The Train to Düsseldorf Came and Left Without Pretty Little Cleo but Her Turbulent Journey Through This Terrible World Has Led Her to a Far Better Destination and a Second Chance at Life

Cleo Was Left Caged and All Alone on the Platform in Essen

"Und finden bei der Polizei sogar zwei Adoptiveltern für das Kätzchen."
-- Tierrettung Essen

Deutsche Bahn's Rhein-Weser Express (RE6) rolled into the Hauptbahnhof in Essen, a rather large town of nearly six-hundred-thousand residents in Nordrhein Westfalen, with renowned German efficiency and right on time at 7:47 p.m. on February 3rd. Two unidentified men boarded the Zug and it quickly roared off into the night bound for Düsseldorf, thirty-five kilometers to the southeast.

In doing so they left behind in a chair on the cold and forlorn Bahnsteig a pretty ginger and white kitten. She was in a cage so she was safe, at least for the time being, from having the life crushed out of her underneath the wheels of one of the incoming and departing locomotives.

There also apparently was some wet food and water in her cage but it is not believed that she had access to either of them. That assumption is based upon the fact that once the Bundespolizei (BPOL) were notified of her presence they had to make available to her the provisions found in her cage.

She Was Found on One of These Chairs

Staffers from the Essener Tierheim were notified and they promptly came and collected her. Upon arrival at their shelter she was examined and found to be in perfect health.

Following that she was given the name of Cleo and placed in quarantine. The BPOL, which throughout Deutschland is charged with, inter alia, guarding not only the railroads and airports but also the border, immediately launched an investigation into the men who had so cruelly abandoned such a pretty little kitten.

Since their images had been captured on surveillance tape, the federal police already had detailed descriptions of the pair who were said to have been between twenty-five and thirty years of age and to have been of either east European or südlandischer (either Italian or Spanish) descent. Both of them were sporting thin beards with sideburns and goatees.

Cleo in the Arms of Tierrettung Essen

The bulkier of the duo is said to have been wearing cloth pants, a white shirt, a short black leather jacket, white sneakers, and toting a black rucksack. The other man is said to have been wearing beige pants, dark Nike sneakers, a white T-shirt, and a black cloth jacket.

Despite having in their possession those detailed descriptions as well as, no doubt, stills taken from the surveillance footage in order to distribute to the Landespolizei (state and local authorities), the BPOL has yet, as far as it could be determined, to make an arrest nearly three months later. Also, since the men have not made any attempt in order to reclaim Cleo, it seems clear that they did not simply forget about her and accidentally leave her behind all alone on the deserted platform.

Rather, they had deliberately abandoned her. (See Bild of Berlin, February 8, 2024, "Polizisten Adoptieren ausgesetztes Katzen-Baby.") 

Even though she was forced to endure some anxious moments on the Bahnsteig and some frightening days

and nights locked up at Tierrettung Essen, things ultimately worked out for her far better than anyone ever could have predicted. "Und finden bei der Polizei sogar zwei Adoptiveltern für Kätzchen," Tierrettung Essen happily announced February 9th on Facebook. (See "Happy End for Cleo.")

Cleo with Her New Caretakers 

Her new caretakers are believed to be a male and female couple who work as officers for the BPOL out of the Essener Hauptbahnhof. The additionally likely were intimately involved in her rescue.

Neither their names nor their place of residence have been made public so it is not known where Cleo is currently residing. Nevertheless, since the branch of the BPOL that serves Nordrhein Westfalen is headquartered in Sankt Augustin, ninety-four kilometers south of Essen, they likely live somewhere in the general vicinity of either it or Essen itself.

The important thing, however, is that she in all likelihood will be safe in their care and, best of all, she now has been given a second chance at life. The only obvious concern is that law enforcement is a dangerous undertaking and officers put in long, stressful hours and that may not leave her new owners with all that much time for Cleo.

In a world that is chock-full of infinite surprises, not all of them could possibly be bad and sometimes miracles do occur. In Cleo's case, if she had been taken aboard the 7:47 p.m. train it is feared that things would not have turned out well for her.

The Train Not Taken Has Made All the Difference for Cleo

Her erstwhile guardians had clearly made up their minds to have gotten rid of her and if they had not done so in Essen they surely would have done so sooner or later in either Düsseldorf or somewhere else and who knows with what dire consequences? Therefore, by abandoning her on the platform at the Essener Hauptbahnhof they, unwittingly, set in motion a chain of totally unanticipated events that ultimately culminated in her salvation.

In this world it is quite often those decisions that are deferred and the trains that are not taken that make all the difference. No one has ever made that point more plaintively than did Robert Frost who in his famous 1915 poem, "The Road Not Taken," concluded:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference." 

Although Cleo clearly never had any real choice in the matter, perhaps someday she will belatedly realize, too, that the train she never took has made all the difference in her life. If she does not already know that, it is incumbent upon her new caretakers to make that a living reality for her.

Photos: The Bundespolizei (Cleo in a cage, the deserted Bahnsteig, and Cleo with her new guardians) and Bild (Cleo by herself and with Tierrettung Essen). 

Lost and All Alone on the Rails, a Young Cat Is Befriended and Saved Through the Efforts of a Kindhearted Employee of the Chemins de fer Luxembourgeois

The Cat Stepped Gingerly onto the Platform ... 

 

"J'ai contacté la commune de Manternach, en lui envoyant des photos du chat et en lui demandant de faire connaître la situation sur les médias sociaux. C'est ce qu' ils ont fait."

-- Nádia Stefanutti

The morning of Friday, February 23rd began pretty much the same as every other weekday before it had for Nádia Stefanutti in that she soon found herself waiting on the platform at gare de Manternach in the city of the same name, located in the canton of Grevenmacher, in order to take the Line 30 train operated by the state-run Sociéte nationale des chemins de fer Luxembourgeois (CFL) into Luxembourg City. Her routine was altered dramatically however when she spotted a pretty young tuxedo in line up ahead of her.

When the train rolled into the station the cat got on board just like it was nobody's business and why not? Since 2020 public transportation in the small but progressive state of Luxembourg, nestled in between Deutschland to the west, France to the east, and Belgium to the north in central Europe, has been gratis and, presumably, that privilege also  extends to cats. In other words, no ticket or pass is required in order to ride.

"J'ai trouvé ça bizarre, mais comme le chat était près d'un homme, j'ai pensé qu'il en était le propriétaire et qu'il l'emmenait avec lui dans le train, en liberté," she later explained to Le Virgule of Luxembourg City on February 29th. (See "L'histoire se finit bien pour le chat qui a voyagé seul en train de Manternach à Luxembourg.")  

Once onboard the man and the cat went their separate ways, however, and that was when she knew that her earlier assumption had been incorrect. Since she works for the CFL in some undisclosed capacity, she did not hesitate to take matters into her own hands by querying the train's crew about the cat and they quickly informed her that it was indeed traveling solo.

Regrettably, the cat's name and sex remain mysteries to this very day as far as the outside world is concerned. From its appearance, however, it does not look to be much more than a year old.

After she had gone over to the cat, Stefanutti immediately recognized that, although it had gotten wet in the early morning rain, it was clean and exceedingly friendly. "Il était très affectueux, nous laissant le caresser et le tenir sur nos genoux," she related to Le Virgule.  

...and When the Train Arrived It Took a Seat By Itself 

Although a cat's socio-economic status should not make an iota of difference in how that it is treated, Stefanutti was astute enough to also recognize that her fellow commuter had been domesticated. "On voyait bien que ce n'était pas un chat des rues, mais on ne savait pas s'il avait été abandonné ou depuis combien de jours il était dans la rue," she added to Le Virgule.

That is a difficult topic to speculate upon but the cat does not appear to have been sleeping rough. On the contrary, its fur looked to have been well cared for and it did not appear to be suffering from a lack of food.

Based upon a photograph of gare de Manternach found online, the train station appears to be located in a residential area with several houses nearby and therefore the most logical conclusion would seem to be that it was not abandoned but rather had simply wandered onto the platform and unwittingly boarded the train. Subsequent developments also tend to lend a certain amount of credence to that assumption.

Although buoyed by having such a distinguished passenger in order to accompany them on their normally dreary daily commutes to work, a number of the riders wasted little time in expressing an interest in adopting the cat if its owner could not be located. Stefanutti however knew that it was up to her to save it and in that regard she most assuredly did not disappoint.

Located twenty-four kilometers northeast of Luxembourg City (thirty-one kilometers via the A1 motorway), it took the cat and Stefanutti around thirty-five minutes in order to arrive at gare de Luxembourg where the train's crew manhandled the cat into a box and transported it to Déierasyl Gasperich, located on the southside of town in a quarter bearing the same name. After the regal treatment that it had received from the passengers onboard the train it surely must have felt at that moment that it had been betrayed. Even worse, it must have feared for its life.

Even if any of the riders on the train had been halfway sincere about offering it a home, that was totally out of the question now that refuge de Gasperich had gained custody of it in that it insisted upon holding it in order to give its owner time in order to call for it. If that had not occurred, the charity would have placed a price on its tiny head and that in turn would have deterred most potential adopters.

The Cat Likely Came from One of the Houses Near gare de Manternach

Although it had been readily apparent from the outset that the cat had not been either collared or tagged, the refuge soon learned that neither had it been microchipped and that severely limited its chances of being able to rejoin its owner. "Nous attendons que la famille vienne le chercher," a spokesperson for the charity earlier had told Le Virgule on February 24th. (See "Insolite: ce chat a pris le train tout seul de Manternach à Luxembourg.") "Si le propriétaire ne se manifeste pas, nous verrons ce que nous pouvons faire."

What that would have entailed is not known because it has not proven possible to ascertain either the shelter's kill rate or how aggressively that it endeavors in order to find homes for those unfortunate felines that it impounds. Needless to say, the future did not look particularly promising for the totally innocent little cat who now found itself cruelly locked up behind bars and bereft of all legal counsel.

As it always has been the case everywhere, mankind seldom has been either fair or compassionate to the members of its species. Even at this amazingly late date in history, homeless cats still do not have a legal right to exist and as such they are usually exterminated on sight.

"Man produces evil as a bee produces honey," William Golding declared in his 1954 novel, The Lord of the Flies, but cats are largely ignorant of the malice aforethought that lurks in the hearts of most men and, equally regrettable, they would be pretty much powerless to do anything about that even if they were capable of comprehending the dangers.  

Far removed from its forlorn prison cell in Gasperich and unbeknownst to it, the cat had acquired the allegiance of a knight in shining armor who had neither forgotten about its desperate plight nor ceased to champion its welfare from behind the scenes. "J'ai contacté la commune de Manternach, en lui envoyant des photos du chat et en lui demandant de faire connaître la situation sur les médias sociaux," Stefanutti explained to Le Virgule.  "C'est ce qu' ils ont fait."

In France as well as in some countries that have been previously governed by the French, such as Luxembourg, a commune can refer to either a stand-alone city, such as Paris, or a subdivision of one that enjoys such a high level of autonomy that it even has its own elected mayor and a conseil municipal. In the case of Manternach itself, the town has a population of only seven-hundred-twenty-eight citizens whereas the commune de Manternach is considerably more populous with two-thousand-one-hundred-twenty-seven residents.

The Cat Was Befriended by Nádia Stefanutti 

There are two reasons that Stefanutti targeted the commune de Manternach in her appeal for assistance. First of all, it has three times the population of the city of Manternach. Secondly, she could not be certain that the cat had not wandered into gare de Manternach from the commune de Manternach, which is north of Manternach city.

Even that working hypothesis did not exhaust all the possibilities. For instance, Line 30 begins its westward journey in Schweich in Rhineland-Palatinate and makes one additional stop in Deutschland, at Trier, before crossing into Luxembourg. Once there, it also makes stops in Wasserbillig and Mertert before finally arriving in gare de Manternach and the cat could have, at least theoretically, gotten on in any one of those towns.

Even more dauntingly, once aboard the train it could have disembarked at any one of the seven stops that it makes en route to gare de Luxembourg if Stefanutti had not taken it into her care. Of course, it is entirely conceivable that the train it and she were on could have been either a rush-hour express or a shuttle that runs non-stop between gare de Manternach and gare de Luxembourg. The finer points of service offered by Line 30 are difficult to know based upon the limited amount of information available online.

For their part, officials in the commune de Manternach wasted little time in launching an appeal on Facebook. In fact, their notice was posted online the very same morning that the cat was found and it soon attracted one-thousand responses.

"Le lendemain du jour (February 24th) où le chat nous a été remis, le propriétaire est venu au refuge pour chercher l'animal et l'a ramené chez lui," refuge de Gasperich informed Le Virgule in the February 29th article cited supra. "Nous sommes heureux que le chat soit déjà chez ses propriétaires."

As it was the case with the cat itself, neither its owner nor his or her place of residence has been publicly divulged. Much more importantly, it has not been revealed how that it wound up on the platform at gare de Manternach.

One never knows for certain, but presumably staffers at the refuge questioned the owner on that matter before they returned the cat. Having then washed their hands of this affair, it does not seem likely that the refuge will be conducting any home visits in the future in order to ascertain if the cat is being well cared for and, above all, that its safety is being taken seriously.

The Cat Allowed Stefanutti and Other Riders to Pet It

Most shelters have so many cats on their hands that they cannot get rid of them fast enough and that is not always the best policy. Therefore, follow-up home visits are almost unheard of but that is, regrettably, the nature of such a cutthroat business.

Nevertheless, this attractive little cat richly deserves an owner who, above all, values its existence and takes its safety and well-being to heart and to irresponsibly allow it to ride the rails solo hardly fits into that definition. The riders of the CFL may have found its presence onboard to have been a pleasant distraction but that overlooks the alarming reality that it easily could have been either seriously injured or even killed.

There is only one hero in this story and that is the transplanted Lisboan who interrupted her busy day in order to have taken the time and trouble to have cared about a lost, frightened, and sans doute confused cat. "Je suis très heureuse d'apprendre que le chat est maintenant chez lui," Stefanutti told Le Virgule on February 29th.

Even though there is not a scintilla of evidence that would tend to indicate that she ever so much as once wavered in her commitment to it, doing so was hardly an option for her in that she had someone looking over her shoulder in order to have made doubly sure that she did the right thing. "Lorsque je lui ai raconté l'histoire et vu les photos, ma fille de sept ans m'a immédiatement demandé de garder le chaton," she confided to Le Virgule on February 29th. "Elle s'inquiétait pour l'animal et elle sera heureuse d'apprendre cette fin heureuse."

It can only be hoped that the CFL fully appreciates what a conscientious and dedicated employee that it has in Stefanutti. The compassion that she lavished on the cat stands in stark contrast to the diabolical cruelty recently meted out to two other cats by much larger state-owned railroads.

For example, in January of this year an evil conductress on the Trans-Siberian Railway condemned a four-year-old ginger and white tom named Twix from the St. Petersburg area to an unspeakably cruel and protracted death when she flung him from a train into the bitter cold and deep snow of Kirov. (See Cat Defender post of March 12, 2024 entitled "In One of the Most Abominable Acts of Cruelty to a Cat in Recent Memory, a Vile Conductress on the Trans-Siberian Railway Hurls Twix to His Death in the Bitter Cold and Snow of Kirov.")

Earlier on January 2, 2023, the crew of a La Société nationale des chemins de fer français train deliberately and remorselessly ran down and killed a beautiful longhaired brown and white tom named Neko at gare Montparnasse in Paris. (See Cat Defender post of July 23, 2023 entitled "Arguing That He Was Only a Cat, the French National Railroad, SNCF, Proceeds to Run Down and Kill Neko at Gare Montparnasse in Paris and, Unbelievably, Is Allowed to Get Away with Its Hideous Crime.") 

Wherever Life Takes You, Little One, Happy Trails!

The misadventures of the intrepid little cat from Manternach once again underscore the importance of collaring and tagging all cats. Microchips are not only worthless as safety devices but they also are yet still another needless and unwise surrender of personal data, responsibility, and power to the fascists and totalitarians who now largely control all life on this planet. (See Cat Defender post of January 9, 2022 entitled "Marley Is Reunited with Her Family after Having Gone Missing Nine Years Ago but Her Deliverance Does Not Establish Either the Efficacy or Desirability of Microchipping Cats.")

Secondly, this case demonstrates the value of social media. It has its fair share of problems to be sure, but it is more egalitarian and there are plenty of decent and honest individuals, such as Stefanutti, who are making good use of it.

By contrast, absolutely nothing positive can be said for the capitalistic media. This problem has become so pervasive in the United States that both print and electronic outlets nowadays serve only the interests  of those factions that are hellbent upon destroying this society and everything that is worthwhile preserving in it.

As far as the young cat is concerned, hopefully its guardian has learned either his or her lesson and will endeavor from this day forward to take far better care of it. That individual is extremely fortunate to have gotten it back and to have been presented with another opportunity in order to share its life.

These things are almost impossible to predict but perhaps it has had its fill of misadventures and from now on will be more than willing to stay at home. On the other hand, its surprise train ride to Luxembourg City may have served only to have whetted its appetite for the open road.

Sadly, the odds are decidedly against anyone from the outside world ever learning how things ultimately turned out for it. Be that as it may but on one cold and rainy morning in February it experienced the thrill of a lifetime and in doing so it charmed the riders on the Manternach to Luxembourg City line and that, at least, is something for it and them to remember and to cherish.

"The meaning of life is a touch, a scent, which comes by chance and is gone before you know it," John Gray concluded in his 2020 tome, Feline Philosophy. Cats and the Meaning of Life, and so, too, is it destined to be the case with the forever nameless cat from gare de Manternach.

Photos: Le Virgule (the cat) and Johnny Chicago at lb of Wikipedia (gare de Manternach).