Dawn and dusk are Juno’s preferred prowling hours. She typically drags her finds into the house, and meows until Geston acknowledges her. Then she lies down beside her delivery. “We call it the drop and flop,” Geston says. At some point, Geston filled a wagon with Juno’s finds and strolled the neighborhood attempting to reunite gloves with their matches and toys with their children. Two items were recognized as junk that had been tossed into the trash can, and the rest went unclaimed. Juno’s fame has grown just as quickly as her collection. Geston dubbed her the Kelpto Kat and created social media accounts to chronicle Juno’s daily (often twice or thrice daily) gifts. She’s catnip to the media, and her story has been told in Noozhawk, The Santa Barbara News-Press and more than once on KEYT. Perhaps in Carpinteria she’s best known for her 2020 bid for mayor. Geston managed a pun-filled campaign to make Juno the City of Carpinteria’s honorary mayor, printing buttons and yard signs that read, “Vote fur Juno…the purr-fect choice.” The human-feline pair canvassed the town, and even
WHO DUNNIT?
JUNO THE KLEPTO KAT It was the summer of 2019 when odd objects started showing up in Connie Geston’s yard: a gardening glove, rags, rubber balls. Was it the kids next door? The wind? Nope. It was the work of Juno the Klepto Kat.
enjoyed a photo op with Mayor Wade Nomura. Juno’s collecting routine seems to bring her satisfaction and help calm her wild and rambunctious nature. Carpinterians, meanwhile, benefit from Juno’s diligent litter patrol, and many see her as four-legged environmental role model. “The community
loves
her,” Geston says. “They
absolutely
love her.”
Born into a feral litter in Los Angeles, Juno was taken from her mother at just five weeks old. The Geston family adopted her in 2015 as a feisty black and white kitten known as Indiana Jones. They renamed her Juno and quickly fell in love with this new family member and her endless, restless energy. Eventually, Juno’s restless energy became focused on collecting. Once Geston realized that it was Juno delivering neighborhood flotsam and jetsam to her yard, she started recording each item. As of late April, Juno had dragged 735 items home to her human mom. Her collection includes nearly 150 gloves of all types, as well as socks, plastic toys, sticks, rags, and trash. “We don’t know what we’re going to do with this stuff,” says Geston, who now has a small area of the house dedicated to displaying Juno’s found art. SUMMER2021 29
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