Tributes have been paid to a beloved cat who used to hang out at an Evesham supermarket.
Cooper, or the Morrison’s cat as many knew him, first appeared around five years ago and quickly became a favourite of staff and customers alike.
Sadly, Cooper was run over by a car on May 23 of this year, but now a permanent memorial to him has been installed at the Davies Road store.
Morrisons Community Champions Theresa Tydeman and Teresa Cerra helped organise the memorial.
Ms Tydeman said: “He was a mischievous cat but well loved by a lot of our customers.
“We think it’s about five years since he’s been hanging out at Morrisons, getting into some mischief and even getting into customers cars and often having to be chased out of our foyer!"
She added: “The customers wanted to have a little plaque there, so we put a bucket out and collected £100.
“Cooper’s memorial is now in place at Morrison’s in his favourite spot.”
On Friday, October 29, the commemorative plaque was unveiled right outside the main entrance.
The stone was donated by local business Just Memorials, founded by Tracy Hampton while she was battling a brain tumour.
Unfortunately, just weeks after opening, Just Memorials was struck by vandals but thanks to the Evesham community, was quickly back on its feet.
Ms Hampton sees this donation as a small way of saying thanks.
She said: “From my point of view it was just an honour to be able to do it, give something back to the community after all the support that I had.
“I had so much support from the community in Evesham. People were offering me to paint my doors, come and clean, new signs, everything!
“So, when cooper passed away I contacted the Theresa at Morrisons and said ‘would you like a memorial, I’m happy to donate one’ and she was really grateful.”
Ms Hampton added that it is not often you see hundreds of pounds raised for the memorial of a cat.
She said: “It’s quite unusual but it’s a special one though because he was a special cat. Everyone knew him. He was so loved.
“It’s very rare to do one as expensive as that one. To spend that on a pet is not something you get every day.
“Really pleased to be involved with it, it was one of my first orders, but it just took this long to come through because it was a bespoke order.”
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