Full Steam Ahead, Felix

26. An Unexpected Arrival

Felix sat on the concourse with a justified sense of satisfaction. She was a cat at the top of her game: inspirational and professional in equal measure. And, yes, OK, she was still a little slower than she used to be; and, yes, OK, she might not catch as many mice these days, but, overall, she had never felt more proud of her position as the Huddersfield station cat.

She prowled about the station that summer with proprietorial prowess. Huddersfield had never looked better. As Felix picked her way carefully down the front steps to gaze out over St George’s Square, her ears pricked up to hear the musical giggles of little girls who were darting in and out of the modern fountains. Each time a jet of cool water caught them, peals of laughter echoed around.

Everyone seemed in a good mood that summer, whether they were off to the races or to a music festival. Felix went to investigate one day as an odd rumble sounded loud across the concourse; it was a group of four lads shepherding a heavily laden skateboard through the gateline. They’d strapped an entire surfboard to it, laden with beer, as they set off for the Leeds Festival at the end of August. Other festival-goers were easily identified too, with flowers in their hair and red Wellington boots. They bought ice lollies from the station shop – raspberry ripples or white choc ices – and wolfed them down before the melting ice cream could stickily drip down their fingers. It perhaps all inspired Felix to reconnect with her fun side, to try to recapture her own lost youth.

One day in the booking office, she wound her way along the back shelf and was delighted to spot that bastion of entertainment that can keep children all over the world occupied for hours on end: a cardboard box. Felix had made games of cardboard boxes in the past, but this one was different. This one was no bigger than her two front paws.

Felix started sniffing around it. It had contained a delivery for her, so she perhaps felt some sense of ownership as she investigated it thoroughly. And perhaps she decided that she ought to assert squatter’s rights too – because Felix decided to climb into the box.

Sara and Angela, who were both on shift that day, watched her with absolute disbelief. Felix was a large, full-size adult cat who was still (unfortunately) overweight – and she was trying to force her rather large frame into the tiniest cardboard box.

‘She’s not going to try to get in that …’ Angela said incredulously. ‘Felix, love, use your eyes!’ Felix was about four times the size of the box!

But Felix was absolutely determined. She put her front paws in first; the box was essentially now full. Then she tried to get her back legs in, without success. She’d lift one up and try to squeeze it into the small gap left, but it would flop down again, simply unable to fit. Nonetheless, with the feisty determination that Eva had so admired in her, Felix tried again.

Felix ignored all evidence that she might be too big and kept on picking up her back legs. In the end, defying physics, she somehow managed to squeeze all four paws inside. But, of course there was now no room for the cat herself. Felix looked rather like a top-heavy tree, with all her roots squished into a teeny-tiny pot. When Angela Dunn took a picture of her, Felix, cheekily, stuck out her pink tongue childishly, as if to say ‘Ha! I told you so! I’ve still got it, Angela!’

But if Felix thought she was still the baby of the station, she was about to get a rude awakening.

On 1 September 2018, Felix completed an outdoor patrol on platform one at about teatime. Hungry for her (low-calorie, senior-food) supper, she smoothly sashayed into the back office and made her way to the kitchen, where she knew she could stand and miaow until someone came to feed her.

As she walked along the corridor, she could hear her beloved Angie Hunte in the team leaders’ room, talking to Jacqui. There was an excited murmur to their voices, but Felix thought nothing of it. The station cat, no doubt, may have thought they were just excited soon to have the honour of feeding her. She appeared at the doorway with her usual flair. ‘Ta-da! Here I am, ladies!’ she announced with a flick of her long fluffy tail.

But neither Angie nor Jacqui even noticed her. A second later, Felix saw why.

Her head flicked sharply to the right. And her back arched as it hadn’t done in a very long time. ‘What on earth is going on here?’ said that swiftly rising spine, as Felix tried to process what she saw.

For tottering about in the corridor – her corridor – was a tiny black kitten. He was so young, he could barely walk, and was weaving a little as he tried out this new mobility malarkey.

Felix blinked as though her eyes were deceiving her. She didn’t hiss. Instead, after only a second or two, she turned round and went outside again, as though she had mistakenly stumbled into a parallel universe and needed to go back and reconfigure where she came from.

Not five minutes later, she returned, the call of her grumbling belly perhaps bringing her back. She walked very slowly and very calmly down the corridor, as though returning to the scene of a nightmare that she knew full well, in the light of day, should hold no more fear. But, to Felix’s dismay, the unsettling parallel universe into which she had stumbled seemed destined to stay.

The black kitten was still there. He was in the team leaders’ room by then, wandering about and sniffing eagerly at all the new and (to him) unfamiliar scents. He was a gangly little thing with an athletic torso, extremely long legs and a tail in the shape of a tick. His ears were absolutely huge on him. As Angie Hunte sympathetically called, ‘Felix …’ they quivered atop his short-haired head to hear her lovely Yorkshire accent.

Felix glanced at her mum for only a moment before her shocked green eyes returned to focus on the little kitten tottering about in her team leaders’ room. Yet in that short glance, Angie read the unmistakeable question: ‘What have you done?!’

‘Felix …’ Angie called again.

But once more her cat gave her only a passing glance, far more focused on the new arrival.

Felix refused to come into the room at Angie’s call. Her back began to rise again as she watched the interloper walk about, as she processed the peculiar shock of another cat on her home turf. And – unusually for Felix – she let out one short hiss, a sound more of disgust than of warning, rather like a sigh. It wasn’t nasty, but it was very guarded. Felix didn’t know what was going on.

Angie went over to her. ‘Felix,’ she said, as the cat glared at the kitten. ‘Please don’t be like that. He’s only little.’

Felix flashed her eyes only briefly upwards to connect with Angie’s. She didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to know. She had to keep her eyes on this imposter who had invaded the station …

But, as Angie now explained, he wasn’t an imposter at all.

‘This is your new apprentice,’ Angie told her gently. ‘You’ve got to teach him now, Felix. You’ve got to look after him. You’ve got to pass all your knowledge on.’

Seven years after joining the station, Felix had won another career advancement. The senior pest controller was now a line manager too.