Casper the Commuting Cat: The True Story of the Cat Who Rode the Bus and Stole Our Hearts

CHAPTER 4

Sue’s Story

I’ve always loved cats. Often upsetting events in people’s lives can make their bond with other creatures even stronger, and I had one particularly sad experience that I believe strengthened the close ties I felt with animals.

When I was a little girl, I lived in the Middle East, as my father worked as an electrical engineer in an oil refinery. Lots of British workers went there during the 1940s and 1950s. Dad set off to make a life for us when I was five. It was company policy for the men to settle for a few years before they went through the expense and upheaval of bringing the families out too, so I stayed in Britain with my mum and younger sister, Lesley.

However, while Dad was away, Lesley developed cancer. At the time, I was only aware that she was ill and my mum was very upset. Children in those days weren’t given much information about things that weren’t considered to be their business; perhaps this was a way of protecting us. Whatever the reason, Lesley’s illness had repercussions for all of us. As well as the huge emotional impact of her eventual death, there were practical implications too. The company my dad worked for relaxed their usual regulations and we were allowed to join him quicker than would normally have been allowed.

I was eight by then. Although for a while I thought I had emerged relatively unscathed from losing Lesley, I know now that wasn’t the case. At the time, I had no other siblings. Whatever happens in your childhood does have a lasting impact. My early years were affected by Lesley’s terrible pain and tragic death, by my father’s absence and by the fact that my mother’s time was spent caring for Lesley and trying to hold everything together on her own under the most difficult of circumstances.

After Lesley died, there was a sense that we were starting afresh, so my mum and I packed up and prepared to leave the UK. There was some continuity though. When we moved to Bahrain, we took our cat, Blackie, with us. He was really my mum’s cat, and I recall her pouring out her heart and soul to him all through Lesley’s illness. I remember him very well. I used to take him into my bedroom for cuddles, but he always listened for my mum and ran to her if she called him I realized from that early age that animals do have a sixth sense for giving what they can to whoever needs them for whatever reason.

I also saw how good Blackie was with Lesley. She was very ill just before she died, and the cat seemed to sense that, staying with her throughout and always being there whenever she could weakly manage to reach out to stroke him. I saw at first hand the connection a person could have with an animal. My mum really depended on Blackie – for some semblance of normality, I guess. Perhaps I see more with maturity, but even as a child I knew there could be something special and I carried that with me. My mum has been dead for a few years now, and I’ve had children (and grandchildren) myself, but the experiences of those early years have stayed with me and the impact Blackie made was strong.

When we moved to Awali, a municipality within the kingdom of Bahrain, it was to a sort of encampment with fencing that was ten feet high to keep the wild dogs out. There were lots of other families, mainly American, British and Australian, and I was never short of other children to play with. The heat was terribly dry and it took weeks to get used to it, but once that happened, it was perfectly normal to see gangs of dozens of children playing cowboys and Indians in temperatures of over 100 degrees fahrenheit.

It was a strange time, although perhaps I didn’t realize it then. My dad took it upon himself to provide us with a lawn, despite the fact that we were living in the middle of the desert. Every day he would drive down to the beach and bring back a few clumps of grass. Of course, it was beach grass, not the lush green meadow type of covering we’re used to in England. He would carefully dig little holes in our garden, plug in the beach grass and water it diligently. Each day he would bring back more, and each day he would claim that his ‘lawn’ was closer to completion. The odd thing was he did eventually manage to create something that resembled a lawn, and everyone referred to it as such.

When I first went to Awali, I attended a school run by Americans, but education there stopped at eleven years of age. Looking back on it, it seems remarkable that I wasn’t privy to any of the discussions relating to me. Almost without any warning, it was announced that I would be returning to Britain alone to continue my education at boarding school in Guildford. It was a huge shock. My sister was dead, my mum was still grieving and I had three new siblings I barely knew Now I was being shipped back to a country that, for me, was associated with illness and grief. My paternal grandparents were there to take care of me during holidays but I was still incredibly lonely in the knowledge that the rest of my family were thousands of miles away and I was expected to be a grown up.

There were a couple of occasions when I went back to Awali for the long summer holiday, but it was very expensive; the fact that I went so rarely suggests that my parents felt it cost too much to have me with them when they were paying so much for my education.

I recall one time flying out on my own from London Airport, as it was then called, on a huge BOAC plane. For some reason, my photograph was in the newspaper, and it looks bizarre to me now, as I was still wearing my school uniform. All I remember about that trip is getting off at Rome for refuelling and going to the bathroom, where I found a tiny little grey and white kitten. I lay on the floor of a half-built toilet in a strange country in all the dust and dirt, and played with the little scrap of a thing until it finally occurred to me that the reason I could hear someone calling my name over and over again was because the lady on the Tannoy was frantically shouting that the plane was waiting for one last passenger and could I please go there IMMEDIATELY!

I felt terribly lonely. My grandparents, who were Dutch, did all they could to give me a normal home life during holidays, and they were lovely people, but I longed for the day when I would be part of a family again – a family that had cats at the heart of it.

I made it through boarding school without being terribly academic and ended up with a job in a travel agency. It wasn’t as glamorous as I’d hoped; I’d had visions of spending my days organizing exotic trips for people, whereas the reality was that I made cups of tea in the back for everyone else. I soon left that job and got another in Walton-on-Thames, where I was a window dresser in a ladies’ gown shop. I loved that position until a chap who worked across the road took notice of me. I managed to ignore him until he got his friends to join in Suddenly, the naive and embarrassed teenager in me realized that all the mannequins were naked and I was standing in the middle of them I wished the ground would swallow me up, but I ended up marrying the ringleader instead.

I had been through a lot by then, but I had a vision of how married life would be. I vowed to be the best wife and mother possible, and had a romantic dream of perfect children, a pretty house and, of course, a cuddly kitten to round it all off. I’d spent many happy hours dreaming how idyllic it would be, and animals played a central role in my dream Sadly, it wasn’t to be. The marriage was never right, but as I’m blessed with three wonderful children from those years, I’d never complain. When my husband and I finally separated, I realized that it was time for me to make the world what I wanted to make of it and fulfil my dreams of family life some other way.