Beloved 18-year-old bodega cat snatched right outside NYC deli: ‘Tearing us apart’
An apparent cat burglar struck a Queens deli last weekend — snatching a bodega’s 18-year-old tabby that one grieving worker said is like his “teenager.”
Video captured the moment the stranger scooped up and carried away Antonio, a staple of K’Glen Deli and Sari Sari Store in Woodside.
“The people love him here. People always stop in the store looking for the cat. They keep saying, ‘Where’s the cat?’” Glen Alagasi, who has owned the deli since 2014, told The Post.
“I’m very sad without Antonio.”
The alleged theft occurred Aug. 2 around 8:30 p.m., when Antonio was licking the concrete sidewalk recently dampened from rainfall, a quirk he was known to enjoy.
“When we were closing, I said, ‘Where’s Antonio?’ So I was looking for Antonio that night. I was doing my whistling,” Alagasi said, thinking the cat was at the back of a nearby house.
When the large tabby was nowhere to be found, Alagasi, 53, grew concerned: Antonio was never known to miss a meal.
That’s when Alagasi checked his security footage, which caught the stranger grabbing Antonio as the cat was licking the ground just several feet from K’Glen’s wide-open front door.
The man can be seen slowly walking down 65th Avenue and straight up to the cat.
Without hesitation, he reaches down and grabs Antonio — but the cat wriggles from his grip and escapes, seemingly making an attempt to head back toward the deli.
The stranger takes a moment to watch the slow-moving cat before following Antonio and picking him up for a second time, placing him under his arm and carrying him toward Woodside Avenue.
“I think he stole it, because if he thinks it’s a stray cat, our door was open at night,” Alagasi said, adding that he’s heard rumors of other cats in the area mysteriously vanishing.
“He had bad intention.”
Alagasi waited two days before his wife reported the alleged theft to the NYPD, but said he wouldn’t press charges if the stranger returned his beloved Antonio.
The cat predates K’Glen Deli and Sari Sari Store, he said, and lived at the location when it was a Mexican grocery store.
“He’s like a teenager. He comes here and eats and sleeps. He then goes out to three houses from the back and hanging out there for long hours. He’s like a teenager smoking there and coming back here at mealtime,” said Alagasi, a father of four.
“I caress him, I even play with him with the broom. Oh god. He’s my companion here,” he continued.
“Now I’m always here by myself.”
Alagasi isn’t the only one reeling from Antonio’s absence — the feline has become a local celebrity over the past two decades and draws teenagers who love to take pictures with the 18-year-old tabby.
Concerned customers have plastered missing cat fliers of Antonio throughout the neighborhood in hopes it will lead to his safe return.
“It’s insanity. A coward does that. Nobody does that. The cat has been here a long long time. That’s a coward’s move,” said Doc Roberts, 63, a regular customer who works in the area.
“Every time I come here, the cat rubs up against my leg.”
Neighbor Pia Tracy said Antonio is “part of our everyday life.”
The tabby is best friends with her cat — and even visits her family to socialize.
“[I’m] devastated and heartbroken because I don’t know if he’s OK. We just hope he’s OK. It’s the unknown if he’s OK,” she said.
“That’s what’s tearing us apart here,” she said.
“I was horrified because nobody has ever taken him. Everyone knows him here so it’s shocking.”
