Earlier today, while I slept, someone stole Scratchen's food from a cupboard in my apartment.
This is not surprising that this happened. Whenever Scratchen has only two cans of food left, they disappear.
According to a couple of demons, the landlord is the culprit. That would not be surprising, either. He routinely enters my apartment while I am gone and knocks on my back window when I have guests (in order to scare them); and, once, based on a photo he attached to a recent court filing, he cornered my frightened cat, who is huddled into a corner in the photo, wide-eyed, with her back to the camera.
Even if he did this, however, he would have done it only at demonic prompting. Based on my lifetime of experience with them (the 26-year hiatus notwithstanding), stealing in this way is characteristic of their preference for needling someone to death, versus all-out killing them.
They could steal everything you have in the blink of an eye (read the Book of Job, in which Satan wiped out everything in Job's field in less time than it took for workers to describe what happened); but, they go for prolonged emotional distress, and subjecting their victim to repeated loss in this way is more effective in their eyes than just doing it once. And, taking from someone you love—as I do Scratchen—makes stealing her food ideal over taking, say, toilet paper. It is doubly so when they know you cannot afford to replace the food right away.
This pattern is easily discernible to me now, but only after hearing about one of their human counterparts, Jon Harrington, instructing his protege, Josh Koppenhaver, back in 2006, on what to take from my home (keepsakes) and what not to bother with (valuables, unless they're keepsakes).