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

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?’

I tried to convince myself that he’d been caught unexpectedly in a downpour, but I knew there was something seriously wrong. This was strange behaviour and I wondered whether his mind was going. It was almost as if he hadn’t noticed it was raining, or as if he couldn’t quite work out why he was so wet. As I dried him off with a towel and laid him by the fire to get warm, I gave him a gentle ticking off, more to appease myself than anything else. ‘Now then,’ I told him, ‘we’ll have no more of that silly behaviour. I think it best that you stay indoors where I can keep an eye on you.’

I tried to convince myself this was a one-off, but a few hours later he was missing again. I opened the back door straight away this time, and there he was. I had an old ceramic washbowl full of plants that I kept in the garden and it was overflowing with rainwater that day. Poor Jack was desperately trying to climb in. His legs had never worked properly and he was certainly far too weak to manage now, but he wouldn’t give up. I knew that the decision had, in effect, been made for me. Just as I’d feared, his mind had gone.

Over the next few days, he kept wanting out, but I did my best to keep him inside. I was so scared that after I returned to work I would come home one day and he would have disappeared. What if I couldn’t find him and he got trapped somewhere? I had to have him put down. It’s the hardest decision in the world to make, but you have to get over it and do what’s best for your pet. It was a stark reminder to me that in the midst of all the excitement over Casper life went on as normal and there were still pockets of sadness in it.

Things had calmed down a little with respect to Casper’s fame when I got a call from Karen at First buses in the autumn. She said the company was launching a new type of bus and they were going to feature pictures of local people on the side panels. There would be a policeman, students, the dean of the university, all sorts of people – and they wanted Casper and me to be included. I was flattered but a bit worried at the thought of more pictures. Karen managed to convince me that it would be a nice gesture and a bit of fun; she said people were still asking about Casper and it would cement his position as one of Plymouth’s most famous residents.

Everyone else had to go to into the main office to get their posters done, but Casper got special treatment, as always, and Karen came to my house to put together the images herself. I could hardly believe the size of them when I saw the finished product – they were quite literally the size of a bus. Casper and I were there for all to see, and we were chosen to launch the new vehicle.

This started off another round of publicity and, before I knew it, we were in women’s magazines as well as newspapers. I started to get recognized a lot as I waited for the bus wherever I was, but people were always lovely to me.

The whole experience made me realize how many animal lovers there were out there. For so much of my life, I’d thought that no one else felt the same emotional pull as I did to other creatures, and there were times when I wondered if it was normal to get as upset as I did by cruelty to animals. My dream then, and now, would be to have a refuge of my own. If I won the lottery, I’d get a rambling farmhouse, a solid building surrounded by land, and I would take in anything that needed love and care – not just cats and dogs, but donkeys, birds, horses, all of God’s creatures.