The Station Cat: A Story of Kindness and Hope

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An extract transcribed from the County Echo , which reported the cat's death at the time, is said to be from an August 1930 issue. In February 2022, Network Rail posted photos on social media of this lovely lady — Holly, a stray who took up residence at the HOLYHEAD signal box (north-west Wales) some eight months earlier in 2021.

Bolt the station cat has gone and bolted | ITV News Calendar Bolt the station cat has gone and bolted | ITV News Calendar

As well as having a comfy bed where he can curl up inside the ticket office, Jess has also been given a feline rail pass and travel card! She turned out to be an excellent mouser, and runs a blog, Quaker the Station Cat where she reports on station news. A whip-round was held every week for some coins to keep him in food and milk; and it's said there was an old lady who passed through the station at about 1.A fund inviting donations for the local Cats Protection branch so that other, needy cats might benefit from her passing quickly and handsomely exceeded the target amount. Local celebrity moggy Hector has been living in Redruth Train Station since 2013 and this sassy whiskered puss attracts lots of attention from commuters and holidaymakers alike.

Tiddles of Paddington Station, London Purr-n-Fur UK | Rail | Tiddles of Paddington Station, London

Nowadays, one of Tama’s former apprentices, eight-year-old Nitama (literally: ‘Tama Two’), serves as the Kishi stationmaster, with four-year-old Yontama (‘Tama Four’) functioning as her feline assistant five stations away in Idakiso. Tama is often cited as part of a phenomenon known in Japan as "Nekonomics" ( ネコノミクス, nekonomikusu, lit. However, when taken to the vet early in 2016 to be treated for fleas, the cat was found to have a microchip and his owner was traced.

But by the mid-2000s, a combination of low ridership and financial problems threatened to close down the rural rail line, and the line’s 14 stations were finally unstaffed in 2006. A beautiful memorial to Alfie has been erected next to that for the earlier station cat, and was unveiled in November 2017.