Police say 2 teen girls suspected of catnapping from Lafayette pet store

LAFAYETTE, Calif. (KGO) -- Police in Lafayette are looking for two teenage girls responsible for what might be described as an unusual case of shoplifting.

Two cats were stolen from a Pet Food Express, but have since been returned and are now living in a foster home.

This one is not so much a shoplifting as a pet lifting, two kittens, up for adoption were by two teenagers grabbed who ran out the door.

If cats really do have nine lives each it's unclear how to tally the status of these two, young kittens named Allen Ginsburg and Walt Whitman.

Their odyssey began Sunday in a Pet Food Express store in Lafayette, where a volunteer rescue group named Community Concern for Cats had put the litter up for adoption.

Two teenage girls became interested in the animals. Danielle Blake was working says it got weird when the girls bolted with the kitties.

"They just ran out and I saw one had a cat and I assumed the other one had a cat," said Danielle Blake of Pet Food Express.

Mary Milton had been fostering the litter. "I felt like a dummy and my heart went down to my guts," Milton said. She had no idea where the girls would have taken them. "I did not think that the people who took them meant evil," Milton said.

Had the girls looked above in that store, they would have noticed security cameras, which captured the heist. It appears that they learned the store might release that video when Blake posted a missing kittens report on her Facebook page. It received more than 150 shares.

"It's amazing how in our community worked together," Blake said.

On Tuesday morning, the teenage girls who took the kitties brought them back.

"They had little smirks on their faces. I said let me get my manager and they said 'We don't need a manager,'" said Pet Food Express manager Terry Dean.

The cats are now home again with Milton who would love a face-to-face sit down with those girls.

"What they did was unkind to these cats and to the people who care about them," Dean said.

In the meantime, if you want to adopt Walt Whitman or Allen Ginsburg, they'll be back in the same store next Sunday.