The 14-year-old cat is well known throughout his Lewiston neighborhood.  Residents know that if they are missing something, it might just be in a plastic tote at the corner of his owners’ house on Lucille Avenue. Or, if they find a “present” in their front yard or driveway they know just where to put it.  

Steven Blais was looking to get a dog about 12 years ago and went to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He didn’t find any he liked and ran into a friend looking for a cat. They looked at a few and when they brought out a cute orange feline that looked at him with longing eyes, Blais couldn’t leave him there.  

“Everything was fine for the longest time. He would disappear for days, weeks, even an entire winter when somebody in the neighborhood took him in when they thought he was a stray,” said Erin Blais, Steven’s wife. “But it was when we brought our daughter home from the hospital that things got a little crazy. He would start taking things from us, especially clothes, towels and shoes. Then it was like he was OK with us and started coming home at night, often with somebody’s shirt or a rag.”  

Sammy comes and goes as he pleases, crawling through the dog door and under the backyard fence to freedom. “We know when he comes home sometimes at night as we wake up in the morning and there is something he has tried to drag through the doggie door and it was too big and gets stuck,” Steven said.

Recently his daughter had some friends over to swim in their backyard pool.  When it was time for them to go home, one boy couldn’t find his shirt. Steven had a good idea what might have happened and after walking around the neighborhood, he found Sammy dragging it across a neighbor’s lawn.  

Everyone in the neighborhood now knows Sammy.

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Jim Bossie, who lives across the street, was mowing and working in his yard when he had to go into the garage for something and put his gloves down on the steps.

“My wife saw Sam making off with one of the gloves, and caught him red-handed … and told him to drop it … he did, and went scurrying off. We, and all the neighbors, get a kick out of watching him patrolling the neighborhood in search of something that he can drag home.” 

He even has friends at neighborhood restaurants. “But he is a bit snobby,” Steven said. “He will only eat turkey. We wonder if they have been snubbing him as he recently brought home some silverware wrapped in a napkin, like you get at a restaurant.

“He is like the neighborhood bum, but he thinks he owns the neighborhood,” Steven said.


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