Felix The Railway Cat

6. What’s in a Name?

‘Morning, gorgeous!’ cried Angie Hunte with even more verve than usual. She had a real spring in her step as she walked into the announcer’s office on day two of the station cat’s tenure. Somehow, getting up at a quarter to five that morning hadn’t been an issue in the slightest – she’d bounded out of bed, knowing that when she got to work, she’d get to see her cat. The early mornings, somehow, just weren’t going to bother her anymore: it was now an undiluted pleasure to come to work.

Billy rolled his eyes as he prepared to hand over to Angie for her shift. ‘Good morning, Mrs H,’ he said dryly.

She batted at him playfully, knowing he was pulling her leg. ‘I wasn’t talking to you, Mr Grumpy. I was talking to my kitten.’

Said kitten was watching this exchange with eager eyes, all from the viewpoint of his new favourite haunt: the top tier of the team leaders’ in-tray. Stuffed with paperwork, and with its metal edges curved up like a hammock, he’d found it an immensely comfy spot, perfect for catching a few zzzs and for watching the world go by.

The kitten’s world, for the foreseeable future, was solely the domain of the announcer’s office. Kittens cannot start their inoculations until they’re nine weeks old, and these usually take the form of a double jab, one at nine weeks and one at twelve weeks, so until that point, to be on the safe side, it is best to keep them indoors. Given the location of this particular kitten’s home, too, it was a nicer and safer way to ease him into his life on the railway. Though occasionally the muted thrum of a train’s engine or the squeal of its brakes could be heard from a distance through the window, on the whole the office was a much more peaceful and domestic place than the concourse – though, of course, the attraction of the cat itself made the office, at times, busier than Clapham Junction.

‘Has he been any trouble?’ Angie asked Billy, as the old-timer prepared to head off home.

Billy turned at the door with his hands in his pockets and scowled. ‘Trouble?’ he echoed tetchily. ‘Trouble? Too right he’s been trouble. Look at where he’s sitting! On my paperwork! All night long!’

He kept muttering grumpily to himself under his breath as he cautiously opened the door to let himself out. Despite his hearty moans, Angie couldn’t help but notice that he was being awfully careful to ensure that he didn’t give the kitten a chance to escape – though he couldn’t resist a huffy slam of the door as he exited.

‘Have you been winding Mr Grumpy up?’ she quizzed the kitten. He cocked his little black head to one side and stuck his pink tongue out cheekily, as if to say, ‘Yes, I have!’

Angie got her bits and pieces together, picking up the cat partly to give him a cuddle, but also because she needed the very bit of paper the kitten was lying on. That Billy, she mused wryly to herself. He could moan for England, it was true – but it hadn’t escaped Angie that, for all his cantankerous words, he hadn’t actually moved the kitten from his comfy place of rest. Billy, despite the toughened exterior and his prickly ways, was a big old softy at heart – though he wouldn’t like her saying so.

Though Billy didn’t have the heart to move the kitten, as the shift continued and Martin, Huddersfield’s other announcer, arrived for work, Angie discovered there were some colleagues who were not so susceptible to the kitten’s many charms. When Martin pulled his chair up at his desk and readjusted his thick glasses on his nose, he looked down to discover the kitten draped across the keyboard, as was now his wont. Martin shook his head: all was not right with his world. He cleared his throat and spoke awkwardly to the cat.

‘You can’t stay there,’ he told him. ‘Come on, get down.’

When the kitten didn’t move so much as an inch, Martin reached out and closed his hesitant hands around the little body, before lifting him up. He placed him down on the carpet, from where the kitten looked up at him quizzically, his bright eyes drinking him in.

‘Go on with you, now,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve got to do some work.’

But the kitten kept watching him, as though Martin was the most fascinating creature on the planet. Only when Martin shooed him away did he scamper off, thinking it was a new game, before darting round the office at full speed. For the kitten, everything was a new game.

And there were certainly plenty of opportunities for fun. As the cat grew more comfortable with his surroundings, he grew more daring. The office furniture became an obstacle course for jumping and leaping upon: in three easy bounds, he could dart from the floor to the squishy seat of an office chair, up onto the narrow beam of the chair’s arm, and then, the big finish, from his tippy-toes on the beam to the crash mat of the desk, which had a perfect surface for skidding and sliding on, just as a rock-and-roll star might do. The larger pieces of equipment, meanwhile, provided handy nooks and crannies for countless games of hide-and-seek, the skyscraper-like sides of the photocopier giving the kitten a safe cityscape to run and play and hide in.

And the cat had no shortage of playmates. It wasn’t long before all twenty-six people on the TPE team at Huddersfield had met him – not to mention the staff from other train companies who also ran services out of the station. Everybody wanted to play with the railway cat.

It was understandably a little overwhelming for the kitten at times: with each new colleague to whom he was introduced, he would at first be timid and shy. Soon, however, he began acquiring favourites. Jean Randall, who worked in the booking office, was one. Her philosophy with animals was that, as you’ve chosen the animal to come and live with you (and they didn’t choose you), you have a duty to make their life as lovely as possible. A cuddle with Jean, whose curly black hair was almost a mirror image of the kitten’s fluffy dark fur, soon became a highlight of his day.

But Jean worked in the booking office, where the team were locked in for security reasons, and the cat-burglar kitten wasn’t allowed in either, so those cuddles had to happen before or after Jean’s shifts, or for a snatched five minutes on her coffee break. The kitten spent far more time with Gareth – sleeping on his lap for the announcer’s entire shift – or with the team leaders than with anyone else, and so these people became his closest family and friends. The brown bear, too, was a constant companion: though it was a bit of a struggle for the kitten on account of its size, he’d tenderly clamp his jaws around its arm or leg so that he could drag it around everywhere he went.

With the kitten settling in brilliantly, the next pressing issue was his name. Gareth turned again to his trusty computer and rustled up a new station-cat poster – one he never thought he’d be in a position to create.

Huddersfield Station Cat

Here’s your chance to name Huddersfield station’s latest recruit!

Only 50p a go!

Write down your name and your suggestion for the cat’s name and it will be drawn from a hat on Tuesday the 19^th of July.

‘Well,’ commented Angie, ‘we couldn’t call him “kitten” for forever and a day.’

There was a great excitement at the station about the competition. It wasn’t open to customers, but as is tradition on the railway network, they put the word out far and wide, wanting as many people as possible to get involved. All proceeds from the naming competition were going to Save the Children, so the more people who entered, the more funds the kitten would raise for this very worthy cause. Almost everyone entered, and Belinda Graham even took some entry slips down to the TPE headquarters at Bridgewater House in Manchester, where the team there made their own contribution to the station cat’s history.

It was, of course, boy names they were looking for. By now, not only the dispatcher from Manchester (who had given homes to Max and Percy) had sexed the kitten – the little cat had suffered the indignity of having several colleagues examining his nether regions, patting at his mass of fur down below and nodding sagely as they said, ‘Definitely a boy.’

Gareth, continuing his tradition of silly ideas, suggested ‘David Hasselhoff’ or ‘Mr T’ as suitable names. Others were more traditional (‘Socks’) or celebrity-inspired (‘Keith’, after Keith Lemon). Dave Rooney, one of the team leaders with whom the cat was growing particularly close, suggested the very creative ‘Aloysius’.

‘Aloysius?’ said Angie, indignantly. ‘What kind of a name is that?’ She glared at Dave. ‘Please don’t let them pick that!’

But Angie would have no control over it – none of the TPE team would. The draw would be made at random and, to ensure it was fair and neutral, they had asked John, a driver-manager from another company, to make the selection. Whatever name he pulled out would be the one. It was a non-negotiable outcome.

The stakes were high indeed. As Tuesday 19 July drew closer, the cardboard box storing all the entries grew fuller. Each name was written on a scrap of paper and, once the entrant had paid their 50p, the scrap of paper got thrown in the box. A close eye was kept on it to ensure there was no cheating – much as Angie might have wished she could throw away some of those names, like another suggestion, proposed by someone with a black sense of humour: Splat. Splat, for a railway cat who’d be out on the tracks! It was hardly appropriate.

Jean suggested Frafty, which had been the name of her children’s cat when they were growing up; the station kitten was the spitting image of that much-loved family pet. It was perhaps Terry on the barriers who nailed it, though, when he scribbled four letters on his scrap of paper. His suggestion read: Boss.

Rachel Stockton, a conductor who’d once worked for the RSPCA, had a real liking for a certain cartoon cat. When she first laid eyes on the station kitten, she said to herself, ‘He’s a right little Felix.’ And that’s the name she popped into the all-important cardboard box.

The draw was made at about 10 a.m. on Tuesday 19 July 2011. Angie was there, but to make sure it was absolutely neutral she was nowhere near the box as John picked it up and another assistant stood nearby. It was like the lottery draw, with independent adjudicators. The kitten, utterly oblivious, prowled around the office, little knowing that the tall man with wispy grey hair standing above him was about to pluck his name from a forest of potentials.

John was a gruff, fair-minded, no-nonsense kind of man. He was used to dealing firmly with hard-nosed drivers on a day-to-day basis and everything about him said: ‘Don’t mess with me.’ Nobody would be debating the outcome of the draw: that was for sure.

He pushed his hand into the box and swirled it through the scraps of paper. Angie watched him, her heart in her mouth. What would her little kitten be called?

John’s hand settled on one and plucked it out.

‘Felix,’ he announced commandingly.

Felix. It fitted everything about him, Angie thought. It was short, it was nice … it wasn’t Alowicious!

Gareth Hope was a bit disappointed, however.

‘There’s probably a million cats in the UK called Felix,’ he grumbled. ‘I wanted something unique.’

As for Rachel, when she heard the news she pumped her fist into the air and cried, ‘Yes!’ Felix was a top name for a cat, and it did suit that little piebald kitten to a tee.

Angie bent down to the kitten and scooped him up.

‘Morning, Felix,’ she said.

He looked at her, nonplussed.

‘Morning, gorgeous,’ she added. Some habits die hard.