DODGER the cat is living the purrrfect life.

The ginger moggy does not paws to buy a ticket when he wants to travel on buses around West Dorset as he’s a fur dodger.

The cunning cat has become well known at Bridport bus station, where he prowls around all day waiting for opportunities.

He has been seen hopping on and off buses, sitting on passengers’ laps as they wait, and devouring discarded sandwiches.

Dodger’s latest escapade saw him taking a trip to Charmouth and back, and he is believed to have taken excursions along the Jurassic Coast on the X53.

But the 15-year-old cat, named after The Artful Dodger from the Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist novel is not a stray – he goes back to his home in Bridport every night to get fed.

Owner Fee Jeanes, of West Street, said: “Our house is on the main road but we back onto the bus station.

“We moved here 19 months ago and where we lived before he wouldn’t go anywhere, but now he goes off down the bus station every day.

“He loves it there because there are lots of people around and they all drop their sandwiches and pork pies.

“The drivers buy cat food for him and he sits on people’s laps.

“Sometimes he just sits in the middle of the road and waits for the bus to turn up.

“He is down there all day and I have to go out in the night to make sure he is ok.”

But not content with staying in Bridport, Dodger has now started taking trips around the county.

He was spotted in Charmouth and when Mrs Jeanes went to find him, she saw him hopping back off the bus at Bridport.

She said: “I suppose the bus drivers know him so well now and they know where he belongs.”

Mrs Jeanes also caught him getting on the X53, which travels between Exeter and Poole.

“I stopped the bus and the driver said he likes to sit on the seats because they are warm where people have been sitting.

“There was another occasion where he got on a bus and the children were feeding and stroking him.”

Dodger is familiar to regular bus passengers and drivers but Mrs Jeanes still receives several calls a week asking if she has lost a ginger cat.

She said: “He is absolutely fine – he comes home and sleeps at the end of my bed and spends the rest of the day at the bus station.”

A spokesman for First said the company didn’t mind Dodger on their buses but didn’t actively encourage him.

“The drivers have been asked not to feed him because we recognise that cat has an owner and we do not want to discourage it from returning home for food and shelter.

“Given this cat is elderly we suspect it would be eligible for free travel, perhaps a bus puss, if such a thing existed.”