It wasn’t long ago that we were wishing a happy birthday to Tama, the adorable feline that was given the title of Ultra Stationmaster by Wakayama Electric Railway. Having just turned 16 in April, Tama, who lived at Kishi Station in Wakayama Prefecture and delighted travelers on a daily basis, was incredibly young for a stationmaster.
16 is a fairly advanced age for a cat, though, and the sad news has just come that Stationmaster Tama has passed away.
When Tama was born in 1999, Kishi Station was still managed by the
now defunct Nankai Electric Railway. The female tortoiseshell cat was
taken in by the station’s employees, who even set up a small home for
her next to their workplace.
When Nankai Electric, and thus Kishi Station, was absorbed by
Wakayama Electric Railway in 2006, Tama’s caretakers made a direct
request to Wakayama Electric’s president, Mitsunobu Kojima, that the
station’s new owners continue to allow the kitty to live on the
premises. Kojima did them one better by promoting Tama to stationmaster.
Given how many people in Japan love animals, trains, and/or cute
things, it wasn’t long before Stationmaster Tama became nationally
famous, and she’s credited with helping to revitalize the community by
drawing visitors from all over Japan. In January of 2014, Tama was
promoted to Ultra Stationmaster, making her, in name, stationmaster of
all of the company’s stations.
Tama’s tens of thousands of Twitter followers may not have known
anything was amiss, as up until just a few days ago, she was continuing
to send out messages with her customary greeting of “Nyango!”
However, the elderly cat’s health was, in fact, failing. At 16,
Tama’s age was equivalent to that of an 80-year-old human, and on May 19
she underwent medical treatment for nasal inflammation. Just over a
month later, she expired from acute heart failure on June 22, and two
days later, Wakayama Electric Railway announced to the public that Tama
had passed away.
Tama is survived by Stationmaster Nitama, whom the company has been grooming as her eventual replacement.
In honor of Tama’s many years of service, Wakayama Electric will
be holding a company funeral, presided over by President Kojima
himself, as Kishi Station at noon on June 28. Considering that
some 300 well-wishers showed up for Tama’s birthday celebration in
April, we imagine the ceremony will likewise draw a large crowd, and
also plenty of tears.
