From the files of Cute When A Cat Does It, But Call The Cops When A Human Does, there's an extremely cute kitty in New Zealand that's stealing the neighbors' socks and underwear. In the last two months alone, Brigit the Tonkinese has brought home 11 pairs of underpants and more than 50 socks. "It's all men's," her owner reports. "It's really, really weird. She's got really specific taste." The good news: We have to believe this is better than having your cat murder other animals and bring the corpses home. The bad news: Really hard to make eye contact with the neighbors when you're constantly returning their underwear. We in Portland know all about cat burglars, because we have a kitty named Snorri who lives in the Montavilla neighborhood and who is similarly larcenous, though Snorri isn't particularly fixated on underwear. Moral of the story: If your kitty must be a thief, at least hope he's not a thief with an underwear fetish.

Meanwhile, an enterprising dog in Mississippi also brought his owner a gift - a plastic bag containing a pound of pot. (Sounds like someone was sick of thieving cats getting all the headlines, no?) The owner swears he has no idea where the drugs came from, and while we were initially tempted to scoff at that, we thought of the hapless owners of Snorri and Brigit, who presumably spend God knows how much time convincing their neighbors they're not kleptos, their cats are. And we reconsidered.

From the files of Oh HELL No, we have the story of this rat climbing all over this man sleeping on the New York subway. Naturally, there's video, and naturally, the grossly understated story contains the line "a shrieking noise can be heard coming from an undetermined location." Pro tip: Odds are the shrieking is coming from the guy who wakes up to find a live rat on his neck. After it crawled up from his crotch. We almost shrieked while writing that, for God's sake. The silver lining: Suddenly TriMet's looking downright antiseptic, isn't it?

To help you recover from that rat thing, here's a video of puppies playing with ice cubes. Keep watching it until you can convince yourself that that tickle on your neck is merely your hair. (Seriously: Did you see? It was right up by his face. His face! Aieee!)

Happy weekend! Let your pets steal anything they want, as long as they protect you from rats!

-- Mary Mooney

mmooney@oregonian.com

503-412-7020; @MaryKnitsPDX