s gardening boot was missing.

After the black boot disappeared mysteriously from her back porch last week, Jozwiak figured she would never see it again — until a neighbor told her about the cat who lived around the corner.

“I says, “Tom, where did you get my boot from?”” Jozwiak recalled, “He says, ‘Well, there’s a cat napper around the corner. There’s a whole pile of shoes there that this cat has brought home.'”

A sociable, cheerful, fluff of a cat, Lucey — short for Lucifer — is a collector of shoes. Over the past few years, owners Scott and Tonia Werda said, the black and white cat burglar has taken to dragging home objects he finds in his 1st Avenue neighborhood — especially his specialty, shoes.

“It’s a lot of pairs,” Tonia Werda said incredulously, pointing to several complete sets of shoes that the cat has gathered, one at a time. Mostly a homebody, Lucey makes an occasional outing to case the neighborhood for shoes that have been left out on back porches or in open garages, nabbing them craftily and dragging them home, hopping the backyard fence with the pilfered shoe in his mouth.

The affectionate cat brings home his finds to impress his owners, the Werdas think, dropping his loot in the yard and meowing urgently.

“He’s like, ‘Look what I got for you, Dad! Didn’t I do good?'” Scott Werda said, shaking his head at the talkative klepto-cat sprawled in the driveway sunshine.

The Werdas didn’t know what was happening, at first, Werda said. They’d come outside, and there a shoe would be. The couple suspected the shoes had been left behind by children in their in-home daycare, but then more and more shoes appeared in their yard.

The cat branched out, eventually, bringing home fast-food bags, packing materials, even an entire roll of toilet paper.

“I’m like, toilet paper? Luce, toilet paper? Are you saying something, here?” Tonia said

The thieving feline’s highest-priced haul was an entire GPS system from a nearby — and, fortunately, very understanding — neighbor.

Lucey’s sweet temperament and convincing meow have won over most neighbors, who have started to know where to look when their shoes go missing. The Werdas keep recovered shoes in a bucket in their garage, hoping they will eventually make it back to their rightful feet.

“We bought our last neighbor a dutch apple pie when she came looking for some shoes,” Werda said with an apologetic smile.

In exchange for the shoes, the experienced mouser is happy to rid the neighbors’ homes of any rodents, Werda said.

The cat loves to snuggle with children and acts like a dog with Scott, his special favorite, Tonia said, running from window to window to watch when Scott leaves for work. An adventurer, Lucey also likes car rides and has a penchant for hopping into open car windows of visitors, sometimes ending up as a stowaway who stays politely in the back seat until he’s returned back home.

“He’s our pain,” Scott Werda said, giving the cat’s soft fur a tousle.

Lucey, unconcerned by the attention, meowed and gave a gentle swat to a nearby shoe.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.