Cat on the loose in Paris station - Electricity cut, travel delayed

PARIS, France - A Parisian cat that escaped from its travelling companion forced a one-hour delay on the TGV train from Paris' Gare de Lyon station to Nice on Thursday, reported German news agency dpa quoting the French newspaper Le Parisien on Friday.

The incident came at the right moment for the cat, as just days earlier, a French court imposed a hefty fine on the national railway company SNCF after one of their trains failed to stop when a cat ran across the tracks.

This followed the "execution" of the cat Neko, in January, after the feline escaped a departing train, according to its 15-year-old owner. The railroad refused to halt the departure even though the girl and her mother warned the cat was under the train, they said.

On Tuesday, the court thus ordered SNCF, which was found guilty of negligence, to pay compensation of €1,000 (US$1,090) to each of the two cat owners.

This time, the railroad cut off the station's electricity for an hour in order to get the cat out from under the framework of the TGV train, the newspaper reported.

In a humourous tweet, a French train enthusiast wrote: " A new cat under a TGV at Gare de Lyon this morning. We crush the cat: not good. We hold up the train and impact 1,800 customers with delays of up to 1h20: not good."Either way, we lose." - BERNAMA-dpa