A Brooklyn woman facing three criminal charges for allegedly swiping a three-month-old kitten from a Park Slope bodega says she plans to sue, even as she admits she took the cat home.
Mary Sierra walked out of a New York City courtroom without bail after her arraignment on charges of petty larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, and "companion animal stealing," a violation under New York State Agriculture and Markets Law that makes it illegal to remove or cause to be removed a dog or cat or to take ID tags from the animals. She was not contrite. She was furious.
Sierra told the New York Post she intends to sue over the accusation. The cat's owner, 60-year-old Imad "Jimmy" Innab, had a different reaction.
"She's gonna sue who? Sue me or the cat?"
Innab added that he wished she would sue the cat, too. "Go ahead!" he said. "She stole the cat. She knows it's stealing."
The trouble started on a Thursday morning at the 8th St. Mini Mart in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Surveillance video recorded two people, Sierra and an unnamed companion, walking away with Jabal, a three-month-old kitten who lived at the store. Sierra later told the Post the store was not open at 7 a.m. and that she found the cat "four houses away" from the bodega.
She called herself an animal lover with three rescue dogs at home. She said she believed Jabal was a stray.
Neighbors knew better. Between Thursday and the following Tuesday, people in the area told Sierra and her companion that the kitten belonged to someone, it was a pet, not a stray, and urged them to bring it back. Sierra eventually relented, but she did not return the cat herself. Her stepson delivered Jabal to the 78th Precinct stationhouse.
Police then took Sierra into custody.
That sequence matters. Sierra had days to return the cat voluntarily. She did not do so until neighbors pressured her, and even then she sent a family member to the police station rather than walk the kitten back to the store. In a city where crime and public safety remain persistent concerns, prosecutors apparently decided the conduct warranted charges, not a shrug.
Sierra's post-arraignment comments to the Post were a study in contradiction. She confirmed she picked up the cat and took it home. But she insisted, loudly, that she did not steal it.
"I went to jail yesterday for this s, t. I went to jail! They locked me up, they locked me up for this s, t. I did not steal the f, ing cat."
She also said the whole episode was humiliating.
"It's embarrassing, because everybody knows I didn't steal the f, ing cat."
Everybody, that is, except the criminal complaint, the surveillance footage, and the cat's owner.
Innab was blunt about the gap between Sierra's version of events and what he says actually happened. He told the Post that even if Sierra genuinely believed Jabal was a stray, the right move was obvious once she learned otherwise.
"Even if she thought it was a stray cat, after they told her no, she should have brought the cat back and said, 'Sorry, here is your cat,' end of story. But she took the cat and ran away."
That is the core of the case. New York law does not require a thief to announce her intentions. It requires that she took someone else's property. Sierra admits she did. Her defense, that she thought the cat was homeless, might carry more weight if she had returned the kitten the moment neighbors corrected her. She did not.
With Jabal safely back at the bodega, Innab said he has already ordered an ID tag for the kitten bearing his name and contact information. He also said he plans to find out whether the cat is old enough for a microchip implant. Those are the kinds of precautions a pet owner takes after someone walks off with his animal and then claims she did nothing wrong.
The criminal complaint lists three charges. Petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property are straightforward. The third, companion animal stealing, is less commonly seen. It falls under New York's Agriculture and Markets Law and specifically targets the removal of dogs and cats, as well as tampering with their identification tags. The statute exists precisely because pets are not interchangeable pieces of property. They are living creatures with owners who care about them.
Sierra was released without bail, which is consistent with the low-level nature of the charges. In a city where accountability for far more serious offenses often proves elusive, the fact that prosecutors bothered to charge a cat theft at all is notable. Whether the case moves forward or quietly disappears will say something about how seriously New York treats property crimes, even small, furry ones.
Several questions remain unanswered. Sierra's unnamed companion, visible on the surveillance footage, has not been publicly identified or charged. It is unclear who filed the initial complaint with police, Innab, or someone else, and no next court date has been disclosed. The case number and the specific court handling the matter have not been made public in available reporting.
Park Slope residents, meanwhile, are left to wonder about the state of their neighborhood. Brooklyn has seen its share of contentious city policy decisions in recent years, and a bodega cat snatched off the sidewalk is hardly the gravest offense on the blotter. But it is the kind of low-level disorder that erodes trust in a community, and the kind of case where a simple apology and a returned kitten could have prevented the whole mess.
Under the current city administration, New Yorkers have grown accustomed to watching officials treat serious misconduct with a light hand. If the system can muster the energy to arraign a woman for taking a bodega cat, perhaps it can find the will to hold bigger offenders to account, too.
Sierra says she wants to sue. Innab says she stole his cat. The surveillance tape is not on her side. When you take something that isn't yours, keep it for days, and only give it back under pressure, most people have a word for that, and it isn't "rescue."
