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

It was a terribly close incident; it was only his amazing homing instinct that had brought Casper back to me. He remained tired for a while, and though his pads recovered, he seemed reluctant to go out for a few days.

His tendency to go walkabout remained undiminished, however. On another occasion, one of the First drivers asked me when I was going to work whether Casper had got home all right the day before. I said he had, but what had made him ask? ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he got on as usual but someone must have scared him or thrown him off the seat, because he got off at a stop that wasn’t one of his usual ones.’

He got home in one piece then but I was starting to feel as if every time Casper went out that might be the last time I’d see him There was a constant fear that he would jump in a delivery van and the driver would unwittingly take him away without even knowing he was there.

I tried so hard to discourage him from crossing the road, but how can you stop an animal who has his independence? I don’t know what his life was like before we got him, but perhaps he was always on roads. Cats are so free spirited; our fears may just be the price we have to pay for their companionship. I’d have to lock Casper in and tie him up to stop him from going out – and, believe me, I’ve been tempted.

Casper broke the cat flap twice; he completely smashed it while I was at work I got home to find a scene of mayhem and a missing cat, which proved to me how determined he was when he put his mind to things. It was as if he couldn’t bear to be a prisoner. Given that he was so light-footed, there were times when he managed to sneak past me without me having the slightest notion that he had done so. I’d be sitting quite happily on the sofa, thinking how well I’d done to keep Casper in that day, when he’d stroll in without a care in the world, his dirty fur and hunger proving that he had been out all day when I’d thought he was upstairs sleeping like a good boy.

One summer, when it felt as if the traffic on the road outside was even faster than usual, I decided to make a concerted effort to keep him in. However, it was so hot that I needed to open windows to let some air in. What was I going to do?

The stuffiest room seemed to be our bedroom. I thought that if I could get a little breeze in there during the day, Chris and I might have a better chance of sleeping at night. I went to the garden centre and got some pieces of trellis that I rigged up so the windows could be opened but Casper couldn’t get near the small part that I worried he would squeeze through. I should have known he would see it as a challenge not a barrier. By the end of the first day, he had wiggled his way through somehow, jumped out of the window and onto the roof, leaped down onto the dustbins below and trotted across the road.

He always found a way to get out – he was such a little escape artist. Unless I fitted this cat with a tracking device, I would never be able to keep an eye on him twenty-four hours a day – even then, I bet he would have found a way to get round it. Casper didn’t just enjoy being a wanderer, he seemed to need his freedom desperately. Perhaps it was a legacy from his life before us, but it was causing me more sleepless nights than ever.

CHAPTER 21

Who is Casper?

Casper’s fame had brought new people to the fore. I’d had a few showing what I felt was too much interest in where I’d got Cassie. One day Edd rang me to say that something strange had happened. A man had called him to say that he believed Casper was his cat and he was, in effect, putting in a claim on him He wanted to talk to me; he wanted to come and see Casper. Edd asked whether I was willing for him to give the man my phone number? What could I say?

I’d got Casper ‘second-hand’ and knew that he had a life before me; there had always been the chance that he had another family out there who would track him down one day. I remembered what had happened when the vet had discovered he was chipped all those years ago: the cat rescue lady had been desperate to ensure that Casper remained with me as she felt that he could not be returned to his previous home. Although she hadn’t been able to give me any more details, there was an implication that he had been with someone who’d abused him I would fight with every breath in my body to keep him from being returned to such an environment.

Minutes after I’d spoken to Edd, the man rang me. He seemed friendly and said that he, his wife and his two teenage children would like to come and see Casper – or ‘Tom’ as they called him When they arrived, I was nervous, but Cassie showed absolutely no interest in them whatsoever. When they called him using the name they said they’d given him, he didn’t prick up his ears.

I asked them why they thought he was theirs and how they’d lost him in the first place. The man informed me that they’d had ‘Tom’ for a few years and then got a kitten. Once the kitten was brought into the family, ‘Tom’ started spending most of his time with an old lady who lived nearby. When she moved, ‘Tom’ disappeared. I wondered why they’d left it all this time to track him down, but they were very evasive and couldn’t even remember if he’d been chipped.

They didn’t get down on the floor to play with Casper, they didn’t hug him or seem relieved to have found him, which I would have expected if he had been the cat they’d lost all those years ago. They took lots of pictures as I asked again why they thought he was their cat. All they could come up with was that he had the same markings – black, white and brown.

This comment confirmed to me that they were making it all up. Casper would not have had brown splodges on him when he was younger; these were the equivalent of age spots that had appeared after years of lying in the sun. Strangely, they made no further attempts to claim Casper; they simply said ‘goodbye’ and left. I told Edd about it, but neither of us heard from them again, and I suspect they just wanted a day out to see the famous cat.

I took the opportunity to contact the chip people in order to try to find out a bit more about Casper’s life before he’d come to me, but it was rather like dealing with an adoption agency. The whole process is shrouded in secrecy. All they would tell me was that he was originally called Danny and had been registered in Hampshire. It was very frustrating but I had to accept that I would never know the full story. Even after Casper died and I contacted them again, pleading for details and pointing out that surely privacy wasn’t an issue now that he was gone, they refused to say anything.

I had my hands full with other matters too. In 2009, Jack started to deteriorate rapidly. He was one of Chris’s favourites, but I knew that I would have to be the one to make the decision about whether it was his time to pass. He was getting thinner and thinner, because he was not eating properly and he was becoming weaker by the day. I’d been off work for some time with my own health problems but I knew that I would have to go back at some point soon. I was terribly worried about how Jack would cope while I was away. He was at the stage where he had to be helped in practically all of his day-to-day activities, such as being taken to his food dish or lifted into the litter tray.

One day, about a week or so before I was due to return to work, it was awfully cold and I couldn’t find Jack anywhere. I went outside to look for him; although he was rarely venturing anywhere by that stage, I’d searched high and low inside with no luck. I opened the back door and there was the poor creature, huddled in the corner of the decking in the pouring rain. He wasn’t attempting to find shelter; he looked like he’d given up. He was soaked through, completely bedraggled. ‘Oh, Jack!’ I cried, rushing over to lift him up and rush him indoors to the warmth. ‘What are you up to, you silly old thing?’