Published Jul 20, 2026
South Shore Feral Care / Facebook.com
Garfield, a New York cat whose amazing rescue story went viral, may have no more than eight lives left after surviving getting hit by a train and stranded on the tracks. Yet love surrounds this young, fluffy orange tabby, who is recovering and thriving in a foster home – now officially his forever home – after breaking his nose and leg, and dislocating his hips.
Tatum Christiansen – adoption coordinator for South Shore Feral Care, a rescue group – took in Garfield through the rescue, and she is loving on him in her Long Island home with her other three cats: Pumpkin, Pierre, and Mr. Pickles. While numerous people saw stories in the media about Garfield and expressed interest in adopting, Garfield found his happy ending with his foster mom.
“I’ve seen so many terrible things in rescue, but stories like Garfield’s are stories we live for,” says Christiansen, 49. “Everybody loves a happy animal story.”
Garfield’s ordeal began on April 11, when an engineer spotted the cat on the ground between two tracks near the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) Lindenhurst station in Suffolk County, some 45 miles from New York City. The engineer assumed the poor cat was deceased, but the same engineer passed the cat the next day and saw the cat turn his head. The engineer called the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) for help, and the MTA shut off the electrified rail power so that three MTA officers and cat rescuers could safely retrieve the injured cat, who apparently had been hit by a train.
“The cat was staring at us the entire time; we locked eyes with him,” Officer Vikki Machado told ABC7 New York. “We wanted to make sure he didn’t run away.”
Officer Dana Kehoe told ABC: “The Long Island Rail Road is so busy. … It’s nerve-wracking. You want to make sure everything’s OK.”
John DeBacker, a prolific cat rescuer on Long Island previously featured in Cats, came to the scene and felt anxious for the cat.
“The scariest part, to me, was not knowing what was going through the cat’s mind – if the cat was going to bolt or not,” DeBacker ABC told reporters.
DeBacker came up with a plan: The officers tried to get the cat’s attention, while DeBacker snuck up behind him with a net. It worked! The cat safely made it from the net into a carrier and to a vet clinic. The veterinarian diagnosed a broken nose, a fractured right front leg, and both rear legs dislocated from the hips, and it cost about $8,000 to treat him. Staff at the Long Island clinic, the Animal Surgical Center in Oceanside, named the orange tabby Garfield.
Garfield suffered a broken nose, a fractured front leg, and dislocated hips, requiring about $8,000 in treatment. Staff at the Long Island Animal Surgical Center named the orange tabby Garfield. South Shore Feral Care / Facebook.com
“He knows that he’s loved, and that is what counts,” Dr. Tomas Infernuso, the veterinarian who did Garfield’s surgery, tells NBC New York. “We are here to support him.”
News of Garfield’s rescue from the tracks went viral, and his story prompted donations from as far away as Australia, New Zealand and Scotland. Funds raised went toward Garfield’s lifesaving surgery, and remaining funds went toward helping community cats, Christiansen says.
“Garfield is so well-loved by the world!” she says. “There’s a community of cats we were able to save because of this. He’s so special to our rescue for these reasons.”
Nobody knows exactly what Garfield – estimated to be about 3 years old – endured and how long he was lying there on the tracks, as many trains passed over the area between the rails where he lay injured.
“How does anything survive being hit by a train? A human doesn’t,” Christiansen says. “He might have been trying to hunt something. Maybe he got sucked in. He probably got hit and flew. We’ll never know. It makes absolutely no sense.
“How awful for him to have been sitting there with no food, no water, and the sun blazing,” she says. “My heart breaks for this cat.”
After seven weeks of recovery, Garfield healed well and is now walking normally. South Shore Feral Care / Facebook.com
Some might question whether Garfield didn’t hear the train that hit him coming, but he is not deaf; he knows his name and comes when called, Christiansen says. Whatever happened to him out on the tracks, she says, Christiansen feels very fortunate to be Garfield’s mom. He is shy around new people, but he has bonded to Christiansen. Garfield had an ear tip and was already neutered, so he may have been living in a feral colony.
Now, after spending seven weeks recovering from his surgery in a bathroom, Garfield has healed and walks normally without a cast.
“Cats are amazing,” Christiansen says. “They are resilient!”
