Felix The Railway Cat

7. Felix Works His Magic

The kitten had been at the station for almost a week now and the transformation in morale was astonishing. Huddersfield had always had a family feel but – just as with actual relatives – along with the closeness of that familial atmosphere could come the odd row or niggle as people rubbed along with each other. But getting a cat had seemed to bring everyone together. Morale was at an all-time high. When the Head of Steam, the pub at the northern end of Platform 1, had its jazz night on a Wednesday, the team were seen literally dancing along the platforms as the bluesy music filled the summer air. The kitten had sucked everyone in and bowled them over.

No one seemed untouched by his magic. Angie Hunte, to her great surprise, had even walked in on Billy playing with the kitten one day, when he thought nobody was watching. The desks in the office had purpose-built holes in, through which, if needed, you could feed computer wires to reach a plug. There was one such unused hole in Billy’s desk, and she’d found him dabbling his fingers through it as Felix followed their movement from the floor, completely transfixed by the wiggling digits.

‘All right, Billy,’ she’d greeted him, in her honeyed Yorkshire burr.

He’d coughed; that gruff smoker’s cough caused by his frequent cigarillos. ‘All right, Mrs H,’ he’d replied. He’d surveyed the cat sitting on the floor who was, by now, washing himself with his rough pink tongue, making his black fur even more fluffy. ‘My,’ Billy commented aloud, nodding his head. ‘He’s a grand-looking lad.’

Angie had smiled to herself. ‘Yes, he is, Billy,’ was all she’d said.

Angie herself thought the reality of having a cat was just heavenly. She and Felix grew closer by the day. If Angie was sitting at her desk working, Felix would come up to her and climb up on her lap. Then, after a while, he’d reach up his paws towards her shoulders. She’d look down at his little face gazing into hers and say, ‘Come on, then.’ And Felix would climb up and sit on her shoulder, draping himself across her like a warm fluffy scarf, and there he would remain while she tapped away at the keyboard.

Felix, as it turned out, was a big fan of cuddles. When Andy Croughan was on nights, which were always a quieter time with just two team members on shift, he found Felix would latch on to him and follow him around. When he sat to do the accounting, the kitten would sit on his lap or find a crease in his arm and go to sleep. Andy’s own cat, Missy, a tabby/tortoiseshell mix, was friendly enough, but she would never, ever sit on his knee. The first time Felix snuggled up to him, he found himself feeling quite touched. But then, of course, every time he sat down the kitten wanted a cuddle, and it became rather like having a demanding three-year-old on his hands!

Somehow, though, he found he didn’t seem to mind too much.

Felix, when awake, was always more than willing to lend a hand with the cashing up. He was a member of the team, after all. But the lively kitten did not differentiate between work and play – they were one and the same to him. Andy would be cashing up and Felix would keep putting a paw on the cash, almost as if the cat was claiming a high-stakes gambling prize. Or Felix might park his bottom on the cash, or lounge across the balance sheet, or chase a dropped note halfway across the office. Sometimes, just at the moment when Andy had very nearly totted everything up and the neat stacks of money were in ordered, counted piles, Felix would get spooked by a noise from outside, and off the kitten would dart, right through all those piles of money … There would be cash everywhere!

Gareth, too, found Felix rather a hindrance when it came to doing his job. As the kitten did with Angie, Felix liked to use Gareth as a climbing frame: first to his lap, and then a scramble up his chest to his shoulder. Sometimes he’d lie lengthways across Gareth’s back, so that the announcer could move neither forwards nor backwards but would have to stay frozen in that position until the kitten decided to wake up. At other times, Felix would make the daring final step on his ascent: from Gareth’s shoulder to his head.

It became a new favoured location for a snooze. He’d clamber all the way up there, then curl up, tail to nose – somehow perfectly balanced on Gareth’s skull – and fall fast asleep. If a customer came to the window when the cat was in that position, however, Gareth regrettably felt the kitten was in far too precarious a pose for him to move.

‘I can’t come to you, I’m afraid!’ he would call out to the customer, in as helpful a tone as he could muster. ‘You’ll have to shout!’

The customers never seemed to mind though. In fact, most were totally charmed by this adorable new arrival and wanted to know the full story about how and why he was there. Nonetheless, Felix was rarely seen by anyone other than the team in those early weeks as he spent most of his time very much behind-the-scenes, and much of that asleep – cats are reckoned to slumber for an average of fourteen hours a day and Felix was, in this regard at least, a typical moggy. However, he never seemed to fancy dozing in the cosy bed the team had prepared for him. Instead – as well as on Gareth’s head or in the crook of Andy’s arm – Felix would bed down in all sorts of places: across keyboards, in in-trays, in the staff shower room, or on the seat of an office chair. Once, he foolishly chose a wall-mounted letter rack to nod off in: as he awoke and adjusted his weight, the letter rack wobbled unsteadily on the wall. Never had a cat dismounted a letter rack quite so fast!

For all the hours he spent asleep, though, there was still plenty of time for fun. Felix was full of life and every part of the office held possibilities. If Gareth did take him to the window, which was a traditional serving hatch, Felix loved to dabble his paws in the dip in the desk, through which customers might pass money and the team return tickets. Even as a tiny kitten, he wasn’t quite small enough to get all the way to the other side, but he would have a good old go. He could get his head in the bucket bit and one white-capped paw out the other side, but could go no further than that. He used to run riot in the office (always watched hawkishly by a member of the team, of course). Gareth tried to get him involved in the station announcements, but Felix merely sniffed at the microphone in confusion and not a single amplified ‘miaow’ was bestowed upon the waiting customers. Balls of paper were a delight to him, while the pens-on-a-string that were attached to the signing-in clipboards were almost as good as the mice-on-a-string he’d been used to playing with at the Briscoes’ house.

Fun as all this was, however, and excepting his cuddly brown bear which was a different kind of toy, as Felix approached the end of his first week, his playthings tended to be brilliantly improvised office accoutrements – not cat-specific objects. But all that was about to change.

Angie happened to be in the office when it happened. She was checking something, so she didn’t take in what was going on at first. Martin was on duty, and she remembered him saying, when Felix had first arrived, ‘You can’t sit there,’ and moving the cat from his workspace. Martin clearly didn’t do cats, and that was fine: each to their own.

‘Come on then,’ the announcer was saying now. ‘Come on then.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Angie glimpsed Felix leaping up onto the desk. He pottered around, then sat down on the keyboard. Less than a week ago, Martin would have told him, ‘You can’t sit there,’ but it seemed Felix had made a new friend.

As Angie watched, Martin slid open his desk drawer and pulled out a little gift for Felix. It was a small brown mouse on a red pull string. It was the first toy the station cat was ever given by a colleague. And it was Martin – a quiet man who kept himself to himself – who had given it to him.

Angie was amazed to see the transformation in her colleague. Felix had connected with Martin; as the cat was doing with so many of the team.

‘He’s brought so many people down to human, where nobody else could get through to them,’ Angie revealed. ‘Someone who’s just out on their own and they’ve got their blinkers on … that cat can turn somebody like that. He’s changed a lot of characters.’

But the question remained: would he be able to change the most important character of all – the one who held the power over whether he could stay? For Paul’s secondment was over. The boss was back.

Gareth had never felt so nervous in his life. The first morning back at work with Paul in place again as the station manager, he felt as if he was walking on eggshells. He crept into the office … and there was the little ball of fluff to greet him.

‘Morning, Felix,’ he said, wondering how many more mornings were left to him and his cat. At least the kitten hadn’t been banished outright on Paul’s return.

As was now their routine, Felix leapt onto his lap, curled up and went to sleep. And that was how Paul found them when he walked into the announcer’s office later that same shift. Gareth hadn’t told him they were getting the cat – he was far too terrified to take on that particular shoot-the-messenger role – so someone else must have dropped the bombshell.

Paul let the door close softly behind him. He took in the sight of the young announcer with the black-and-white cat on his knee. Up went the eyebrows … Then Paul gave a slight, almost amused shake of his head, smiled wryly, and didn’t say a thing.

Felix was here to stay.