Under the cover of darkness, Claude slips through the back door of an unknown home and enters the kitchen.
As its unsuspecting owners sleep inside, the intruder pads over the terracotta flagstones with barely a sound.
He knows what he is looking for and he knows how to get it. He’s done this before. But it isn’t jewellery or electronics that Claude’s after – it’s food.
Scroll down for video
Lilly the cat at the BBC's feline HQ in Shamley Green, Surrey. Lilly is one of the stars of BBC's Horizon documentary, The Secret Life of the Cat. The makers of the show fitted 50 cats with highly sensitive GPS collars and miniature 'cat cams' that recorded their every move When the cat's away: The BBC Two show followed 50 cats like Thomas, pictured, around the leafy Surrey village of Shamley Green during one week in AprilBecause Claude isn’t just any old burglar. He’s a cat burglar – quite literally.
An eight-year-old grey and white tom, he likes chasing mice, sitting in the front garden and Whiskas cat food – which he regularly steals from the bowl of his neighbour’s moggy, a five-year-old ginger named Rosie, once her owners have gone to bed, by making full use of their cat flap.
More... Inside the three-bedroom house of squalor where cat-hoarding mother and daughter kept nearly 100 pets in filthy conditions Mortal tom-cats! Photographer captures cats springing through the air with claws outstretched like characters in a kung fu film Florida couple running animal rescue out of their home arrested 'for keeping 19 starving dogs and cats and two children in horrible conditions'
Despite owning Claude for seven years, having adopted him as a kitten, Henrietta Mulnier, a 47-year-old lecturer, was unaware of his nocturnal thieving (which, as it turns out, is surprisingly common among domestic felines) until recently.
‘I had no idea,’ she laughs. ‘I’ve always wondered why he never seemed to lose weight even when I put him on a diet – now I know.’
It’s only thanks to a fascinating experiment – the results of which can be seen in Horizon: The Secret Life Of The Cat tonight on BBC Two - that Claude’s light-fingered ways have been revealed.
Dr Sarah Ellis, far right, shows the cat owners where their pets travelled during the one-week surveillance. Each cat's route was tracked and mapped onto a large screen at the BBC's Surrey Cat HQ
