AUSTIN, Texas – A 4-year-old lab mix named Kevin, who's up for adoption at the Austin Animal Center, is a bit of a kleptomaniac.
He steals just about anything within his reach -- toys, food bowls, spare change, clothing, blankets, even a purse. Kevin lives in an office at the shelter because there are no available kennels, and he's built himself a nest of stolen goods he curls up in underneath a desk.
"Every time that I've been assigned to take care of the office dogs, I'll go in there and I'll notice his pile happens to be a little bit bigger than the last time I was in there," said Caitlyn Kretsinger, an animal care worker at AAC.
It can happen fast. Another employee, Kretsinger said, left her office briefly to take a phone call. "And as soon as she got back, her sweater that she had taken off was underneath Kevin and he was snoozing on it," she said.
But Kevin's motivation for stealing others' belongings, shelter employees believe, is rooted in something deeper.
Kevin's owner surrendered him to the shelter, and he's been living there now for four and a half months.
"He doesn't really have a whole lot, you know," said Jennifer Olohan, AAC's communications and media manager. "He's got a couple toys, he's got his food bowl, and he's got his bed, but that's really all he has."
The tendency to take, employees think, comes from the absence of people he's come to know.
"I think he's trying the best he can to maintain that presence by taking our stuff," Kretsinger said. "It makes his feel closer to us."
