Tama

The Kishigawa line in Wakayama prefecture was fourteen kilometres of loss-making local railway, its stations unstaffed since 2006, and it was close to being closed. Tama was a calico who lived by the shop at Kishi station and was fed by the shopkeeper, who had been made a nominal stationmaster after the staff were withdrawn. In January 2007 the railway's president, on a visit, made the cat stationmaster instead. She was given a cap, a badge, an office in a converted ticket booth, and a salary paid in cat food. The job was to sit at the gate and meet passengers, which she did, and it worked to a degree nobody had planned for: passenger numbers rose by more than ten per cent in a year, and a study put the wider effect on the local economy at about 1.1 billion yen. The line was saved. She was promoted to super-stationmaster and then to operating officer of the railway — the first cat to be an executive of a Japanese company. The station was rebuilt in 2010 with a roof shaped like a cat's face, and a Tama train ran the line. She died of heart failure in June 2015 at sixteen. Three thousand people came to her funeral, which was Shinto; she was made honorary permanent stationmaster and enshrined at a small shrine at the station, and a cat called Nitama took over the post.

Loved by · Toshiko Koyama

Honours

• 2007Appointed stationmaster of Kishi station, salary paid in cat food
• 2008Promoted to super-stationmaster; passenger numbers up more than a tenth in a year
• · Credited with about ¥1.1 billion to the local economy, and with saving the line from closure
• 2010Kishi station rebuilt with a roof in the shape of her face
• 2015Shinto funeral for three thousand people; made honorary permanent stationmaster and enshrined

Their kind

Not a breed but a coat: the orange-and-black patchwork needs two X chromosomes, so a calico is almost always female.

A life in seasons