Felix The Railway Cat

22. It Must Be Love

Felix the railway cat was the queen of Huddersfield station, as regal as Queen Elizabeth II and as single as the Virgin Queen. Yet as 2013 drew on, it turned out that, like that red-haired beauty Elizabeth I, Felix attracted her own fair share of suitors.

‘Felix has got a boyfriend.’

Angie and Angela were catching up on the latest news, and this hot gossip was spreading like wildfire around the station. Their little Felix had an admirer.

He was a stray black tomcat. Very few – if any – cats ever appeared on the concourse, but it seems word of Felix’s fame had spread in the feline world too, and this new fellow had suddenly started appearing at night. Felix, the fluffy feline goddess, was quite the catch, and the stray began to appear regularly on the night shift as he hung around the station hoping for a glimpse of her. He’d sometimes wait for her at the customer-information desk, looking for all the world like a lovelorn teenager, choosing to settle in this spot that smelt so strongly of his sweetheart.

Angie Hunte, eyeing him up and down from a distance, was none too keen on the look of him. Though he was a bit bigger than Felix, for his shape he was skinny and scrawny, and even from where she stood she could smell his unpleasant, feral scent. Unlike her beautiful fluffy Felix, this cat was short-haired and his coat was unkempt. Oh, he was no good. Angie, like so many a worried mother before her, thought she should intervene.

‘Look, Felix,’ she said, trying to reason with her charge. ‘He’s rough. And when you start with them rough it continues, girl!’

As she observed the two cats together, Angie had reason to hope that her words had hit home. One night shift, Felix was sitting on the customer-information desk when her fella wandered into view. At last, his vigil had paid off. The tomcat sat down and stared wonderingly up at her: this vision of fluffiness so dedicated to her role. But Felix paid him no mind whatsoever. Nose in the air, she kept her head held high.

Ooh, she’s playing hard to get, thought Angie, watching through the door. Good on you, lass, good on you!

But it seems Felix’s curiosity soon got the better of her – or perhaps it was the dedication of her suitor that paid off. ‘Felix, your bloke’s out there for you,’ Angie would say with a disapproving tut, as the black cat prowled around the platforms looking for her girl.

But Felix wasn’t about to let her ‘parents’ see her courting. The team never saw the two of them playing together or even interacting closely. But when the tomcat looked steadily at Felix one evening and then tottered off, she tottered off as well, and they started to follow each other around in the cooling autumn nights.

It was perhaps partly because of these developments – and on the direction of the vet – that Angie determined it would be wise to give Felix a preventative flea treatment the vet had recommended. The station cat didn’t have fleas, but the medicine would ensure that she wouldn’t get them, plus keep her free of them in the future. Given the company she was keeping these days, Angie thought they had better get on with it straight away.

The medicine came in the form of tablets. Angie knew that wasn’t going to go down well with Felix – and she was absolutely right. She tried hiding the tablet in Felix’s food, but the canny cat just ate around it and when she’d finished her meal the tablet would still be there, utterly untouched. Angie tried everything she could think of to get the medicine down her, but eventually it became clear that they were going to have to try another way. It was for Felix’s own good, of course, but Angie knew in her bones the cat wasn’t going to like it one bit.

It took three of them in the end: Angie and two other team members called Dale and Louise. They caught up with Felix in the team leaders’ office.

Felix looked up at them as they entered and her eyes narrowed. Every sense she had told her something was up. When Louise picked her up she kicked up a hell of a fuss, but eventually she resigned herself to the inevitability of it, and Louise was able to hold her still. But Felix was still not happy – and it was written all over her face.

‘Sweetheart,’ Angie said, trying to reassure her, ‘I would not do this unless I had to, I promise you that.’

Then she gently opened the cat’s jaw with her fingers and placed the tablet in her mouth before closing her jaw again.

Felix looked as if she wanted to hawk it up like a hairball and glowered indignantly. Then, as they watched, Felix licked her lips in a way that seemed almost involuntary.

Well, that’s done it, everyone thought. Just in case, they kept hold of her for a moment longer, to make sure the tablet really had gone down.

‘Let’s just make certain she’s OK,’ Angie instructed.

But Felix was. She licked her lips again and Louise set her down on the floor. The trio clapped their hands. Great, we’ve done it, they thought.

‘Job’s a good ’un, team,’ Angie declared. ‘No more stress. Let’s give her a treat.’

But as she opened the door to fetch the Dreamies, Felix made a beeline out of the room. Unusually, she wasn’t hanging around to receive her reward. Angie followed her out into the corridor and watched her go, nodding her head understandingly. She knew Felix hadn’t enjoyed that experience, yet she knew, too, that what the cat needed now was simply to be left alone – Felix would come round in her own time.

She bustled back into the office, really pleased that, at last, Felix had taken her medicine.

‘Well,’ she said complacently to her colleagues. ‘That wasn’t too bad, really, was it? Not too bad at all.’

‘Angie,’ said Dale, slowly.

‘What?’

‘Look down there.’

On the carpeted floor was a little white tablet. Felix had spat it out before she’d made a beeline for the door. And she knew exactly what she’d done so she’d legged it before they could try to make her take it again.

Angie shook her head, nevertheless feeling a grudging admiration for the cat’s antics. Obviously Felix’s recent experiences onstage at the Alhambra had stood her in good stead – for the performance she had just given was truly worthy of an Oscar.

But it left them with a problem: how could they get Felix to take her medicine?

In the end, it was Billy who provided the solution. It turned out that the medicine didn’t come only in tablets: you could get it in the form of drops, too, which you placed at the back of the cat’s neck and then the treatment worked just as well. So it was in Billy’s arms that Felix finally received the protection she needed. He held her steady in his rough, weathered hands, stroking her fur reassuringly as he picked up the bottle and administered the drugs.

‘There you go,’ he said gruffly to her. And Felix was very grateful that he had ensured she never had to take those tablets again.

It marked the start of a softening in the relationship between Billy and Felix. The two seemed to reach a kind of understanding. And in Felix’s occasional grumpiness towards people – which she displayed more and more often, the older she got – one could perhaps see something of the cantankerous nature of Billy: Mr Grumpy himself. The two were kindred spirits. At any rate, he didn’t complain quite so much when she came to his garden anymore.

However, the horticultural experts who lived in Huddersfield might well have argued that perhaps he had never really wanted her to stay away. For amid the lavender and the Shasta daisies, the orange montbretia and the blue geraniums that Billy had planted in his garden, there was also another plant: nepeta, commonly called ‘catmint’. It has silvery-grey leaves and spikes of purple flowers, and gardeners know that cats love to roll in its aromatic leaves.

Perhaps he had planted it there just for Felix.