Felix The Railway Cat

26. Santa Claws

‘Here we go, then, Felix,’ Jean said as she opened up the door of the cat carrier. ‘Welcome home.’

Felix stepped gingerly out of the blue-and-oatmeal carry case and looked around with interest. Jean lived in a lovely two-bedroom cottage, built in 1802. On the ground floor it had a long kitchen/diner, as well as a huge living room with wooden floorboards and plain cream walls. The focal point of that living room was the fireplace, which was framed by a beautiful stone mantelpiece set before an open chimney. When the fire was lit and the white voile curtains drawn across the glass French doors, it was a wonderfully cosy place to spend a winter’s night.

Felix had a good old nose around, sticking her twitching whiskers into every nook and cranny, familiarising herself with this environment which was so very different from the station. She had stayed with Jean for Christmas 2012, too, but showed no sign of recognition as she padded round the living room on her white-tipped toes.

It had been a great Christmas two years ago with the little black-and-white cat, so Jean had been more than happy to volunteer to look after Felix again. In 2012, when Jean and Felix had first got home from the station on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, after investigating her new pad Felix had simply curled up on Jean’s lap and fallen fast asleep, exhausted by the novelty of being in a family home.

On Christmas Day, however, it had been Jean who’d been exhausted, for Felix – bless her – had spent the whole of Christmas Eve night crying and howling. She’d been lonely without the night-shift team around her and was clearly disconcerted by the stillness and the silence, where normally there were trains coming and going through the night. Jean had got up and sat with her at least three times – but they didn’t see Santa. Instead, they’d snuggled up on the sofa together and listened to the radio as Christmas morning had broken across the town.

Christmas Day had been a fine affair with Felix receiving a special festive treat of fresh prawns while Jean and her visiting family and friends ate their dinner; it was a very full house, and Jean was convinced that at least some of the visitors came because they knew the railway cat was the guest of honour that year and wanted to meet her. Felix had been as good as gold as they’d pulled their crackers and told the jokes, so used to the noise of the station that the bang of the crackers didn’t even make her start.

But busy and well-populated as the celebrations were, Felix had been far more interested in her hostess than in her new admirers; she’d followed Jean around devotedly, and every time she’d got close to her she’d purred loudly, delighting in the familiarity of her friend when everything else was so strange. Yet it didn’t take her long to adjust to her new environment: before she came home, Felix was sleeping through the night without a peep and Jean thought she’d adjusted very quickly to domestic life.

That said, the cat returned to work with far more enthusiasm than most workers do following the Christmas break. Jean and Felix had spent both Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2012 together, then Jean had carried Felix back to the station on 27 December, which was also Jean’s first day back in the booking office. When Jean had opened the door of the carry case, the railway cat had come straight out as if she’d never been away and immediately got on with her work. She’d sauntered along the platforms, giving a contented nod to the customers as if she was saying, with some satisfaction, ‘I’m home.’

Not that she didn’t enjoy her holidays. Felix was a curious and adventurous cat with many human friends, and her annual jaunts to stay in the different homes of her colleagues for Christmas had always been fun affairs. This year, naturally, would be no different. As always, her first priority was to suss out the lie of the land.

Jean let the cat get settled before changing out of the uniform she’d been wearing for her shift that morning. She pulled on some tartan pyjamas and shrugged a cosy pink dressing gown on over the top. She liked to get changed after work, and she and Felix wouldn’t be going out again that evening; it would be just the two of them on the sofa instead: the cat lady and the cat. Nice company for each other on this Christmas Eve night.

Jean padded back down the stairs to see how Felix was getting on. Perhaps she would be lying on the new fleecy blanket Jean had bought for her bedding. Or maybe she’d be in the kitchen/diner, where her litter tray was laid out. Well-trained by her mother Lexi, Felix was still diligent in using the litter tray, even though she tended to do her business outdoors at the station. It seemed there were some things you never forgot.

Because Felix was a cat so accustomed to being outdoors and to coming and going as she pleased, the only hardship of her holidays was that Jean would be keeping her indoors for the entire visit, as she had done two years before. Felix was far from home and had travelled to Jean’s house in a car – Jean didn’t want her getting lost or running off. The idea of returning to the station after Christmas without the station cat and having to break the news that she’d lost her didn’t bear thinking about. Team leader Angie Hunte would probably kill her.

When Jean got downstairs, Felix was pottering happily about in the living room, swishing her fluffy black tail as she wandered this way and that, her whiskers quivering as she sniffed all the exciting new smells. Jean joined her.

‘All right, my darling?’ Jean asked as the two of them ambled about the big living room, Felix still exploring and Jean doing some tidying up. There was a large coffee table in the middle of the room; Jean was standing on one side of it and Felix on the other. As it was now late afternoon on Christmas Eve, it was dark outside the French doors: a thick blanket of black had already settled upon the town.

Jean chattered away to Felix, conscious of the cat’s eyes upon her as she moved about the room. When Felix was staying at her house, the feline often followed her movements obsessively, as though she didn’t want to let Jean out of her sight.

Which was why, when the cat’s gaze was no longer trained upon her, Jean felt its absence, as surely as if a spotlight had been suddenly switched off.

Jean was a mother of grown-up kids, and she felt an eerily familiar sensation as the cat stopped looking at her. It was just like when her boys had been small: she’d always instinctively known they were up to something when they went quiet.

She glanced over at Felix on the other side of the coffee table. The cat had turned away from Jean and was facing the unlit fireplace, sitting there and looking, as though deep in thought. As she watched, Felix’s head inclined to one side and her whiskers twitched. There was a tension in the cat’s body, as though she was about to do something, but what it was Jean couldn’t imagine.

‘Felix?’ she asked uncertainly.

And then Felix ran up the chimney.

She leapt over the hearth in one jump and dived athletically up into the open chimney above, through which – perhaps – she could smell fresh air and freedom. All Jean could see was her tail and her two back legs as she scrabbled and scraped against the sooty chimney in her bid to climb up, up, up and away.

‘FELIX!’ yelled Jean at the top of her voice. She scrambled round the coffee table, which suddenly seemed like an obstacle upon which Felix had counted for a few seconds’ delay. Nevertheless, somehow Jean managed to grab those wriggling back legs with both hands before they completely disappeared from view.

Her heart was pounding. I can’t let her escape, I can’t let her escape ran the mantra in her head.

Felix writhed and wiggled against her, trying to find some traction. It was a sort of ‘dog-leg’ chimney, where the channel curved round and then narrowed, and Felix was trying to get round the bend, her front paws scrabbling hard against the chimney as she attempted to find a way through. As she struggled, she dislodged centuries of puffy black soot, which fell in thick ebony drifts around both her and Jean, coating the two of them.

Jean was panting. She genuinely thought she was going to have a heart attack. Oh my God, it’s Christmas Eve, she thought to herself. It’s Christmas Eve – I can’t let her go. What if she gets hurt? What if she escapes? Or what if she gets stuck in the chimney?! I’ll have to call the fire brigade!

She could just imagine their reaction.

‘You do know it’s supposed to be Father Christmas coming down the chimney tonight, madam,’ they would chortle behind their hands, ‘not Santa Claws …’

But never mind the firemen: Jean was far more concerned about what the station team might say. Even though Jean genuinely believed she might keel over at any moment from the stress, she knew it wasn’t her that her colleagues would be alarmed about.

‘Oh, Jean’s had a heart attack?’ they would say, so blasé. ‘Well, never mind that. How’s Felix? How do we get the cat back? If she’s stuck up the chimney, we’ll just have to demolish Jean’s house!’

Jean tugged harder on Felix’s squirming hind legs, trying desperately to drag her back to safety in the living room, and the cat mawed and dug in to something within the narrowing chimney, holding on tight to her escape route. Jean pulled and Felix howled, Jean yanked and Felix squealed, and every second felt like an aeon as Jean’s heart hammered in her ears.

And then Felix let go. Whoosh! Cat and cat lady fell backwards from the chimney. Felix did a commando roll and shot away into the kitchen. She was safe. Peace was restored. Home sweet home.

Yet that home was no longer quite as sweet as it had been before Felix had made her bid for freedom. As Jean sat panting before the fireplace, she surveyed the damage.

She was covered in soot. Felix, she had seen, was totally covered in soot. The wooden floorboards, the hearth … everything was covered in soot.

But more pressing than the dirt, to Jean’s mind, was the need to block up the chimney. What if Felix did it again?

Jean couldn’t believe what had happened. On her visit in 2012, Felix hadn’t shown the slightest interest in the fireplace – and now this!

The escape artist was mewing in the kitchen, a kind of ‘Well, I say!’ mew at all the commotion, but she wasn’t grumpy or bothered by what had happened. Her attitude seemed pretty equable: ‘I tried that, it didn’t work, so let’s move on.’

But just because Felix didn’t seem concerned about it now, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t turn her attention to the chimney again in the future, perhaps in the middle of the night when Jean was sleeping and no one would be awake to watch her go …

Jean tiptoed to the kitchen door and shut it firmly so that Felix was, at least, safe for the time being in there. I’m going to have to block the chimney, she thought. She picked up a cushion, but realised it was way too small. She debated pushing something in front of the fire, so that Felix couldn’t get to the chimney, but whatever she placed there would inevitably have cat-sized gaps at the sides, through which the lithe Felix would easily be able to squeeze. In the end, she went upstairs and grabbed an old duvet. Pushing and shoving, she rammed it up the chimney till the hole was completely filled.

‘There!’ said Jean when she had finished. ‘That will have to do.’

That particular mission accomplished, she now turned her attention to what was evidently going to be a big job: the clean-up. Jean walked from the fireplace through to the kitchen. Following in Felix’s footsteps was easy as the cat had left a sooty black trail everywhere she went. Jean decoded the evidence like a crime scene investigator. Here was where the cat had landed from her fall and rolled across the floor. Here was where she’d had a good old shake to get some of the soot off. And here was where she had curled up in a big fluffy ball in the corner.

‘Felix,’ Jean said to her, and the cat looked up. They stared each other out, and Jean shook her head reproachfully. ‘Don’t you ever do that again, do you hear me? I nearly had a heart attack!’

Felix gave a little purr, as though to say, in conciliatory fashion, ‘I won’t!’ She got up and started twisting through Jean’s legs.

‘Friends?’ asked Jean.

And friends it was.

Jean grabbed an old hairbrush and Felix stood still, ready to be groomed. Her trips to the parlour had never been quite like this. First Jean stroked her, and a lot of the soot came off in her hands. Then she pulled the brush through Felix’s fluffy fur, and brushed and brushed and brushed her till she was clean. Felix stood there, letting Jean minister to her, until there was a solid black circle of soot all around where she stood. Only once she was totally clean did Jean let her go. She then wiped up the living room and the kitchen and all of Felix’s sooty pawprints, then let the cat back into the lounge.

Felix tiptoed in and went straight over to the fireplace as though drawn to it by a magnet. She cast a look over her shoulder at Jean, who was watching her like a hawk.

‘Don’t even think about it, Felix,’ she said dryly.

Felix drew closer to the hearth and looked up. She sniffed at the edges of the duvet, then ducked her head and walked away. Nevertheless, she kept on looking back at it, as did Jean. Is the duvet secure? Jean fretted. Might Felix be able to dislodge it?

Amid her worrying, Jean looked down at herself. Her pink dressing gown was pink no more. Her hands were pure filth. I’m going to have to have a shower, she thought. She was scared of going upstairs in case Felix imitated Harry Houdini again while she was gone, but she had no option. So Jean showered, and put her blackened clothes into the washing machine. Then, as the washer tumbled and hummed melodically, she and Felix finally settled in for the night.

When Jean sat down on the sofa in the living room, Felix immediately jumped up into her lap for a cuddle. All was forgiven. Santa Claws was just the station cat once more.

After that, Jean and Felix had a lovely Christmas. Following her little escapade, Felix was no trouble at all; she didn’t even cry at night. On Christmas Day, Jean gave her a treat of a little bit of Sainsbury’s finest unsmoked salmon, which she sentimentally served up in a white china bowl that had once belonged to her children when they were babies: it had the letters of the alphabet painted on it in blue. Felix absolutely loved that salmon; she devoured the small amount Jean let her have and purred noisily for more.

Boxing Day was mostly spent with Felix gazing out at the garden through the tall French doors, miaowing every now and again as she stared morosely at the great outdoors. Jean felt a bit sorry for her in the end, so glum was her constant vigil. Felix seemed jealous of the neighbour’s tabby cats who tumbled in the garden, and of the robin and the wood pigeons who flew about the trees.

Even when it grew dark, Felix maintained her watch by the window. Jean had some solar-powered fairy lights wound round her trees, and after the sun had set they came to life automatically and twinkled in the darkness. Perhaps they reminded Felix of the fairy lights wrapped around the stately columns of her home. Perhaps she was missing it.

She was certainly pleased to be back when Jean opened up the carrier the following day and Felix scampered out. She sniffed all around the team leaders’ office and wandered over to Billy’s garden. She carefully traced the route they walked together for the security checks and careered around the car park. She paced up and down the platforms, on patrol. But the man she was looking for wasn’t there.

Billy was still not back at work.