Felix The Railway Cat

3. A Star Is Born

‘Shh,’ said Chris Briscoe, a revenue protection officer with TransPennine Express, ‘listen.’

It was the middle of the night on 17 May 2011, and in Chris’s semi-detached house in Rotherham nothing should have been stirring. But something had woken him and his wife, Joanne, from their slumber – and he thought he knew what it was.

He and Joanne listened intently into the dark night. Yes – there it was again: a timid squeaking, which sounded as if it was coming from the airing cupboard. Chris threw back the duvet and tiptoed down the landing, rubbing his hands across his bearded face to shake himself awake. Though it should have been shut tight, he could see that the airing cupboard door was standing ajar and, as he edged closer, could hear the multitude of tiny squeaking noises growing louder as he approached.

He gently eased the door open a bit wider and looked down. And there, at the bottom of the cupboard, spread luxuriously across the Briscoes’ best Egyptian cotton towels, like a film star in a perfume advert, was his eleven-month-old, black-and-white cat, Lexi. When he’d gone to bed, there’d been one heavily pregnant cat slinking about; now, as he peered down at the wriggling shapes surrounding her, he counted five minuscule kittens and one very happy cat.

Lexi was an affectionate pet, the only cat Chris had ever known who licked him, and she’d become even more so during her pregnancy. While she’d been carrying the kittens she’d barely moved five feet away from Chris: if he sat down for an instant, she’d climb on to his lap; if he got into bed, a moment later he’d feel the warm, solid weight of her as she snuggled down on top of him. He’d known her time was near, so he’d got a special flocked cat bed for her and tucked both that and an old blanket away, somewhere private, so that she could give birth in peace and comfort when she felt ready to do so. Lexi, however, had clearly had other plans – thus the little family currently sprawled out on the softest, most expensive towels known to man.

Chris crouched down and examined his lovely, tired-looking cat and her new children. He reached into the mess of kittens and first checked Lexi over, then did the same with the newborns, making sure that their airways were clear and that their mum had nipped off the umbilical cord properly; all was as it should be. Everything was grand. There was no hissing or biting from Lexi as he did any of these checks; she wasn’t that kind of cat. Instead, she happily nuzzled each tiny kitten as it was returned to her, making sure they were all well.

There were five of them: three tabby cats and two black-and-white ones. The latter were so similar that it was almost impossible to tell them apart. They looked the absolute spit of their mum: mostly black, but with almost identical markings to Lexi – a white V-neck bib, and white paws that looked as though the kittens had dipped their paws in paint; or perhaps, given the elegance of their bedding, had slipped on ivory-coloured kid gloves. In fact, all five kittens had those tell-tale white paws: a family trait that had come through strongly in each and every brand-new cat. Having just been born, their eyes were shut tight, and they mewed only for their mother, who attended diligently to each one.

Having made sure all was well, Chris gently closed the door, leaving it just ajar, as Lexi had wanted, before he and Joanne left them to it.

Lexi’s pregnancy had come as something of a surprise to the Briscoes. They owned two cats, Lexi and Gizmo. Both had been found abandoned on a council estate up near Collingwood, and were taken in by Chris and Joanne as they were looking for a pair of cats to help with mousing. Their house had a massive garden and they’d set aside an area at the top of it to keep chickens and a couple of golden pheasants in an ornamental cage. Because of the grain for the birds, mice had soon taken up residence, too, and since the Briscoes hadn’t wanted to put down poison to address the issue, a duo of cats was the answer.

Gizmo was an enormous cat, mostly white but with a black head (though white face) and black back. Lexi was half his size. Though he’d been taken in for mousing, he was absolutely idle – so laid back, he was laid down – and daft as a brush. He was a huge, fluffy cat who was patient and kind.

When the cats had first arrived, given they were rescue moggies, the Briscoes hadn’t known how old they were. They set about getting them inoculated and had taken them into the vet’s to discuss getting them neutered and spayed respectively, as they didn’t want any unexpected litters. The vet had looked up from his examination of Lexi and told them somewhat bluntly, ‘You’re too late.’

Sixty-odd days later, here they were with five gorgeous little kittens.

As the kittens were surprise arrivals, Chris now set about putting the word out that there were five kittens going spare, who needed rehoming once they were old enough to be separated from their mum. Joanne Briscoe also worked for TPE, as a customer host, so both she and Chris tried to spread the message far and wide on the railway network. Their son said he would take one of the tabby cats, and then a train dispatcher from Manchester got in touch to say she’d like the other two tabbies. Only the black-and-white pair were now without a new home to go to.

But they were making themselves rather comfortable in the one they currently had. Over the next ten days, one by one, the kittens slowly opened their eyes. At that age, kittens’ eyes are always blue, so first one pair of cerulean peepers, then another, and then another, stretched open and took in the sight of the world for the very first time. But one of the black-and-white kittens – the one who was fluffier than her two-tone twin, which was the only way to tell them apart – took her time. She was the very last of the litter to blink open her bright blue eyes – but once she did there was no stopping her.

Almost overnight, or so it seemed to Chris and Joanne, the basket of kittens was transformed from a blind and helpless mass into five courageous and mischievous individuals, who set out to cause chaos wherever they went. They were so playful! The kittens chased each other all over the house: scarpering up the curtains, hiding in the washing basket, pinching the socks drying on the radiators and treating them like prey. Nothing could be left unattended for a moment or it would be turned into a new game. The kittens had the run of the house and they made good use of it – they darted and tumbled and skidded all over the place, a five-headed ball of kitten mayhem that had suddenly rolled into town like a funfair.

A favourite game of the quintet was to terrorise their dad, Gizmo. He was such a placid cat that the kittens found they could romp all over their father and he’d let them do whatever they wanted. Eventually, after half an hour or so, he’d have had enough, and would gently ease them all off him and slink out of their way, but he never once chastised them.

Mum, however, was a different matter. All five kittens would jump all over her, just as kittens do, chasing each other and leaping athletically over their mother – a great game – but when Lexi had had enough, she’d give her children a backhander or grab them by the scruff of their necks to tell them: ‘Enough. Stop now.’ She was a loving cat, but she was also a very ‘do-as-you’re-told’ type of mother, and the kittens learned to stay in line. They learned other things from her, too. When the time came, Lexi – who was an absolutely spotless cat when it came to hygiene – showed them how to use a litter tray so well that all five kittens became impeccably house-trained.

As time passed, the kittens stopped suckling from Lexi and the Briscoes moved them on to the recommended diet of raw mince mixed with egg. They didn’t want to use the shop-bought kitten food that some did; nothing but the best for these kittens born on Egyptian cotton towels! Instead, they were weaned on the freshest, highest-quality mince, with raw egg hand-beaten into it. Food of champions.

One of the tabby kittens – the one who became known as Spadge, and who would eventually go to live with the Briscoes’ son – certainly agreed with that sentiment. He asserted himself early on and would always be the first at the food; in the Briscoes’ own words, ‘He was a greedy little oik.’ Amid the loud protestations of his mewing siblings, he decided he was getting in first and nobody else could have a look-in until he was finished.

The kittens were a noisy, confident, outgoing bunch. They miaowed when they wanted their dinner and Spadge was in the way, but they also mewed when they were playing, and had been known to let out a chorus of squeals during spirited boxing matches with one another. At night, when they were fast asleep after dinner, wiped out by their mega-exciting day, there were always a lot of soft little purrs coming from the velour brown-and-white cat bed where the siblings all slept.

In addition to Spadge revealing that he was ‘the greedy one’, the kittens asserted their individual personalities in other ways, too. The black-and-white duo became known as the terrible twins, for a favourite game of theirs was to latch on to Chris’s trousers while he was having a quiet sit-down, just like two furry pin badges. The kittens would make themselves quiet and still, so that Chris had no idea they were there. Then, when he stood up to make his way upstairs, he’d suddenly find that he had ten (or twenty) claws stuck into his legs as the cats clung resolutely to his trousers. Those super-sharp claws would scrape his skin when he moved. ‘What the hell is that?’ he’d cry, feeling them scratch, and one black-and-white kitten or another would cheekily cock its head to one side, enjoying the drama of his roars of pain and the oh-so-sweet sensation of being carried through the air on his trousers. They climbed up his legs all the time. So, after only a few weeks, Chris was walking around looking as though he’d made it a new favourite habit to clamber through viciously spiked brambles on a daily basis.

He redoubled his efforts to find permanent homes for the terrible twins. And here, at last, he heard on the railway network that Angie Hunte had been putting out a message of her own: Huddersfield station wanted to employ a station cat. Did anyone know of any kittens who might be up to the job?

It was important to Angie and the team that it was a kitten who joined them. It wouldn’t have been fair to an older, former house cat to throw it in at the deep end in a working environment, what with the danger of the trains and the noise and bustle of a busy station. Huddersfield hosted approximately 5 million customer journeys each year, with fifteen trains per hour, which placed it in the top 100 busiest stations in the country. You couldn’t teach an old cat the kind of new tricks that a railway cat would need to learn, but if a kitten grew up there it would learn on the job how to be a station cat.

Angie and Chris soon met up to talk all things kitten. At that time Chris was often at Huddersfield for work, so a meeting was easy enough to arrange.

Angie greeted him with one of her classic beaming smiles. ‘So, we’re looking to decrease our pest control bill,’ she said, eyes sparkling with good humour, ‘go a bit greener and employ a kitten instead. I hear you might be able to help – how much are you wanting for them?’

‘Oh, I’m not wanting anything for them,’ Chris replied quickly. Thinking of the scratches on his legs, in the nicest possible way he was going to be rather pleased to be shot of the kittens. To know that he wasn’t going to be stuck with at least one of the terrible twins was great news. In addition, given the network nature of the railway, he thought there was also a bit of kudos in the fact that it was going to be his cat that would be the Huddersfield station cat; that he would be its granddaddy. He would never live that one down.

Above all, though, he and Joanne were simply pleased that the kitten would be going to a permanent, loving home, where the Briscoes could be sure that it was going to be well looked after. In fact, judging by the grin on Angie’s face when he agreed that she could have one of the kittens, it was going to be downright spoilt.

‘We’d like a boy,’ Angie added, almost as an afterthought, as they drew the conversation to a close. After all, she and the team didn’t want to push it: it felt like a miracle that HQ had agreed to the station cat. Nobody thought that the powers-that-be would appreciate having kittens on top of that, so everyone felt safer if the new recruit was a boy.

As it happened, Chris didn’t actually know the gender of the kittens. And when the train dispatcher who planned to take the two tabby cats came to visit her new charges at his home he openly confessed his ignorance.

‘I don’t know how to sex kittens,’ he admitted. ‘You’ll have to do it yourself.’

Unfazed, the dispatcher picked up the tabby cats and said, ‘That one’s definitely a boy and that’s definitely a girl.’ She would go on to call them Percy and Max, respectively. Then she reached over and plucked one of the black-and-white kittens from the basket and turned it upside-down. ‘Definitely a boy,’ she announced. She picked up his twin, the fluffy one, and did the same. There was so much long-haired fur around its bits that it was a little harder to see, but she made a pronouncement nonetheless. ‘Definitely a boy.’ She seemed to know what she was talking about.

Chris let Angie know the good news: both the black-and-white kittens were boys, so she could take her pick. There was good news for Chris, too: a lady who worked in the Huddersfield booking office, Pam, had said that her mum would give a home to whichever kitten the station didn’t want, so both of them would be off his hands for good.

Joanne and Chris assessed the terrible twins as they scampered boisterously about the house. Apart from the fact that one was a lot fluffier than the other, there was barely any difference between them. They’d noticed only one thing that marked them out. The kittens, as you’d expect, had a heap of toys to play with (some actual toys and some hijacked by the kittens in fun). They had a scratching post with a ball on a string and in their turn all the kittens had climbed up the pole and then dived off, jumping on the ball; there were half a dozen squeaky mice for them to pounce on, too. And it was one of these mice toys that differentiated the twins. It was one of those toys where you’d pull the string at the side and the mouse would vibrate really, really quickly, making it skid along the floor. One of the black-and-white kittens was absolutely terrified of it – but the other was in his element. Over and over, he’d jump on it, pounce on it … boom: game over. Killer instinct in action.

‘So which one do you think should become the railway cat?’ Joanne mused aloud. She was a short, smiling woman with blonde highlights and a great sense of humour, though this issue was no laughing matter. It seemed a rather serious question: to be debating the future of these kittens as they gambolled obliviously about the place, investigating every new sight, sound and smell with a kitten’s classic inquisitiveness. The five hadn’t been outdoors at all yet, as they weren’t inoculated, but there were enough new experiences in their home to keep them occupied for weeks. But what new experiences awaited the station cat: the lure of the train tracks, the rhythm of the trains, the hours and hours of walking about on cold platforms in the middle of the night …

To Joanne’s mind, the fluffier of the two seemed more suited to this occupation. For even at this young age that kitten seemed to be taking after his dad, Gizmo, who was a total fluff-ball and enormous because of it. Surely a nice thick fur coat would stand a station cat in good stead? The other kitten had shorter hair and was nowhere near as large.

Chris described them both to Angie. ‘One’s really big and fluffy like his dad,’ he told her.

‘Well, we’ll have that one then,’ she said decisively. Angie liked the idea of having the fluffiest cat – and this little kitten really was a fluff ball, currently no larger than the size of a man’s hand. Chris sent her some snapshots of the kittens – and that’s when the team really knew this dream was coming true.

Angie showcased the photographs all around the office, more smile than woman as she did so. ‘Meet our little cat,’ she said to Gareth as she showed off the photographs as proudly as any new mum would snaps of her newborn.

Gareth grinned right back at her. ‘We’ve done it, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘We’ve only gone and done it!’

But there was still a lot to sort out before the railway cat could arrive. He couldn’t leave his mum until he was at least eight weeks old, so in the meantime the station team began preparing for their little boy’s arrival. They got fleecy blankets for him to sleep on, and bought a white plastic double-aperture bowl for his food and drink. There was a lot of excitement around the office at the thought that, soon, the newest member of the team would be joining them. Judging by the enthusiasm on everyone’s faces, this little kitten was going to be the most popular colleague at the station by quite some distance.

But not everyone was thrilled by the promise of the new arrival. Some colleagues even started talking up the fact that they were highly allergic to cats, and that therefore the whole plan should be called off – but these ‘allergies’ were something they had never once mentioned during Gareth’s three-year campaign to get a cat, so he didn’t really buy it.

But Chris Briscoe, for one, was definitely looking forward to the terrible twins moving out. Each night he and Joanne had to have a roll call for the kittens to find out where they’d got to, as they were forever playing hide-and-seek and trying to get into places where they shouldn’t be. ‘Right, how many have you got?’ Chris would say, his hands full of tiny tabby cat, as Joanne picked her way across the living-room floor and exclaimed, ‘There’s one at the side of the fireplace!’

Those two would be returned to Lexi’s side, placed gently into the snug brown-and-white cat bed, but by the time the other three had been located, the first two would have gone AWOL again. Tiring as it was, Chris’s daughter thought she would be very sad to see her new friends move on, as they were due to any day now. Lucy Briscoe was eleven years old and besotted with the kittens. She and the Briscoes’ grand-daughter, six-year-old Ellie, had taken the lead in getting the kittens used to humans, so they were forever picking them up and giving them cuddles – as were Joanne and Chris, in all honesty. All five little ones had received an equal amount of human playtime, personal affection and friendship in their formative first eight weeks. The Briscoes would, in some ways, be sorry to see them go.

And that day came all too soon. On Tuesday 12 July 2011, the kittens reached an all-important milestone: they were now exactly eight weeks old. It was time for the members of the litter to say goodbye to each other – and hello to their brand-new homes.

Spadge was the first to leave, moving out to live with the Briscoes’ son in Sheffield; a day or so later Max and Percy headed off to their new lives in Manchester. Now only the as-yet-unnamed black-and-white kittens remained. Both would be heading to Huddersfield station on Thursday 14 July. Aged eight weeks and two days, it was time for the terrible twins to take a journey they would never forget.