Old Totoro fanart I made for a comic con 2 years ago (Most post over the next week or two will be older art that I sold as prints, please bear with me as this devolves from a star wars blog to multifandom for just a bit)
While trying to follow up on Macavity, I found this story on another British bus riding cat, Dodger. The bus riding cat, Casper, mentioned at the end of the article is not Macavity. Video of Casper to come. Who knew there were so many cats riding busses in Britain?
Pay? No, I've got a puss pass: Cat rides the bus for free by hopping on and off at his local station... making 10-mile journeys on passengers laps
Dodger is fed cat food by some of the drivers
Owner thinks he likes the bus because it's warm
By JESSICA SATHERLEY
UPDATED: 21:44 EST, 15 December 2011
Sometimes being a cat can be a tiring life: all those catnaps between bouts of idle stretching in front of the fire.
But Dodger the ginger tom has found a way to get round the tiresome business of walking anywhere, by hopping on the bus.
The 15-year-old sits on bemused passengers’ laps as the bus makes round trips of up to ten miles from Bridport to Charmouth in Dorset.
He is such a regular passenger that some of the drivers take tins of cat food to feed him. They even know which stop to let him off at so he can return to his home and owner Fee Jeanes.
Mrs Jeanes, 44, believes Dodger, named after the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, first took a liking to the buses’ warmth.
She said: ‘We moved here 19 months ago and our house backs on to the bus station. He is an old boy and is very friendly.
'Sometimes he just sits in the middle of the road and waits for the bus to turn up before he gets on.'
'But then he started climbing on board the buses because they are almost like greenhouses when it is sunny.
'Then last week I found out he had travelled to Charmouth and back, which is a 10 mile round trip.
'I hadn’t seen him all morning until my daughter Emily told me one of her friends had just seen him on the bus at Charmouth.
'I couldn’t believe it and panicked. I got into my car to go off and look for him and then at that moment the bus pulled up near our house and low and behold he got off.
'He had fallen asleep on board and nobody knew about it. When the driver realised he knew who Dodger was and where he lived and kept him on board.
'That afternoon I saw Dodger climb on board another bus and I rushed to tell the driver.
'I was shocked when she told me Dodger was always on there and liked to sit on the seats because they are warm from where people have been sitting.
'The drivers buy cat food for him and he sits on people’s laps.
'Sometimes he just sits in the middle of the road and waits for the bus to turn up before he gets on.'
Dodger is familiar to regular bus passengers and drivers, but Mrs Jeanes still receives several calls a week asking if she has lost a ginger cat.
A spokesman for bus firm First said they didn’t mind Dodger on their buses but didn’t actively encourage him.
He said: 'The drivers have been asked not to feed it because we recognise that cat has an owner and we do not want to discourage it from returning home for food and shelter.
'But in principle we do not have a problem with it being around the bus station.
'Given this cat is elderly we suspect it would be eligible for free travel, perhaps a bus puss, if such a thing existed.'
Another bus-hopping cat, called Casper, died last year after being hit by a car while crossing the road to board the No.3 service in Plymouth.
Pictures next post and a video at the original site
In early 2007 bus drivers on an urban route between Walsall and Wolverhampton, in the British Midlands, noted an unusual passenger. A beautiful white cat wearing a purple collar, and with odd-coloured eyes — one blue, one green — started using the no. 331 bus several mornings a week. Drivers nicknamed him Macavity, after the mystery cat in T.S. Eliot's poem (and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical).
He always boarded at a certain stop, in front of a row of 1950s-era semi-detached houses, and then left the bus again at the next stop 400 metres down the road — by a row of shops that included a fish-and-chip shop! One driver said he first noticed the cat getting off the bus with a couple of passengers, not having seen him get on, but the next day Macavity jumped on the bus when it stopped to pick up passengers by the houses, getting off at the next stop as before. He appeared two or three times a week; no one knew why, or who he belonged to.
He didn't occupy a seat, but sat on the floor at the front of the bus, waiting patiently for the next stop. 'It was quite strange at first, but now it just seems normal,' said another passenger who caught the 331 to work each day. 'I suppose he is the perfect passenger really — he sits quietly, minds his own business and then gets off.'
The story was picked up by the national press and then reached the internet, and at the time we thought the owner might have read the story and come forward to claim and name the cat, but as far as we know no one did. Then in April 2010 the no. 331 service that Macavity used to ride on was withdrawn and no longer operated. We weren't able to find out whether he used an alternative service or stopped riding the buses.
