Big Mike

COMMENT Cat thieves are on the prowl so don’t let them get their claws on yours

It’s also a good time to invest in better forecourt security, as I found out to my detriment last week.

Anyone with access to a local community Facebook group will have noticed that the nation is currently in the grip of a peculiar obsession with dog thefts, which – if nothing else – will have done wonders for the sale of cable ties.

Apparently, if you find one around your gatepost, it’s a marker for the dognappers to strike in the dead of night and whisk away your beloved ‘fur baby’ (which is social media lingo for ‘pet’, apparently). This month, though, I want to talk not about dog theft, but about cat theft. And it has nothing to do with your smaller fur babies being taken by Dickensian-style pet pesterers with fishing nets and black cloaks. Cat theft is rife at the moment, and it’s your car babies that you need to lock up.

With values of scrap metal at a 10-year high, it may be a good time to clear out ‘Pooh Corner’ (which is where I store all my rubbishy part-exes to clear) but it’s also a good time to invest in better forecourt security, as I found out to my detriment last week. Turns out the big ‘CCTV in operation’ stickers that I bought in a seaside gift shop in Rhyl a few years back aren’t as much of a deterrent as I thought they were, and if you want proper security you need to spend more than a fiver. I found this out the hard way when I came into work, all ready for an early viewing on a 10-year-old Golf.

The previous night’s Cabernet Sauvignon had made me a little later in than I’d hoped to be, so I didn’t have a chance (or the clarity of thought) to run the car up before the customer arrived. But I wasn’t unduly concerned as I knew it had a decent battery and a quarter of a tank of motion potion, which at that level of the market counts as a full sales prep. The customer arrived and looked around it, making all sorts of positive noises about the colour and pretty alloy wheels, blithely ignoring the fact they were shod with the finest ditchfinders that money could hide from, so I set myself up for the sale, pointing out the partial service history (which I can’t help but think is as useful as an expired magazine subscription) and the fact it had a nice little a/c button on the dash (no idea if it worked or not, but this was the closing act).

They were keen as the proverbial bean, so in order to show them just how good it was I jumped in the driver’s seat and switched on the ignition, pausing to show them how the posh Germans liked to have softly lit dashboards, and turned the key – only for the Golf to sound like my late father’s old Massey Ferguson vintage tractor. By the time I’d convinced the punter that we weren’t under siege and that it was the car making that noise, it was too late. The deal was off.

Sticking my head underneath the car after he’d scuttled off to the bus stop, I discovered that some NotRight had been over during the night and cut the catalytic converter clean out of the middle of the exhaust pipe in the dead of night. And subsequent investigation revealed they’d done another 12 cars as well.

My insurers weren’t especially interested. They asked me to review my CCTV, but as it’s just a big yellow sticker it didn’t really give me any clues, and I was left with no option but to suck up the cost of 13 new catalytic converters and a day of my mate Bob the Welder’s time to stick some exhausts back together.

It was worth it, though, for a tale that Bob told me about a less scrupulous member of the trade who caught a cat thief in the act, and rather than refer him to the authorities took the law into his own hands – a procedure that involved a stool, some rope and the remnants of the chopped-up exhausts.

For three days (so the story goes at least) the catnapper was made to stand on the stool, and every time one of the employees walked past he would be clobbered with the exhaust and knocked off it to hang suspended by his armpits for a short while, allowing the exhaust-wielder to have a quick game of swingball with him before returning him to the stool. It wasn’t the only stool on display by the time they’d finished with him, either...

Big Mike

OUR MAN ON THE INSIDE SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON THE CAR BUSINESS

Who is Big Mike?

Well, that would be telling. What we can say is he’s had more than 40 years in the car trade so has probably forgotten more about it than we’re likely to know.