Mumbai Metro's Gundavali cat gets a new job title: Chief Feline Officer
Mumbai has a new transit celebrity, and it prefers lounging to rushing. A ginger tabby often seen at Gundavali Metro station has been christened the station's Chief Feline Officer after a commuter posted its photo online and tagged the metro operator.
The change is mostly official in the internet sense, but it landed fast. After Mumbai resident Sandesh Samant shared a photo of the cat stretched out on a polished black ledge inside the station and joked that the "pure soul" deserved a proper role instead of working for free, the Maha Mumbai Metro Operation Corporation joined in and said the feline was already the station's Chief Feline Officer.
According to the operator, the cat's portfolio includes inspecting the station, observing commuters and placing itself exactly where people can admire it. The animal, relaxed as travelers moved in the background, quickly became the star of a feel good exchange that spread well beyond one platform. The post reportedly passed 50,000 views, along with hundreds of likes, reposts and replies, turning the unnamed ginger tabby into a small social media celebrity.
Commuters and cat fans ran with the joke. Some proposed renaming the station "Meowdavli." Others dubbed the cat a "santri billi," or sentry cat, and imagined it handling "end to end feline security." One commuter wrote that they had been seeing the cat for around three years and that it once had a companion. Another said they make a point of stopping to meet the cat whenever traveling from Gundavli. Users also began sharing their own sightings of cats at stations, hospitals and other public places around Mumbai. A few comments questioned the celebration of stray animals, but the response was largely delighted.
For cat people, Gundavali's new officer now joins a small but famous club. Britain has Larry, the Chief Mouser at 10 Downing Street, and Palmerston, the late Foreign and Commonwealth Office "diplocat," known as an effective mouse catcher. Japan had Tama, a calico made honorary permanent station master at a railway station where she lived from 2007 to 2015. Tama was credited with drawing enough visitors to lift the railway company's revenue by 10 per cent.
For Mumbai commuters used to packed trains and hurried trips, this particular hire seems to have delivered one immediate result: a brief, collective pause to smile at a cat on the job.
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