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

CHAPTER 13

Casper the Travelling Cat

I went to work but spent the rest of the day in a real state. The bus driver had seemed genuine. If he’d been spinning me a tale, I don’t think he would have kept it going. Surely, once he thought I’d fallen for it, he would have let me in on the joke and admitted he was messing about? He didn’t seem to have any malice in him; he appeared simply to be passing on some information that I didn’t know I didn’t mention it to anyone at work, and decided to wait until Chris called that evening to try to figure out what was going on.

When he rang from his stopoff point, my words sounded bizarre even to me. I told him what the driver had said and asked him what I should do. ‘Well, do you believe him?’ he questioned. ‘Do you think Casper is getting on the bus, just as he says?’

That was the odd thing: the more I thought about it, the more I could see it was plausible. ‘I think he might be doing exactly that,’ I confessed. ‘He’s always crossing that road and I’ve seen him hanging about the shelter. He disappears for hours on end, and despite me trying to call him back or dangle turkey roll, he never appears. Then, all of a sudden, there he is. Chris, I think the driver might be telling the truth.’

Saying the words made it seem much more real. As I thought it all through and verbalized it to Chris, I could see, in my mind’s eye, Casper getting on the bus, sitting there, napping and coming home when he felt like it. When I finished talking to Chris, I looked at Casper lying on the sofa, watching me with one eye open. ‘Is that what you’re really up to, Cassie?’ I asked him ‘Are you leading a double life? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know,’ I concluded.

I went to bed a little more settled but by morning had managed to think of a whole host of problems. Despite the fact that the driver I’d spoken to the day before had been so friendly, I was worried. He may not have had any problems with Casper, and the passengers he knew may have welcomed him, but there were concerns. If this was really happening, what if Casper was taken somewhere and got lost? What if he was frightened and couldn’t find his way home, sleeping for ages until he was in a strange part of Plymouth? I now had more to worry about. I hoped I could get other people to help out.

I reasoned that if I contacted the main bus companies that used the route on Poole Park Road, I could ask them to watch out for Casper and perhaps even discourage him from boarding the bus in the first place. I didn’t expect anyone to look after my cat for me, but I thought that by informing people I could alert both drivers and passengers to what was going on.

I sent a letter to one bus company in which I explained that I had just found out about Casper’s adventures. I asked whether they could possibly warn their drivers about this travelling cat and ask whether they would try to discourage him from getting on the bus as I was terribly worried about him I was polite and tried to let them know that I was only giving them some information that I thought might help them too – should any of them see a cat sitting on their bus without warning, they might be a little perturbed.

After some time, I received what I thought was a rather unfriendly reply in which I was told, ‘If you permit the animal to stray from your garden, then you have to accept the consequences of allowing the animal that freedom.’ Goodness! I had only asked that they be aware and perhaps show a little compassion, and for that I was being told off . The letter went on:

the drivers tell me that they are well aware of this cat’s habits and that they are to some extent fed up with it. They have a difficult and responsible job to undertake at the best of times and having to remember to check their bus for a stray cat is not appreciated, especially when they are busy. I would respectfully suggest that you restrain your animal using a lead or tether to ensure that it is unable to stray from your property . . . we will not be held responsible for anything which may happen to it as a consequence of your failure to control or restrain it.

I was then curtly informed that the photograph I had sent them to help identify Casper was being returned to me. I was a little shocked by the tone. The driver who had told me what Casper had been up to had been so nice and not seen it as a problem at all. I’d hoped that, by warning other drivers, I’d be able to keep an eye on Casper and warn them of an unusual cat they might find asleep on a seat. I was upset that I was being told to ‘tether’ my cat in a fashion that would stop him walking around freely – surely if I did that I would be a very cruel owner indeed? In fact, if I did that, I would have expected someone to report me to the RSPCA.

By writing the letter, I hadn’t been asking anyone to take responsibility for Casper, I was simply asking them to be vigilant. This was something I had done on other occasions. For example, when our next-door neighbours moved out and put their house up for sale, I’d popped a note through the door warning the estate agent and prospective buyers that they might find Casper in there, so could they please make sure he wasn’t locked in when they left? I thought I was being a responsible owner, not someone trying to shift the blame onto someone else if, God forbid, something did happen to Cassie.

This letter had shaken me, but I then realized that the company I had written to was not the one that employed the driver who’d told me about Casper. I hesitated a while, wondering whether I would get the same reception if I called First Devon and Cornwall, but my need to do all I could for my cat was my primary concern, so I found the number for their office and called straight away.

The attitude there could not have been more different. The phone was answered by a chap who introduced himself as ‘Rob from Customer Services’. As I spoke to him for the first time, I didn’t know what a comfort and help he would become to me over the next few months. Rob would turn out to be one of the people in Casper’s story who would always go beyond the call of duty – even if he thought he was just doing his job – and would prove to be immensely supportive.

I started to tell Rob what was going on and cautiously asked whether he could maybe warn the other drivers. ‘I’m typing up a notice as we speak,’ he informed me. ‘As soon as I come off the phone to you, I’ll print it off and put it up on the noticeboard and in the canteen.’

What a difference! Rob was as good as his word, and within minutes, the following notice was posted on the information boards:

TRAVELLING CAT

CAN ALL DRIVERS ON SERVICE 3 BE

AWARE THAT THEY MAY HAVE A FELINE

PASSENGER ON BOARD WHO HAS BOARDED

AT THE POOLE PARK ROAD AREA AND IS

TRAVELLING INTO TOWN. IF HE IS SEEN,

CAN THE DRIVER CALL CUSTOMER SERVICES

AND WE WILL CONTACT THE OWNER TO

MAKE HER AWARE HE IS SAFE AND WELL.

MANY THANKS – ROB

I’ve since spoken to Rob and he’s told me that when I first called him, he thought it might be a prank, just as I had when I first heard about what Casper had been doing. He said that after two or three years in customer services, he’s heard most things, but the idea of a cat popping on and off the bus seemed a bit far-fetched. ‘I thought I’d go along with it,’ he recalls. ‘So I asked, “Where does he get on?” All of the things I asked Sue were answered with such openness that I started to think maybe this was true after all. There was so much personal information and she seemed like such a nice lady that I couldn’t help but believe her and decided to do what I could to help out.’

To me, Rob is such a big part of this story because he, too, is one of those traditional British types who believes in manners and fair play and doing what you can to help people. As I’ve found out more about him, I’ve realized that he didn’t treat me any differently to anyone else that day – he’s like that with every person who calls his line. He always goes out of his way and he always does it with such a lovely manner that he reassures anyone he helps. He later told me that he was raised to believe that good manners cost nothing – a value he is passing on to his own children. He treats everyone as individuals. I was so lucky to have got him on the line that day.

Rob found that by the time his posters had been up for not much more than half an hour, the drivers were chatting about Casper, so he knew it was all true. The talk in the canteen that day was full of tales of the cat who rode the number three bus. Some of the drivers had mentioned it to each other in the past, when Casper started his antics, but it was as if Rob’s poster had opened the floodgates and they all started discussing whether they had seen Casper on their bus, how often he’d been there, where he went, what seat he liked, what he got up to and all sorts of other things.

Over the next few days, I started to ask for a bit more information every time I took the bus and I gradually put together more pieces of the Casper jigsaw The drivers didn’t have much time to talk as there were always plenty of passengers getting on and off, but they always seemed to have a moment to tell me about Casper. I’d been promoted to the position of his mum rather than merely his owner and they were delighted to inform me of the misadventures of my boy.

It seemed as though every time I asked one of them whether they knew him, they did. No one was surprised when I asked the question, and it seemed that I was the odd one out for not knowing what was happening. How long had this been going on, I wondered? Many of them seemed to think it had been since we moved in rather than just a day or two before I discovered it. I was amazed. My cat had a secret life.

‘That little chap’s been on my bus for longer than I can remember,’ said one, while most of them went for a vague ‘ages’ when I asked how long he had been travelling.

One woman told me that she always checked the internal mirrors before driving off from a stop, and the day she first saw Casper reflected in one of them she got quite a start. People leave handbags, newspapers and sweets on the seats, but she’d never seen a cat there before.

As I pieced everything together, I discovered that he liked to sit in the front seat where I had originally been or the back one where the noise of the engine was loudest. He was always perfectly happy to be stroked, tickled or even picked up by passengers. He was sometimes asleep before they moved off from the bus stop, and, most amusingly of all, he always waited in line. They all said that Casper was never at the front of the queue or the back. He waited between people, in the middle, and the other passengers seemed happy with that too, never pushing past him or jumping the queue. How British is that? We love our queues so much that we even apply the rules to cats. I was astounded.

Some of the drivers said that Casper would often wait in the bus stop but not always get on a bus when it came. It was as if he had his favourites or was waiting for one in particular. They joked that they got quite offended if he decided not to get on theirs, and they’d ask him, ‘What’s wrong with me, then?’ One driver told me that he’d seen Cassie waiting in the shelter many times but he’d never once deigned to get on the bus he was driving – he wondered why he wasn’t one of the chosen ones.

There was one part of the story that I found hard to get my head around. I had thought that Casper was probably staying on the bus for one stop, then jumping off and trotting back home again, but as they told me about his sleeping patterns, I wondered how long his trips were.

The number three went round Barne Barton before coming to St Budeaux. From the stop opposite my house, it travelled along the Wolseley Road to Camels Head, down Saltash Road past HMS Drake, St Levan Gate, Albert Gate, then on to Park Avenue through Devonport, where it would take the trip into the city centre. In the city centre, everyone would get off, the bus would travel up the end of town, turn round and then start the opposite journey all over again. It was quite a trip. ‘Does he get off at St Budeaux Square?’ I asked one driver. It was just over five minutes from where I lived.

‘Are you joking?’ he replied. ‘Casper?’ They all knew his name by now thanks to Rob’s posters. ‘That wouldn’t be far enough for him, would it? Casper likes his little journey.’

‘So, where does he go then?’ I wondered, with my heart sinking. If he went any further than the Square, how would he know how to get home?

‘He does the round trip,’ I was told.

‘He does WHAT?’ I screeched.

‘Oh yes, Casper likes to go into the city centre, then come back again – door-to-door service.’

‘But the bus stops in the city centre, everyone gets off, the driver takes it to the end of the terminus and turns round to the other side of the road before letting anyone else on. Isn’t that what happens?’

‘Yes ... usually,’ came the reply. ‘But Casper’s different, isn’t he?’

I was starting to realize that. ‘In what way?’ I asked.

‘Well, we don’t kick him off, do we? That wouldn’t be right. Anyway, he’s usually asleep – and we know where he wants to go. He’s just coming back to Poole Park Road. We only ask the humans to get off. Casper gets special privileges – as I said, door-to-door service.’

I was speechless – again. Just what sort of creature was I sharing my life with?