Before ordering coffees, breakfast sandwiches or grabbing a newspaper, customers at the Eight Street Mini Mart in Park Slope all ask the same question: What happened to Jabal, the bodega cat?
The cat caper has the neighborhood up in arms and on the hunt for a couple caught on surveillance camera walking away with the kitten Thursday morning. The man holds the cat at arm’s length, as if it were struggling to escape.
“ We do have some thefts that occur, packages in buildings, but stealing a pet, I've never heard of that happen,” said local resident Nina Allen, who is in her 70s. “So people are surprised. … He was everybody’s favorite crazy cat."
Bodega owner Imad Innab, 60, said the catnapping went down as he began setting up for the day, displaying newspapers outside the store. While he was distracted, he said, Jabal, his 3-month-old white bodega cat with a smudge of brown fur on his nose, snuck out the door.
A couple was captured walking off with the cat at 7:18 a.m. It was the last time Innab saw his beloved cat. The snatching must have happened in an instant, Innab said.
Bodega owner Imad Innab, 60, said the kitten had touched his heart.
Two customers scoured the neighborhood looking for the culprits. One had no luck. But Ken Park, 69, said he spotted the couple in Prospect Park. They were “mean,” he said.
Park said he asked them to return the cat, but they refused. He said the woman kept the cat in her jacket. Jabal, at least, didn’t seem distressed. The couple eventually walked away. Park was left wondering if he should have done more.
“I tried to help [Innab] out and I'm frustrated because I could of done a better job at it. But it's not easy to recapture a cat,” Park said.
Innab, who has run the bodega for the past 39 years, shook his head in disappointment Friday morning as customer after customer came in asking if the cat had been returned.
Residents had posted signs depicting the couple and a picture of the cat across the neighborhood. A local message board and Reddit post captured the outrage over the incident. An NYPD spokesperson said Innab had declined to file a police report because he did not want to press charges.
Imad Innab said he got the kitten after his previous bodega cat died after 17 years of dutiful service.
Longtime customer and long-distance trucker Jason Miller, 50, popped in to ask if Jabal was back.
Innab, who goes by the nom de bodega “Jimmy,” offered Miller a Gatorade on the house. Miller refused and paid. Miller is so fond of Jimmy and Jabal that he keeps a picture of the bodega cat on his phone.
“ He's the patron saint of Jimmy's store. So we want the cat back,” Miller said. “That gives you an idea of how much we value animals around here in Park Slope. … It's unconscionable that somebody would just callously take that sort of precious thing from somebody who cares so much for their animals.”
Innab got Jabal from a friend after his previous cat, Victoria, died after 17 years on the job. A large photo of Victoria hangs in the shop. Innab named Jabal after his daughter. The word means “mountain” in Arabic.
The kitten, Innab said, “ touched my heart" from the moment he saw him.
