Susan Finden - Casper the Commuting Cat - The True Story of the Cat Who Rode the Bus and Stole Our Hearts

The stories kept coming and I was getting to hear more and more, although the information came in snippets. People all over Plymouth were talking about Casper. One woman I knew who worked on the taxi buses, was laughingly discussing his adventures when a passenger said that she saw him lots and had never really thought anything about it until she read his story in the paper. That appeared to be of the experience of many locals. Perhaps it’s part of the British desire not to get involved. If Casper’s appearances on the bus were treated as normal by everyone else, then no one wanted to be the first to draw attention to him So, in turn, everyone thought it was fine, and Casper believed that he was entitled to go about his daily journey without interruption. I was so lucky that he always seemed to be meeting the right people and that he had never once come across some ‘Jobsworth’ who thought that little Casper shouldn’t be on public transport and kicked him off.

The Casper phenomenon was particularly strange for Chris, as he wasn’t around very often. He had to take long-distance jobs as and when they came up; he never knew if he would be in Scotland or Spain from one week to the next. He would tell people a few bits and pieces about what our strange cat was up to, but, to begin with, they all thought he was pulling their leg. Once they started reading about it in the Sun , the Guardian , and pretty much every other paper in the country, they realized that, bizarre though it may have sounded, he was telling the truth.

Once, when Chris was driving to France, he had the radio on and heard Sarah Kennedy on Radio 2 talking about Casper. That’s my cat, he thought proudly. It didn’t change their relationship. Cassie didn’t suddenly develop airs and graces; he was still the same boy who jumped into the car beside Chris as soon as he pulled into the drive after a trip away.

Casper made people happy: me, Chris, the drivers, everyone who read about him Despite the redundancies, the constant talk of recession and the unemployment figures rising, he put a smile on people’s faces. Rob said to me at one point that life’s just too serious. Lightness helps us all and you need to find happiness wherever you can. Casper gave everyone a bit of a break and reminded us that we can still find a bit of fun in our day-to-day lives.

He was taking it all in his stride but I wished that someone had told me what to expect and how to deal with it. There seem to be no guidelines handed out to people who are suddenly thrust into the media spotlight, and I would have welcomed some dearly.

CHAPTER 18

How to Deal with Fame

Casper

Assume that everyone is a good person – yes, they may want to write a story about you; yes, they may want to take your photograph, but as this will not interfere with the important things in life (such as riding buses or napping), allow them access. After all, it’s no skin off your whiskers.

Do not be embarrassed or shy about the barter side of the deal – every celebrity has their price and, in my experi ence, most journalists are perfectly happy to engage in a spot of belly-rubbing, ear-scratching or coat-brushing to prove that they are fundamentally decent, if misrepresented, individuals.

Leave all the tricky stuff to your person – in fact, don’t even concern yourself with the things that take up so much of their time, such as deadlines, phone calls and suchlike. A cat may have nine lives, but none of them is meant to be stressful.

Give your person a little comfort in return – they seem to become inordinately stressed about the way in which their head fur should be fashioned, whether they are required to paint bright colours on parts of their faces and if their costume is ‘just right’. When they seem to be running around not achieving anything, jump on any pile of clothes they have discarded and roll on your back. They will be delighted, even if such delight seems to result in them running about even more and shriek ing a little.

When the doorbell rings, run away – you may even wish to ‘hide’ somewhere they can see you quite easily, but find themselves unable to access. I’m sure that everyone finds this as funny as I do.

If you are expected to perform – for example, I have been asked to pose for pictures beside the wrong bus, and board a bus when it is clearly not the one I’m waiting for – be gracious. You will be repaid very soon, usually in the form of turkey roll and cuddles.

After a while, when the attention has quietened down, your person will invite you to ‘listen to this’, or ‘come and watch this’. For these purposes, you are expected to sit beside them while they read to you from a newspaper or put the noisy picture box on. Every so often, they will say your name excitedly, showing the simple side to their nature, for we know that the more interesting activities would be to roll on the newspaper or hit the picture box with our paws every time something moves.

Do not change your behaviour – this is not because people will say that fame has gone to your head, but because dogs will laugh at you. Need I say more?

CHAPTER 19

Joining the World of Celebrity Cats

Of course, Casper wasn’t the only cat who had gained fame for his travels, nor was he the only one who had discovered the pleasures of riding on the bus. A couple of years before Casper became famous, I read about a white cat called Macavity who was in the papers because he liked to get on the bus from Walsall to Wolverhampton most mornings and ride for 400 metres to his favourite fish and chip shop. Passengers commented that he was the perfect passenger: he was quiet, minded his own business and never distracted the driver – just like Casper. I wondered whether he and Macavity had known each other at some point earlier in their lives and discussed their love of buses.

They weren’t the only cats who had hit the headlines. I recalled reading about another called Kofi who’d gone missing for nearly four years. His owner had moved house from Nottingham to Sheffield, and, though she desperately missed her lovely cat, she’d given up hope of ever seeing him again. Little did she know that Kofi was both adventurous and determined. After he was picked up by the RSPCA wandering around Ipswich, looking lost and undernourished with an infected flea bite, they checked to see if he was microchipped. He was, and was soon reunited with his delighted owner. I guess that Casper clocked up a lot more than the 120 miles Kofi was estimated to have gone in his travels, but he did much of it in the luxury of a number three bus.

Plenty of other cats have been returned to their human families years after going missing, such as Dixie from Birmingham who took nine years to find her way back. Her mum said that her personality hadn’t changed one little bit since the day she disappeared, but I wonder whether these creatures have experiences that scar them in one way or another. For a domestic cat to survive in the wild for such a long time is a miracle – perhaps they are taken in at some point by another family, or perhaps they are the lucky ones. Whatever happens, it always lifts my heart when I read or hear of another little moggy finding its way home to the ones who love him or her.

Perhaps the most impressive journey of all that I’ve heard of was that of Sandi, the ginger and white cat from Portsmouth. When he went missing one Friday, his owners were frantic because he’d never disappeared before. They handed out leaflets and put up posters everywhere, hoping against hope that someone would have information about where he was. They couldn’t quite believe it when they got a call three days later to say that Sandi had indeed been found – in Spain!