Casper The Commuting Cat: The True Story Of The Cat Who Rode The Bus And Stole Our Hearts

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.