Morris was adopted after being abandoned in a park at the age of two. The shelter named him Kai, but it didn’t suit him. He was an old soul – a curmudgeon who tried to pull his owners into old-school pubs, demanded routine, and treated walks as a favour to them. Morris was perfect.
Audacious thefts
Incorrigibly lazy and happiest on the sofa, his only real motivation was food. Perhaps he knew hunger in that park and vowed never to meet it again. His countless petty thefts included a sandwich stolen right out of a stranger’s hand, a birthday cake polished off tinfoil and all before its intended recipient tasted a bite, and multiple raw baking potatoes eaten – the last crime caught on video, or they would never have believed it.
Brink’s-Mat moment
His most audacious theft came after a 12-person barbecue. Under cover of darkness, he ate the bones of 24 chicken drumsticks and a large rack of ribs. He paid for it with a three-day sentence at the animal hospital, where X-rays showed the agonising progression of 100 needle-sharp bone shards through his digestive system. Luckily, he did not seem to be in too much pain.
Learned nothing
He survived and learned nothing. A couple of years later, he dispensed with a roast chicken so thoroughly that they wondered if it had even existed. The meat was gone, the entire carcass vanished. The metal platter was clean and shining, and the foil had been replaced neatly on top. The only evidence was a slightly misaligned chair and a single smear of grease.
Final days
Even when grey streaked his fur and he lost his hearing, his owners avoided talking about the end. When he developed dementia, the responsibility of deciding when to say goodbye fell to them. On his last day, he ate like there was no tomorrow: posh sausages, Marmite toast, and his unlikely favourite, satsumas. His owner reflects: “Where’s Morris?” used to mean “what’s he stealing now?” Now it means the disbelief that he is gone. But the stories remain, and they are richer for the 12 years their funny little Morris gave them.
