There's a whistle down the line at eleven forty-nine...

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Down by Third Rail, You Need Nine Lives

The search for the Fulton Street subway cat started the other day with a hopeful heart and a healthy dose of skepticism.

For years, there have been clear signs at the station pointing to the existence of a full-time feline resident there - the suspicious absence of mice, for one, but more tellingly the tiny cans of cat food that seem to materialize behind a steel column on the downtown platform of the J and M lines.

A morning token clerk swore that the cat was real and so did a Brooklyn psychologist, who reported having seen it on her way home from work. But the consensus among conductors was that the cat was just a figment of the imaginations of weary subway riders, particularly of the nice woman who exits the train around dawn every weekday and carefully sets out cans of food for it.

"I think she might be . . . you know?" said one conductor, making the swirly-finger sign for insanity. Another conductor said: "I've seen food there for years. I've never seen no cat."

A third said: "I kind of worry that maybe that woman is feeding a rat and she just thinks it's a cat. You never know around here."

With that pleasant thought in mind, a visit was paid to the station and the investigation was formally launched. In short order, it revealed the aforesaid cat food at the edge of the platform - a can of Nine Lives Salmon Supreme Entree, another of generic-brand chicken and rice, and some dried food, accompanied by a dish of water. But it also revealed evidence of a kind of consumption that had cat, not rat, written all over it: the salmon was missing but the generic chicken and the dry food were untouched, apparently disdained.

Carmen Figueroa and her boyfriend, Agosto Astorga, sitting on a bench nearby, continued to be dubious. "I never heard of a cat living in a subway station," Mr. Astorga said.

But just then, at around 11:15 a.m. he looked over the shoulder of his questioner and his eyes grew wide. "Oh, dude," he said.

"Oh my God!" Ms. Figueroa exclaimed, pointing. "Look."