Junie the cat gave birth to a litter of kittens in 2022, was spayed in 2023, and photos show her nursing her babies, relaxing on a favorite blanket, and lazing imperiously on one of her humans’ clean black shirts.
The photos and documents were shared by Brenda Wilson, the Bakersfield, Calif., woman who said her cat still hasn’t been returned to her after an Amazon driver took her several weeks ago.
Since the police say they’re investigating the alleged theft, releasing the documents seems like more of an exasperated act of receipt-producing after the delivery driver, Joshua Gonzalez, went public and said he was retrieving his own cat, not stealing Wilson’s.
You can practically hear Judge Judy snapping “Let’s see the receipts!” as she adjusts her glasses.
In Gonzalez’s version of events he serendipitously happened to discover his own missing cat sitting on the front step of a home that happened to be on his delivery route. At different times referring to the cat as “he,” “she” and “it,” Gonzalez said he’d adopted the feline for his seven-year-old daughter back in October of 2025, still hadn’t bestowed the cat with a name despite her living in his home for seven months, and he knows she’s his cat because she has a “distinct” M-pattern on her forehead.
Gonzalez could be telling the truth. There’s a nonzero chance of that. Truth really can be stranger than fiction. But his version of events stretches credulity to its breaking point.
Literally every tabby cat has the “M” pattern on their heads. It’s what makes them tabbies. He seems as confused about that as he is about Junie’s gender.
Then there’s the video: the entire sequence of events is captured on a Ring camera near Wilson’s front door. Gonzalez doesn’t react like a man who’s stunned to fortuitously stumble over his own missing cat, at an address his job took him to, no less. He doesn’t express shock or surprise, or seem to visibly react at all. He doesn’t even look at the cat. He delivers the package, logs it on his phone, then swoops the feline up in his arms and walks off with her.
If you’d just unexpectedly found your own cat, would you call out to her, extend a hand, and smile with relief when she pads up with a raised tail and happily brushes her cheek against it? Would you check her coat pattern and markings, then check again? When scooping her up, would you talk to her, maybe even plant a kiss on her head, and tell her how happy you are to find her? Would you look happy? Would you leave a note?
Most people would do at least some of those things. Gonzalez does none of them.
And while Wilson has produced date-and-time-stamped photos of Junie going back years, the only photo Gonzalez shared with a local news station was a smartphone snap from the other day showing Junie in his lap.
And that’s half the problem. Neither party would be going to the media and trying to litigate this in public if the police were motivated to take the alleged theft more seriously. That’s not entirely their fault, because in the vast majority of states, laws regarding animals haven’t been updated since the days, more than a century past, when they were written to settle farm and ranch disputes. There’s little guidance from the law, and fewer options. The law doesn’t recognize pets as conscious individuals with feelings, so courts don’t take into account the best interests of the animals either.
Wilson said she doesn’t want anything but the return of Junie. The police would save her family a lot of angst by making that happen. Unless Gonzalez starts producing some truly impressive evidence, familiarizes himself with the gender of the disputed feline and explains his behavior, it’s difficult to believe Junie belongs with anyone besides the Wilsons.
Pain In The Bud 
Just because the cat does belong to Wilson does not mean she should get the cat back. If i were the rescue group i would take it back. Pretty sure contract says cat should not be outside. I know one group who took cat back.
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Thank you for the update. Surely justice and common sense will prevail soon.
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Surprisingly there’s still no news on the police end. If I were in this situation I would not be happy with the police right now.
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I hope everything gets resolved soon for the cat’s sake. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with letting a pet go outside, although I do think that if the owner isn’t going to be home, they should keep their pet inside with food and water available. I know many people disagree because of the dangers pets might face, but I think it depends a lot on where you live, in a city, for example, I wouldn’t let my cat outside for anything in the world. I live in a small town with green spaces; many people work in agriculture, and only the town center is urban. But my house is far from the center, so I do let my cats out into the yard, and I know they leave my property and in that regard, I can’t stop them because the wall separating my property from neighboring lots is a natural fence, so they just wander off.
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I used to be firmly against allowing cats outside, but people (mostly readers of this blog) have changed my mind for exactly the reasons you outlined. In our neighborhood, Bud could never be allowed to wander outside alone because of traffic, coyotes and other dangers (yes, believe it or not, coyotes are a real threat in the suburbs just north of NYC), and we’re fortunate to have a balcony that gives Bud a safe place to get sun and fresh air.
But there are people like you who live in rural areas, or really quiet neighborhoods with virtually no traffic, and that’s a different situation altogether.
Plus studies have shown cats stay within 150 feet or so and very rarely venture further away from their homes. In all these cases with Amazon and other delivery drivers taking cats, the pets are scooped up from front porches and doorsteps.
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Let me tell you something about rural areas. One pos always had a trap with him. People thought this man was doing tnr. Nope. He was trapping cats to drown them.
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Greetings Gilda, please allow me to clarify something of my previous comment, I’m not saying that rural areas are completely safe for cats, because they’re not. There are horrible people everywhere. However, I’d go so far as to say that the area where I live tends to let animals roam freely; people here are used to seeing cats and dogs here and there. I live in Ecuador (I know, a third-world country with a pretty bad crisis, nothing to be proud of) in a rural area. There are no “trap-neuter-return” programs; there are only spay/neuter programs for pets and the occasional stray dog caught in the cities. People in rural areas deal with their own pets in different ways; there are still some who are cruel enough to say, “My dog got pregnant, so I’m going to drown the puppies,” while others are responsible enough to take part in the spay-and-neuter campaigns organized by local municipalities or to take better care of their pets. But when it comes to animals that aren’t theirs, for better or worse, they let them roam in peace, they generally ignore them. Of the four cats I currently have, two are getting on in years: Lucy, who is 14, she used to go out wandering but doesn’t anymore because she’s too old, and my other cat, Wander, who is 8, he’s the one who goes out the most but always comes back home. As for the two younger ones, Moneda and Tequila, although they’re free to go out, they usually don’t venture beyond my property.
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We all went nuts last summer when we were having workers in the basement and the upstairs bathrroom for several days, and three of the cats got out (several times for Onyx) You would have thought they had disappeared for days by the way we greeted them. That is not his cat.
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Yes, exactly. If it’s your cat, the emotion of finding them safe is overwhelming and the relief is incredible. Very difficult to reconcile with the non-reaction in the footage.
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This is all fake news. The only person who has shown documentation is Joseph Gonzalez. The police did a blood test and it has been proven that the cat belongs to him, which is why he has been allowed to keep the cat. Brenda stole the cat from him while they were neighbors. Brenda denied knowing him for hours during interrogation before finally fessing up to knowing him and knowing he use to be her neighbor. Quit trying to ruin this man’s life for getting his property back. It’s under investigation still because we are looking into Brenda now.
-from a police officer
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Sorry Joseph Gonzalez but no one believes you.
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I’m fascinated by the idea that someone thinks there’s a DNA test that can confirm the human concept of pet ownership. How would that work? Genetic osmosis?
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Meta Data from photos can be edited and altered by the way. Plus the original owner only provided two photos of the cat from before 2025/26.
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It can be, although I would hope that someone sharing that information with the police as evidence would understand that. Hypothetically speaking, if someone were to edit metadata and submit it as proof, they could be charged with something like obstructing an investigation. (That’s the legal term in New York. Other states may call it something different.)
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