In 2007, a struggling Japanese railway named a stray calico cat as station master to attract riders, passenger numbers jumped 17%, and the cat later generated over ¥1.1 billion for the town

In 2007, the Wakayama Electric Railway appointed a stray calico cat named Tama as honorary station master of Kishi Station as a light-hearted publicity stunt for a railway on the brink of decline. The rural line in Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture had been losing passengers over the years, and its future looked uncertain; to address those concerns, the railway staged a publicity stunt by appointing a cat as station master, and it became one of Japan’s best-known tourism success stories.

Raccontata datimesofindia.indiatimes.com