NEAR CATASTROPHIES
Tabby halts train and black cat bounces back
CAT ON A FAST TRAIN ROOF
Passengers on board a London to Manchester train at Euston station were forced to disembark about half an hour before its scheduled departure time of 9pm. This was due not to a mechanical fault with the train itself, nor to signal failure on the route ahead, nor even leaves on the line or the fabled “wrong type of snow”.
No, the reason for the Avanti West Coast train’s customers being compelled to transfer onto a replacement train was a cat on their original train’s roof. A tabby was spotted curled up on top of the train and, despite the best efforts of station staff, refused to move. The nonchalant feline was dangerously close to the 25,000volt overhead lines, and, if it had escaped being electrocuted, would then have faced a 125mph three-hour ride en plein air.
Eventually, after two and a half hours, the stubborn moggy was coaxed down from its perilous perch when a large refuse bin was placed alongside the carriage, giving it a platform on which to climb down.
According to station staff, the cat appeared supremely unbothered; it was described as “swaggering off” into the night. It is still not known how it managed to get on top of the train in the first place. “We often have to deal with birds inside the station, but in all my time here this is the first train-surfing cat!” commented Joe Hendry, Network Rail station manager for Euston. “Thankfully, curiosity didn’t kill this cat and we’re glad it avoided using up one
of its nine lives.” Guardian, 4 Mar 2021.
CHICAGO’S BOUNCING CAT
While attending an apartment fire in Chicago, firefighters were surprised to see a black cat appear at the smoke-filled broken window. After briefly testing the wall with its paws, the cat leapt from the building. It fell five floors, missed a wall, landed on all four paws on a patch of grass, bounced once and ran away. “She went under my car and hid until she felt better after a couple of minutes and came out and tried to scale the wall to get back in,” said fire department spokesman Larry Langford. Langford is now trying to find the cat’s owner to reunite them. Guardian, 14 May 2021.