Felix The Railway Cat

8. New Discoveries

It took perhaps a day for Paul to warm to the cat. By the second day – like Billy and Martin before him – he was playing with the kitten as happily as the rest of his team. And it was Paul, together with Angie Hunte, who took the lead on Felix’s next big move: the feline’s first trip to the vet’s.

Felix was clearly a very clever cat. Yet he had his moments of foolishness. With his position at the station only just secured – and caring not a jot for the company hierarchy – when Paul tried to place him gently into the cat carrier, Felix fought back. Swipe! Three bramble scratches appeared on the station manager’s nose. Way to go to endear yourself to the boss, Felix!

Yet Felix clearly remembered all too well the scary journey on his way to Huddersfield station. Even though his own, personal carrier was a different model from the one he’d been transported in by the Briscoes – this time with a sky-blue bottom and an oatmeal-coloured top – when he saw the ominous-looking carry case sitting on the desk, so obviously waiting for him with its yawning plastic mouth, he twigged what was going on and became a wild cat. His mood didn’t improve when, after Paul and Angie had wrestled him in and driven him off in the car, they arrived at the vet’s.

Animals, perhaps understandably, never like going to a vet. Even though it was Felix’s first time, he was already antsy from being put in the carrier, and to wait in the lobby with all the other animals was very disconcerting. The kitten was here to get a general check-up and his first inoculation jab.

The vet’s careful hands held the tiny little cat, who looked up at him through narrowed eyes, grumpily. Then Felix, to his intense annoyance, was once more turned upside-down in the most undignified manner and his nether regions probed.

‘Ah!’ announced the vet, knowingly. ‘You’ve got a little girl!’

Paul and Angie looked at each other in astonishment. They were stunned. But as Felix was turned upright and placed back down on the metal table, she washed herself indignantly without a hint of shock. ‘Yes,’ she seemed to be saying, ‘get with the programme, humans. I’m a lady.’

The reaction to the news at the station was massive; it caused both a few chuckles and a few dropped jaws. How could this have happened?

Then the next big question arose: should they change Felix’s name?

The outcome of the charity draw was supposed to be non-negotiable, but was it fair to give a female cat a name that had been intended for a boy? Would Felicity not be more apt? All sorts of suggestions were bandied around.

But, in the end, Felix stuck. It suited her. A girl cat with a name like Felix seemed a bit different, a bit spirited, and that was certainly the character of the Huddersfield station cat. In time, she grew to recognise her name and would even come when called (if she was in the right frame of mind). She seemed pretty happy with it. In fact, she seemed pretty happy with her lot generally – and why wouldn’t she be, when she was getting spoilt rotten?

Every day was play day. As the next few weeks passed, she had an absolute riot in the offices of Huddersfield station. Martin’s toy had only been the start of it: team leader Dave Rooney got her her first laser toy, and she loved that, especially on a night shift when it was dark and the laser light so bright.

‘Felix, what’s that?’ the team would say as they switched it on. ‘What’s that?’ And she’d look, and they’d turn it off. ‘Where’s it gone? Where’s it gone?’ On. ‘There it is! Go, Felix, go!’ And she’d sprint after the maddening light.

She continued her usual games of sleeping or lying on anything that stayed still for longer than thirty seconds, too. Often, she’d spread-eagle herself across official objects so authoritatively that to all intents and purposes she looked as though she was helping the team with their duties – but nothing could be further from the truth, whatever Felix’s intentions. For example, one of these reclining hotspots was where the conductors kept their cash bags, which might be piled one on top of another. The conductors would be lining up, rushing to get off on a service, but before they went they had to take hold of the very item the cat was stretched out upon so comfortably. In the end, they became adept at performing that old magician’s tablecloth trick: pulling them out from under her as she watched proceedings like a hawk, as though looking for the secret of how they did it.

As Felix settled in, Angie and the rest of the team got to grips with how paying for Felix worked. Essentially, the company covered all costs – but they had to be attributed to something on the disbursement paperwork: an explanation given as to why the money was being spent. Angie chewed the end of her pen as she sat facing her first form to cover Felix’s food costs. What to put?

A smile crossed her face as she scribbled it down: Pest controller needs nourishment.

After that, they often referred to Felix as ‘the pest controller’.

But perhaps another nickname would have been more apt: The Destroyer. For although Felix had a scratching post, she preferred to rake her claws along the office chairs, or the fabric noticeboards, or her colleague’s clothes (and hands). She was growing larger and bolder by the day, and had now learned to combine two of her favourite games: the climbing-frame athletics extravaganza she’d perfected with Gareth, and the old-school trouser tango with which she’d used to terrorise her grandfather, Chris Briscoe.

A colleague would be walking along, minding their own business, when Felix would suddenly launch herself at them and run up their back. They’d feel the tell-tale twinge of cat claw, and then the full weight of the kitten as she anchored herself to their work trousers. Then she’d be up, up and away – dragging her claws through the fabric as she ascended their legs, moving on to the slippery smooth surface of a work shirt, giving a trampoline-like push up onto the shoulder, and then the pièce de resistance as she reached the summit: claiming the head. Her claws were such that it rather felt like being skewered with a flag reading ‘Felix’ when she reached the top.

She tried this trick with lots of people but, unsurprisingly, not many of the team enjoyed the sensation of a cat using them for mountaineering practice, so it was only a hardy few, like Gareth, whom she used consistently for her energetic climbs.

The team’s trousers were in a right state: full of tiny holes and pulls in them, from where she’d at least tried to run up their legs before being lifted off. It was clear to everyone that Felix was going a little stir crazy.

It was now the middle of August 2011. She’d just had her twelve-week birthday and her second – and final – inoculation jab. Her age was clear for all to see, for as the weeks had passed Felix’s eyes had taken on their adult pigment, changing from their kitten blue to a beautiful, shimmering green; just like her mother’s.

It’s always a tough thing for any parent to recognise, but Gareth Hope, on a late turn, realised that Felix was now ready to meet the outside world. Up until this point, excepting her trips to the vet, she had resided only in the office with the door always shut tight, preventing any escape. Felix knew that was the way the world worked: people came in and out, but the door was always closed to her.

That evening, as the summer twilight faded to dusk and the night set in, Gareth took a deep breath and lodged open the door.

‘Here you go,’ he said to his little friend. ‘You can have a look outside.’

Felix almost gave a double take – are you sure? – before she ran out, tripping over her toes on this great adventure. She ran bravely straight to the public doors, which were just beyond the office door and always open. Then she stopped dead, on the threshold to Platform 1, as though surprised to find that there wasn’t simply another office beyond, but instead a very big, and very wide, world. She almost skidded to a halt, as though her senses had been hit by a sledgehammer, and she could go no further until she’d digested all this newness.

It was quite late, so the station was quiet. But that was quiet in comparison to rush hour – and in the dark, especially to Felix’s little ears, the night sounds of the station seemed amplified a hundredfold.

There were no trains on the platforms. Instead, the melodies she could hear, and which mesmerised her, came from the swish of the public rubbish bags moving in the wind on their frames; from the syncopated rhythm of a woman’s high heels as she clicked her way along the concourse; from the constant buzz of electricity coming from the station lights or its signals, which were always switched on. Felix was very alert and seemed very on edge – but she wasn’t alone. Gareth loitered, just a few steps behind her, keeping an eye on his charge. She had grown so much, but she was still a kitten, and somehow looked suddenly smaller, standing on the threshold of this brave new world.

Reassured by his presence, Felix turned back to face Platform 1. She sat down in the doorway, perhaps a little abruptly. She took a few moments to take it all in, her head moving from left to right as she assessed everything that lay before her. The concrete of Platform 1 rolled gently to its edge. It was bordered by a shocking yellow line, and Felix felt no desire to see what was beyond its cliff-like edge, where the platform dropped away into nothingness. Beyond, across the blank emptiness, there was another platform, Platform 4; and if she looked to her left, she could just see the outer reaches of Platform 2, located at the very foot of her home on Platform 1. Platform 2 eventually tapered in a slope to the ground, but Felix couldn’t see that from the doorway; it might as well have been in Siberia, it seemed so far away to the little kitten. To her immediate right were the bike racks; and they struck her, even on that first scout outside, as a rather safe-looking haven. Perhaps she made a mental note for the future.

As the station cat quietly surveyed the scene, the evening breeze stirred her fur for the very first time, ruffling all that ebony fluff so that each cat hair quivered and moved in the August air. She blinked those big green eyes of hers. She twitched her long white whiskers, sniffing all those brand-new smells. She looked rather as though she was thinking: Wow.

Felix, meet the world.

World, meet Felix.

Though the kitten didn’t know it yet, all this would be her kingdom.