Felix The Railway Cat

12. A Very Special Cat

Felix continued to work her magic again and again as a key member of the customer-facing team of Huddersfield station. She was absolutely superb at calming the angriest customer. As Angie Hunte observed, as soon as they saw Felix, the rage just totally disappeared. In all her years at the station, she had never seen anything like it. And it seemed to work on everyone, from elderly customers to middle-aged mums. Gareth had a teenage customer once, a young woman with short, bleached-blonde hair, who was ranting and raving that her life was over because of the cancelled service that had wrecked everything! Felix had been asleep under the window at the time, and as the woman screamed at him in a total teenage tantrum, Gareth had fumbled discreetly under the desk for his cat, picked Felix up and put her on display in the window, as though producing a rabbit from a hat.

It changed the conversation completely – and abruptly. ‘What on earth …?’ the young woman had said.

Gareth had then slipped out of the door with Felix and the girl had held her and stroked her and she just forgot that the train had been cancelled and her life had been ruined five minutes before …

Felix wasn’t only skilled at diverting angry customers, however – she could also cheer up the unhappiest folk. Because the office window opened onto Platform 1, the announcers could hear everything that went on out there. One day, Gareth’s eardrums were split by the most wretched sound of a screaming child. A little girl with Goldilocks curls was crying her heart out and she was standing right outside the office, howling. He could hear that her mum was trying to comfort her, and had been trying to comfort her for the past five minutes, with no luck whatsoever. The child was distraught.

Gareth went out onto the platform with Felix in his hands. He didn’t really know much about children, so he had no idea if this would work, but the mum was really struggling. The girl, who was maybe two or three years old, was red in the face; her tears had made watery tracks all down her cheeks. As she took a deep breath in preparation for yet another ear-splitting wail, Gareth interjected hurriedly.

‘Look!’ he said to her brightly. ‘I’ve got a cat! Would you like to see her?’

The little girl blinked up at him in surprise, and the scream stored in her lungs never came.

‘Come and see our little cat,’ he said encouragingly, exchanging a look with her relieved mum. The two walked over to Gareth, who bent down so that the child could see Felix properly.

‘Here she is,’ he said. ‘This is Felix.’

He put the station cat down on the platform, and Felix trotted cautiously over to the little girl and sat down at her feet, looking up at her. The child stared back in wonder, whatever terrors had been plaguing her forgotten.

‘Say, “Hello Felix”,’ urged her mum.

‘’Ello, E-lix,’ echoed the little girl, her voice transformed from hiccoughing howl to burbling brook.

Felix stood up again and wound her way through the legs of the girl and those of her very happy mother, pressing her furry body against them both. It was another job well done.

Felix was doing such brilliant work at the station that it was around this time that she made her first appearance in the media, in November 2011. At only six months old, an article was written about her arrival at the station in the Huddersfield Examiner, celebrating the employment of this very special member of the team. Angie was interviewed for it, and made an appeal to customers not to feed Felix, for while the moggy had now successfully lost the weight she’d gained after her operation, they didn’t want her getting fat again. Angie explained that Felix was going to be a working moggy – the pest controller.

‘She’s about to start work on keeping pests to a minimum,’ promised the Examiner.

Despite the media coverage in the local paper, many customers travelling through Huddersfield – who came from far and wide – were still astonished to meet the railway cat, whether they encountered her at the customer-information point, patrolling the platforms or doing a security check with one of her colleagues. If they met Felix when she was on her own, they would often rush up to the nearest member of staff shortly afterwards.

‘Do you know there’s a cat on the station?’ they’d exclaim. Or they’d pick her up and proffer her: ‘We found a cat!’

‘Yeah, we know,’ the team would say casually, maybe even a little wearily after it had happened several times. ‘She’s ours.’

‘But where does she live?’ they would ask in consternation.

‘She lives here.’

‘Oh, is she a stray?’

Felix, at this juncture, would look up at them haughtily, and give almost a toss of her ebony head, so that the diamanté studs on her collar would glimmer and her pink heart tag would tinkle indignantly.

The station team’s response would be just as proud: ‘She is not a stray! She’s legal, she’s above board and she’s very much loved.’

Felix would then start washing herself, licking that oh-so-fluffy black fur to keep it nice and clean. A stray … Honestly! Did she look like a stray, with her well-kept coat and her glittering accessories? She seemed almost offended by the slur.

But despite the eye-catching glamour of those glitzy accoutrements, not everyone seemed to notice them. There were a few occasions in those early days where a well-meaning customer had picked up the cat and tried to take her home; perhaps because they thought she was a stray, or perhaps because she was so very beautiful. Luckily, the team on the concourse always spotted the situation arising before any damage was done. The collar was pointed out and the address read, and Felix – rather than being ‘catnapped’ – would be safely returned to Platform 1.

But the team couldn’t always keep tabs on her. It was a busy station, and a big one, and they all had jobs to do. Felix was an independent woman; at any time of day or night she might be off exploring round the bushes at the southern end of Platform 1 near the King’s Head pub, or up at the other end, watching those tasty little wild rabbits. She was becoming more and more fearless – though her hatred of the black crows still saw her running for cover. Sometimes she’d try to style it out on the platform, looking at one of them and striking an ‘I own this joint’ pose, but the moment the crow started walking or flying towards her, she would leg it – back home if possible, or up to safety on a windowsill.

But then she’d be stuck there, marooned, and the crow would know it. It would caw at her, a cackling kind of call that sounded like a mocking laugh. Angela Dunn, working in the lost-property office, came to recognise that sound. Soon she knew that if the crows started making that noise, Felix would be stuck on a windowsill outside somewhere, too terrified to move. Angela would have to come out onto the platform and shoo the crows off, so that Felix could get down from her little island and run home to safety.

So although the kitten was making great leaps forwards, she was still a vulnerable creature at heart: new to the world and still finding her way, working out what was a terror and what was a toy; who was a friend and who an enemy. As with all parents watching their children grow, the station team were both delighted and chilled by her growing independence. But Felix was a loyal little thing. Almost as if she knew they might be fretting, her explorations never lasted for any length of time, and she never wandered far from Platform 1. Every few hours, several times a shift, the team would spot her hanging out by the bike racks or leaping up onto the customer-service desk to put in her time on the frontline. She gave them no cause for concern.

But then came a day Angie would never forget. The day when she signed on for her shift and Billy had to take her to one side.

‘Now, I don’t want you to panic, Ang …’ the gruff team leader began.

These words, of course, were destined to set her heart hammering hard and fast within her chest.

‘I don’t want you to panic,’ he went on, ‘but we can’t find Felix.’

Angie looked at him blankly. So Billy said it again, more plainly, more worryingly, and in words that left no room for doubt.

‘Felix has gone.’