The suspect’s crime spree was short lived and the kitten has been returned.
Magnolia is back after her meowgnificent caper.
The three-and-a-half month old kitten was conscripted into an attempted bank robbery by a man who stole her from the adoptable cats section of a Maryland pet shop late Tuesday morning, then took her to a nearby bank.
Security camera footage from the pet store shows the suspect cradling Magnolia as he darts out of the shop.
The man, whose name has not been released by police, then asked a teller to hold the kitten while he scribbled out a note demanding cash.
Despite the suspect’s wily and carefully calibrated plan, the attempted robbery went awry when police arrived in force before he could escape with any cash.
Meanwhile the pet store employees across the street, unaware of the attempted robbery, watched the cops converging and thought the local sheriff was very serious about pilfered pets.
“I immediately saw all of these police cars, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a heck of a response for a stolen cat,” Stephanie Stullich of Beltsville Community Cats told a local TV news station.
As for Magnolia, she seems to be a resilient kitten and wasn’t particularly phased by her ordeal. Footage after her return shows her happily batting her paws at a toy. When pet store staff were told by the cops that their cat was in the bank, they found Magnolia cuddling up with the bank manager.
The man who stole her had visited several times and had been fixated on the kitten, store employees told the local NBC affiliate.
Magnolia was back and safe shortly after her ordeal. Now she’s looking for her forever family. Credit: NBC Washington
Surely treats are in order for little Magnolia. We’re glad to hear she’s okay. She’s available for adoption, by the way, and wants to retire from her brief lifeof crime. Stullich says she’s “looking for a law-abiding citizen with a lot of love in their heart.”
Police haven’t offered details besides acknowledging the incident and saying they’re still sorting details out. We’ll update as more information becomes available.
The comedian’s animated show for adults imagines life through the eyes of sarcastic street cats.
When a lost kitten says he wishes he’d never been born, scruffy tomcat Gus is in disbelief.
“Don’t ever say that! Life is a gift, and you’re a cat!” Gus says. “Do you know how good that is, to be a cat?”
“Pretty good?” the kitten asks.
“It’s f—ing great!”
That’s one of a few short scenes revealed in the first trailer for Alley Cats, a new Netflix show created by Ricky Gervais. The comedian plays Gus and an ensemble cast provides the voices of the other neighborhood strays, who seem to spend most of their time veering from one lazy activity to the next while zinging each other with one-liners.
Warning: NSFW language in this trailer:
Although it’s animated, Alley Cats is a comedy for adults. Think South Park except with cats and a much more sarcastic, dry sense of humor. As the trailer makes clear, it’s irreverent and over-the-top, and it seems to tie cat humor in well with broader comedy.
Humans have insulted felinekind for the last time!
Little Buddy was determined to win the prize.
A lavish spread of his most favoritest snacks — including a mouth-watering variety of crunchies, Gouda and American cheese, turkey meaty sticks and more — would be his if he could rush to the kitchen, open the refrigerator door, remove a cold beer, and somehow get it back to his human before the end of the half-inning commercial break during a Yankees broadcast.
“Sixty seconds left!” Big Buddy called from the living room.
Little Buddy panicked. He was still working out how to reliably open the refrigerator door and was worried about whether he’d be able to carry the bottle by gripping the slender part with his teeth, or would be forced to roll it.
With a back paw resting against the adjacent cabinet, Buddy wedged his body against the refrigerator door and, with a bit of wiggling, finally pried it open. Yes!
There it was: the cold beer.
“Thirty seconds!” Big Buddy called.
Oh crap! The feline tried to grab the top of the bottle with his teeth, but it was slippery with condensation and cold.
I’ll have to roll it, then, he conceded.
Working quickly, he had the bottle safely on the floor in a few seconds and began rolling, nudging the icy brew with his nose and correcting its direction with his paws. Think of the snacks, he told himself.
He was out of the kitchen and heading toward the living room, beer rolling along, when Yankees announcer Michael Kay’s voice boomed through the speakers.
“And we’re back here in the bottom of the sixth, Yankees up two runs over the Red Sox,” he said.
“Time!” Big Buddy said, then got up and walked over to where his feline pal was sitting dejected with his shoulders slumped.
The human picked up the beer and cracked it open.
“So close,” he said, shaking his head. “What a shame.”
Little Buddy stared at the floor sadly as Big Buddy walked into the kitchen. Then he heard the unmistakable crinkle of a plastic bag. It was music to his ears, a balm for his soul, relief for his rumbling stomach.
I knew Big Buddy wouldn’t do this to me! he thought. He’s gonna give me that snack spread anyway!
The excited feline came skidding to a halt just inside the kitchen doorway and looked up to find his human digging a few mochi nuggets out of a Trader Joe’s bag. His tail, which had been quivering with excitement a second ago, sank like an inflatable air dancer suddenly deprived of wind.
“Mmmm,” the human said. “These are delicious. Don’t you just love snacks?”
He walked back into the living room and collapsed in his chair, leaving Little Buddy staring longingly up at the inaccessible Cabinet of Yums.
The hollow pop of a fastball discharging its kinetic energy off a wooden bat and the roar of the crowd sounded through the speakers in the next room, sending minute rumbles through the floor that tickled Buddy’s paw pads.
The gods of yums are pooping on me from great heights, he thought. What have I done to deserve this cruel fate?
“He’s training you!”
Little Buddy spun around. Who was meowing to him?
“Up here, dummy!” the voice meowed, and Little Buddy looked up to find a cat the color of a tangerine sitting on the outside window ledge and licking one paw.
“What do you mean by ‘he’s training me?'” Buddy asked the mysterious interloper.
The other feline continued raking his tongue along his paw at an insouciant pace, then finally stopped and looked down.
“He’s conditioning you to retrieve bottles of beer,” the interloper said with certainty. “The promise of a reward lit a fire under your behind, so you didn’t even question the ridiculous ‘challenge.’ And that, my boy, is how humans train lesser creatures like dogs. It is beneath us felines and an insult to our dignity!”
Buddy let the new information sink in.
“That bastard!” he meowed.
“Yes!” the tangerine cat replied.
“He’s treating me like a mutt? A dirty dog?”
“An abominable way to treat a friend, and if I may say so, an insult to your stature!”
Buddy seethed. “I’m supposed to be his best pal! His little buddy!”
“Some might call it a stunning display of absolute contempt for your feelings and your stomach,” the other feline nodded. “Criminal, really.”
“I’m gonna kill him!” Buddy meowed angrily.
The orange cat held up both paws.
“Hold off on that for a minute, will you, pal? If you go scorched Earth right away, you’ll have nothing for when this inevitably escalates.”
Buddy nodded reluctantly. “What did you have in mind?”
Tangerine smiled mischievously.
“My friend,” he trilled, “do you know what a toothbrush is?”
Author’s note:This is a work of fiction. At no time has Bud ever been denied a snack, nor has he ever missed a meal.
A writer reminds us that feline friendships don’t always come easy, but some of the hardest-won are the most rewarding.
When San Francisco’s KQED, the local public radio affiliate, asked its culture writers to reflect on “one beautiful thing” from 2025, Rae Alexander chose her cat, Kevin.
Kevin is “chaos in cat form,” a feline “sociopath” who doesn’t realize how much damage he does with his claws. The tabby, Alexander writes, is “never not screaming at us for food” and pads around as if he owns the place. (That sounds awfully familiar!)
After bringing Kevin’s heavily pregnant mother in from the cold earlier this year, Alexander adopted Kevin’s mother and his “well-behaved sister,” but was repeatedly rebuffed when she tried to get rid of Kevin himself.
Three potential adopters fell through while Kevin was growing out of his kitten stage, drastically reducing his chances of finding a home.
Then something crazy happened: cat and human came to a mutual understanding and the beginnings of trust led to friendship and love. As with any progress in gaining a cat’s trust, it was not a quick process, but Kevin eventually showed another side — a much softer, appreciative version of himself who enjoys cuddling and expresses love despite his quirks.
“As this fraught year draws to a close, I want Kevin to be a pertinent reminder to us all that the little things bumming us out today might just lead to the things that make us happiest tomorrow,” Alexander wrote. “Start putting all those everyday stresses on the stairs. You never know where that might lead in 2026.”
Apologies for going radio silent over the past week. This past Saturday I sat down to write and my computer was dead. As in completely dead — I couldn’t even trick it into loading BIOS or getting a boot screen.
So I said farewell to a machine that had served me well since 2018, that served as my primary platform for writing, producing music and gaming.
Now I’ve got an absolute beast of a machine centered on one of the new Ryzen chipsets, and it takes quite a bit of restraint not to go into nerdy details. I’m still setting things up, especially the music production workflow.
The important thing is, I’m able to properly sit at a desk and write again, and Buddy can properly supervise me from his desktop perch again, so we are now back!
An old enemy lies in wait in the far reaches of the galaxy, ready to exact revenge on the most dashing, clever and dashingly clever captain in Starfleet!
ALPHA QUADRANT, Milky Way Galaxy — Captain Buddy is back for his most thrilling, treacherous and scrumptious adventure yet!
As the commanding officer of the USS Fowl Play and a legend within the galactic community, Captain Buddy and his trusty crew get the call to investigate reports of the malevolent Borg raiding colonies on the edge of Federation space.
Our intrepid captain arrives just in time to fend off a Borg cube attacking Dawn’s Edge, one of the largest colonies on the Felinian Rim. After mounting a heroic defense and defeating the diabolical enemy spacecraft, brave Captain Buddy discovers the Borg weren’t just trying to assimilate the peaceful Caitians living in the colony: they were after the colonist’s turkey, tuna and dilithium reserves as well!
With reinforcements several days away, Captain Buddy is tasked with defending the colony, reassuring terrified colonists, and managing a dwindling supply of sandwiches and snacks…
Pain In The Bud 