TRIBUTES, both emotional and financial, have ‘pawed’ in for one of the great characters of Farnham over the past decade: Brian the cat.

Brian, a nine-year-old three-quarters Bengal one-quarter moggy, was found ‘sleeping’ on a lawn last month – have succumbed, it is thought, to injuries sustained in a brush with a car two months’ earlier.

But what has happened since is a phenomenon. Well known for following pub-goers and school children home across Farnham Park, Brian already had his own cult Facebook following.

And after word of his demise spread, the messages and memories began flooding in. More than 600 people have joined a tribute page on Facebook ‘In loving memory of Brian the cat’.

And after a Go Fund Me page was set up in Brian’s memory, more than £600 has to-date been raised in the name of the great feline wanderer, in aid of the Farnham Community and Support Group.

“I am a mad cat woman, but I’m not that mad, and I promise I didn’t do any of this!,” Brian’s owner Katrina Dunbar told the Herald.

“I knew Brian was well known around the town but I had no idea how well known! He basically was just a terrible tart, who got whatever he could wherever he went, really.”

It seems everybody in Farnham has had a brush with Brian, whether they knew it or not. He was a big feature at the UCA where he used to fraternise with the students, and was well known to local Cats Protection volunteer Brian Blencowe, who once rescued him from the middle of Coxbridge roundabout.

“He didn’t come home every night, he was really stressful to own and it’s amazing he came back home at all really,” continued Katrina.

“Two years ago, he disappeared for two weeks and I thought, ‘that’s it he’s gone now’ because his brother Mr Duck, who was as mad as he was, was a terrible wanderer too.

“Brian was a home-body at that point. But his brother used to virtually live at Farnham Park golf club, and even had his own chair there. And then in 2015 he disappeared one day and he just we just never saw him again.

“I always dreaded the same thing would happen with Brian, and about six months after he went Brian suddenly started doing the same.

“I lost track how many times he went missing. All the vets knew him, because members of the public would get worried because he’d follow them back from The Nelson pub in Castle Street across the park up through Upper Hale sometimes, and then they’d think, ‘oh god, what do I do with this cat that won’t leave me alone?’.

“About a year ago we actually got a call from the Farnham Park Golf Club saying they had found Mr Duck. But we knew it was Brian, and sure enough, there he was – furious he was being trapped in the shop!”

Katrina says the secret behind Brian and Mr Duck’s nomadic lifestyle lies in the fact they are three-quarters Bengal – which typically have a range of up to 9km, three times that of your usual cat.

“They’re lovely but I would never have another Bengal, they’re so stressful! Brian was only nine when he died. But the fact that he lived that long, to be honest, was fairly astonishing after all his madness.

“We live just to the south of the park and when they were both around, they used to both go up to the children’s playground and hang under the zip wire. They were just very social and chatty.

“They were great fun and used to befriend people. I had a sweet message from one of the art college students saying you know, I had a really difficult first year and he got me through it. That was really sweet.

“But he also used to go in and out all the houses in High Park Road. People would say we’ve just found him in our bed. He was very cheeky, he didn’t care and he didn’t care if he had cats.

“He wasn’t aggressive. Not at all. They’d just go upstairs and he would be running around on their bed, which, of course is not everybody’s cup of tea. I used to tell people I was really sorry, but what could I do? I just couldn’t control him.

“I had a tracker on him for a while. It was so stressfull, I put a tracker on him for a while. But that was just more stressful than not because he just would lose it. And I spent hours hunting for this thing I thought had a cat attached to it. And I’d find a kind of collar and think little sod, where has he gone now.”

Though he outlasted his brother by six years, nine years is still a relatively short lifespan for a cat. But it seems at last, Brian had used up all nine of his lives, and it’s thought he was hit by a car a few months before his death.

Katrina added: “He suffered an injury to his back end, probably when a car hit him, and damaged all his nerve endings. His tail was just kind of then hanging down after that, and he was getting incontinent.

“We talked about amputating his tail, but it would have taken six to eight weeks to recover from – and you just couldn’t keep him in one place. He was like Houdini – he just wouldn’t be kept in. And so in the end, I let him out and eventually a neighbour found him in High Park Road in her garden curled up as if he was asleep.

“I was really sad, because he wasn’t old. But he certainly made the most of his nine lives!”