Felix The Railway Cat

9. Brave New World

‘Coming, Felix?’

Gareth Hope paused at the doorway of the office, a day or so later. The kitten didn’t need asking twice. She dived across the office, scampered up his long thin legs, and nestled herself on his shoulder, like a pirate’s parrot.

‘Today, Felix,’ he told her, ‘we’re going to be doing security checks.’

These were a regular part of every shift, important to make sure that the station was running smoothly and safely. They involved a circuit of the entire station, including investigation of various nooks and crannies, so it was a good way to introduce Felix to the wider parameters of her new home. She was still so small, she wouldn’t be walking: instead, Gareth would become her long-legged chariot, transporting her all the way.

Since her first taste of the station’s exterior on that summer’s night a few days ago, Gareth and some of the other team members had accompanied her outside again. She hadn’t gone much further than the doorway, and had only ever gone out late at night. Between the hours of 00.30 and 05.00, Huddersfield station locked its large, panelled, blue front doors and bolted them with a sturdy bronze pole. During the night, they were only opened again sporadically, fifteen minutes before the departure time of the services that ran in the wee small hours, then closed immediately afterwards. When the doors were locked, only Felix and the two team members on duty were around, so it was the perfect time to introduce the kitten to a trainless, customerless Platform 1. She was too timid to explore very far, but she did like to go behind the bike racks. The metal docking stations towered above her like an iron forest, and she seemed to feel secure behind those thick steel ‘branches’, with the yellow-brick wall of the office just a pace or two to her back.

That evening, Gareth was taking her out a little earlier than she was used to, before the sun had set. It had been a glorious summer’s day, and the heat was still shimmering around the station as Felix and Gareth set off along Platform 1. Felix’s enormous green eyes darted this way and that: there was so much for the little kitten to see. More customers were about for a start, and her ears pricked up at the rumble of a wheelie case along the concourse, or the sound of a man’s deep laugh. She was very used to people by now, so these noises didn’t trouble her; nor did the humans who kept doing double takes at the duo as Felix and Gareth passed them.

Felix bobbed along happily on Gareth’s shoulder, noting the coffee bar on Platform 1, and the doors to their right that led through to the main entrance of the station (and, beyond that, to St George’s Square and Huddersfield’s town centre). She started a little as a strange, moving glass box rose into view like a whale from the deep: it was the lift, which connected the platforms to the subway below. Felix looked back over her shoulder at it, perplexed, but she and Gareth weren’t going that way.

Instead, the young announcer trotted down the stairs to the subway. He kept a light hand on Felix as they journeyed underneath the tracks. Huddersfield was a very old, Grade I-listed station – the foundation stone had been laid on 9 October 1846, when there was a public holiday and the church bells rang all day in celebration – and it was a little-known fact that, when it was first built, a vast labyrinth of rooms and passageways was also constructed on the subway level, which today is shut off to the public. In the nineteenth century, they were used as offices, coal rooms, lamp rooms and even the first-class lounge. But they had long since fallen into disuse and now they lay in darkness, their old-fashioned fireplaces no longer flickering with flames; everything abandoned, covered in dirt and dust. Though TPE used a few of the rooms for storage or technical operations, the rest of the crypt was a spooky, subterranean lair, more fitting for ghost stories than travellers’ tales. Gareth definitely didn’t want Felix to go exploring down there. It was a place that gave the shivers to several team members, and he didn’t want Felix to get lost. They stuck to the well-lit, public-access subway instead: a clean and bright tunnel, modern and manageable.

Up they popped on Platform 4. Felix whizzed her head about as they came up the stairs, taking in all the new sights and sounds. Between Platforms 4 and 8 was a buffet room, but it was closed at that early-evening hour; it did a roaring trade in the mornings, when the smell of frying bacon and the clatter of plates tempted in bleary-eyed commuters. Peering towards the south end of the station as they came up from the subway, Felix glimpsed Platforms 5 and 6, which were tucked between Platforms 4 and 8 using a different bit of track. It was just as well she wasn’t numerically minded, as the station’s layout would have foxed a mathematical genius; but for those keeping tabs, Huddersfield has no Platform 3 or 7.

But Felix wasn’t interested in the platforms or the people. Instead, her eyes narrowed sharply as she looked up at the station’s roof.

Huddersfield station is only partly covered by its corrugated iron roof. There is a gap in it, running parallel to where the train tracks divide Platforms 1 and 4. But the open sky wasn’t what had caught the little kitten’s eye – it was the crows.

They lived on the station: a number of big black beasts who claimed the place as their own. The roof was supported by a cross-hatch of several steel girders, providing the birds with plenty of prime perches. They were cocky, confident creatures with slick, oil-like feathers, and at that time were larger than Felix herself. As she watched them swoop down to the platforms to pick over the crumbs the customers had left behind, she gave a worried frown, as though to say she wasn’t sure she liked those birds.

As Gareth continued his security circuit by walking along Platform 4, however, something else happened which drove all thoughts of the crows from Felix’s mind. There was a silent, still train sitting at the platform as they walked along it: a local stopping service which had been slumbering there quietly before its journey began. The pair were just passing the train when its engine suddenly came to life and revved up with the most enormous roooaaarrrr!

Felix was still on Gareth’s shoulder. When she heard that booming, jarring sound, her claws came out in fright and she dug in as hard as she could, trying to get as close to her friend as possible, in order to feel secure.

Gareth yelled in pain, and he got the sense that if Felix could have done so she would have yelled out loud, too. As it was, she dug in even harder, until Gareth reached round and gingerly lifted her off. He cradled her in his hands and, seeing that she was scared, rushed her back to the safety of the announcer’s office. He ended up with claw marks all over his shoulder, but Felix was OK.

Although it was clear that Felix was none too sure about the thunderous engines, the team at Huddersfield knew – from the success stories of those happy railway cats living up and down the country – that they simply needed to persevere in getting her used to the trains and Felix would be fine. She was simply like a child who puts her hands over her ears at the roar of a jet engine on an aeroplane; in time, that sound would become nothing to fear, just a part of everyday life. Felix was a station cat; she would get used to the noisy engines.

Her colleagues had read about how important it was to expose kittens at a very early stage to the things they expected them to consider normal and safe when they were adults. Anything they don’t experience at that young age might be viewed with fear and caution later on in life, to the detriment of the cat. It was why the team had wanted to give a kitten a home in the first place, so that she could learn the ropes as she was learning life itself.

The team took Felix’s initiation into station life slowly, though, and were always understanding. The kitten was never rushed into anything, and if she didn’t want to go outside, she was not forced to. Yet she rarely ever wanted to stay in – the call of the wild and adventures awaiting her were sirens to the station cat.

As the team helped her to adjust, they made sure that someone was always with Felix when she stepped outside, and she never left the office if the concourse was busy. Her colleagues used to carry her around in a ball in their hands until she got used to the trains and became more confident. Gareth and the others would regularly take her round the station on their security checks and, over the next few weeks, she slowly became inured to the engine noises of the stationary trains rumbling quietly in the station. She was nonchalant, too, about the chimes of the opening and closing doors; the sounds of the station announcements over the crackling tannoy; and the hiss of the little puffs of air that the trains let off as they prepared to depart. She often wanted to stay close to Gareth when they did the rounds, but she didn’t freak out anymore and to Gareth’s (and his shoulder’s) relief, her claws were not as prominent.

Felix usually sat on his shoulder as they made their way around the station, and for Gareth it became second nature to have a cat perched there. It must have been quite a sight – and this fluffy new member of the station crew certainly seemed to cause a stir among the commuters, who would do a double take as they walked past. Not everyone seemed to approve, however. One afternoon, Gareth noticed a couple of the regular trainspotters huddled in their usual spot at the end of the platform, shaking their heads disapprovingly, as though saying in despair, ‘What’s happening to this railway?’

With Felix now going out and about, the team made sure she had the perfect accoutrement: her very first collar. It was Angie Hunte who had the pleasure of buying it for her – and it was a complete pleasure. She had an absolute field day! She got it from a nearby pet shop and spent a long time looking for exactly the right one. Angie loved sparkly things, so it was perhaps no surprise that the one she chose was dotted all over with glitzy, diamanté studs. It was cornflower blue – the colour of the tops of the dip-dyed TPE trains – and Felix looked an absolute stunner in it: so glamorous!

But while Angie was delighted with her selection, it didn’t meet with universal acclaim.

‘What is that?’ said Billy in abhorrence the first time he laid eyes on it. He thought it was an abomination. He looked Felix up and down and then turned to Angie. ‘Why? But why would you choose something like that?’

‘Because she needs something so that you can see her!’ Angie retorted. You could certainly do that: the diamanté studs dazzled like glitter balls at her throat, catching the September sunlight.

Of course, a collar isn’t much good without a tag. It was Christine in the booking office who gave Felix her first one. By this time, everybody at the station was giving the kitten bits and pieces – toys, treats, new bowls and all sorts – and the collar tag was Christine’s own special gift for the cat who had transformed the entire station. She went to Pets at Home and got Felix’s name and address (Platform 1) engraved on the front of the tag and the team leaders’ work mobile number engraved on the back, so that if the kitten ever got lost people would know that she was loved and wanted and missed, and she’d be able to find her way home again.

It wasn’t any old tag that Christine bought. Oh no: this was a tag for Felix, the Huddersfield station cat! It needed to be something special. Christine had seen the jazzy collar Angie had given her, and as she shopped she was also musing on the poor kitten’s gender-confused start in life – so Christine picked out a beautiful, hot-pink, heart-shaped tag for the station’s little girl. One can imagine Billy’s reaction …

Angie had been one of those trying to help her little kitten adjust to the station’s noisy exterior. While they all loved carrying Felix about the place, that wasn’t a long-term solution: the kitten needed to stand on her own four paws. But there were so many things that could go wrong if she was let loose immediately – she could run off; someone could take her (the volume of strangers coming through the station each day was frightening when Angie really thought about it); not to mention the danger of the train tracks if Felix was released before she understood the threat they posed. She was coming up to four months old, so it was still a lot for her to comprehend.

But Angie thought she had a solution: a cat harness.

‘We can get her a little lead!’ she exclaimed, pleased with the idea. ‘Then we can walk her round and she’ll get to know the platforms on her own four paws, but she’ll be safe as houses.’

Felix was soon the proud owner of a bright-pink fabric cat harness. It slipped over her fluffy back and fastened around her belly and her neck, and was attached to a long lead so that the team leaders could walk her around.

Billy took one look at it and threw his hands up in despair. ‘I’m not walking round with a cat on a lead!’ he exclaimed. ‘Walking round t’station with a cat on a flipping lead? There’s no way!’