Full Steam Ahead, Felix

20. New Year, New Felix

‘Nice one, Felix,’ said Mark Allan, Felix’s Facebook manager, in January 2018. He lowered his phone, on which he’d been taking pictures of the station cat, and gave her ears a rough stroke. She tipped her head up into his hand, acknowledging the compliment – although, really, she was so consistently fabulous in front of the camera that it didn’t need to be said …

Mark slipped his phone into his pocket with a heavy heart that morning, and returned to stroking Felix. He had only a few minutes before his train was due to arrive and he wanted to make the most of the time he had with her.

Felix didn’t know it, but it was the end of an era. Mark’s job had recently changed and would require him to work in London from now on. For the past three years, he and Felix had met every weekday morning; it was a daily appointment that Felix rarely missed. Her delicate ankles and wrists bore no trace of a timepiece but, even so, the TPE team knew they could set their watches by her – because Felix was always impeccably punctual for meeting Mark. Every day she would wait for him by ‘their’ bench. But from tomorrow onwards, she would be waiting in vain.

Mark didn’t have the words to say goodbye to her. The only upside for him was that most Fridays he would be back up north for work. His bosses had given him the option of working from home that day – but Mark had a sneaking suspicion that the prospect of meeting Felix meant he wouldn’t. He’d much rather come in to see her on his way to the Manchester office – so that’s exactly what he did. He enjoyed his time with Felix so much that he simply couldn’t go cold turkey, even if that was what everyone else was eating in those first few days of the new year.

Luckily for him, Felix did not seem to hold a grudge against him when his new job began and he failed to arrive to see her four days of the working week. She still waited for him on those Fridays when he caught the train from Huddersfield. Remarkably, on his birthday she even waited outside on the station steps for him before accompanying him inside, as though she knew it was a special day. (Perhaps she had a calendar as well as a watch secreted somewhere on her person.) Mark found that he really missed their daily interactions – but he also discovered that it made the shorter time they now shared together even more special. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all, and that was definitely what happened for Mark, who continued to run the Facebook page (with a little help from the station team) despite his change of job.

As well as cherishing his time with Felix more, he found that he noticed little details which might previously have escaped his notice, such as the change in Felix’s name tag. The team leaders’ phone number, which was engraved on the back in case Felix ever got lost, had recently changed, so team leader Jacqui had ordered a new tag for Queen Felix. Naturally, it had to be a glamorous design. Jacqui had opted for a gorgeous one: a silver circular tag with a pink glittery pawprint on the front, and Felix’s name, address (‘Platform 1’) and the new phone number engraved on the back.

Felix took to it straight away, showing it off in her modelling shoots with her trademark style. Watching her pose and posture, the pink glitter at her throat sparkling under the station lights, it was more like seeing a diva on a dancefloor, lit by rotating glitter balls. Mark made sure to capture every sensational step she made.

On those Friday visits to the station he also noticed that Felix’s famous cat flap on the concourse had changed. Unfortunately for Felix, it wasn’t exactly an upgrade due to her ever-increasing fame. The original cat flap, which had been decorated with her name and cartoon image, had recently been vandalised. One Saturday afternoon in the run-up to Christmas, an angry man had decided to boot the plastic partition panel and badly cracked it; luckily, Felix wasn’t around at the time. The team had taped it up and put in a request with maintenance man Dave Chin to repair it.

But, before Dave could get to it, half a dozen fare-dodgers got there first. A group of lads, rushing to get through the gateline without paying for their tickets, had decided to try to hurdle their way over Felix’s personal entrance to the station instead. But their collective weight, combined with the original damage, was too much for the structure to bear. It had since been replaced, but it was ‘only’ a standard cat flap, brown and drab in design, with no decoration and no name of the famous railway cat appearing anywhere on it.

Felix, however, took as much notice of the ‘substandard’ replacement as she had of the original – which is to say, none at all. She had never used it anyway – she would squeeze awkwardly round the gaps at its sides, rather than swinging through the saloon door in its centre – and she wasn’t about to start now. Still, the unused cat flap stood on the concourse as before, a not-so-secret sign that a railway cat lived here.

Truth be told, as 2018 began, such signs were needed more and more. It was perhaps Dave who first noticed the difference in Felix. As he didn’t come to Huddersfield every day, he was struck by how Felix had gradually changed her routine. Once upon a time, when he came to the station, Felix would be out and about, sitting comically in a watering can belonging to the Friends of Huddersfield Station, stalking pigeons on the platforms or simply taking a breather on one of the metal benches. She was seemingly never off the platforms, and clearly enjoyed the fresh air and all the adventures of the railway. Back in the day, Dave had found himself unable to undertake a new task at Huddersfield without Felix trotting over to see what he was up to. Her inquisitive green eyes would drink it all in as he hammered or plugged or screwed or banged and she was fascinated by everything he did – by everything anyone did.

But, as the new year began, Dave realised that it had been quite a while now since Felix had done any of that. Her six years at the station had taught her what everyone was up to and she no longer bothered to investigate. Why chase after Adam Taylor when he was watering the plants? She had seen it all before. Why race after Dave as he dragged a ladder along to change a light bulb? She was switched on enough to know that it was a waste of her time. She preferred to snooze on her luxurious ‘chaise longue’ in the ladies’ locker room instead.

It was, in fact, rare, now, for Dave to see her out on the platforms during the day at all. He found he could spend all day at the station and never see her, whereas in years gone by he had seen her all the time. If he wanted a cuddle with the station cat now, he had to go and pay court to her in her radiator bed, just like everyone else. Nine times out of ten she would be sleeping, and Dave would tiptoe out of the room and leave her be.

When he mentioned the cat’s change in routine to Angie Hunte, she could only agree. She too had noticed that Felix had got much more sleepy of late. Cats sleep for an average of fourteen hours a day anyway, but Felix was clocking up much more than that now. To her credit, she would still have bursts of liveliness, where she might stalk after a pigeon or play pouncing games with the on-duty team leader, and for those brief moments she would still be sprightly and springy. But as soon as she’d had enough, she would go and lie down – and that would be her adventure done for the day.

Jean Randall, too, noticed on her infrequent visits that Felix was much less frisky and playful. She had never been a big one for toys anyway, but they seemed to have lost any appeal they’d once had; Felix just wasn’t interested in them. And if Felix did go out on to the platform during the day, she would settle herself down and watch the world go by, without any inclination to engage with it. It was rare that she went to explore the wildflower garden beyond the white picket fence at the bottom of platform one these days – or any further afield. Angela Dunn soon realised that when she went to look for Felix to introduce her to her fans, more often than not Felix was findable, even if not always in the mood to grant an audience. It was unusual these days for her to be off on a patrol somewhere during the daytime. She preferred to stay much closer to home – so much so that even her hunting trips to Billy’s garden on platform four were much less frequent. Though it had once been a favourite spot, she hung out there only sporadically, even though the garden was just across the tracks.

But ‘just across the tracks’ could seem a very long way away when you were slowing down physically, as Felix now seemed to be. And there came an incident in February 2018 that underlined that with heart-stopping clarity.

It was a classic wet and wintry day. The passengers coming through the gateline looked battle-worn, having fought their way through the wind and rain even to reach the station. Commuters crossly dumped inside-out umbrellas that had been destroyed by the strong gusts blowing across St George’s Square, while professional women mourned the loss of the smart hairstyles with which they’d left their homes. The bad weather lasted all day long, so that the platforms were soaked through by the time Felix decided to put in an appearance later in the day.

For the first time in a long time, she decided to pay a visit to Billy’s garden, braving the bad weather to cross the tracks and have a sniff about in the long grasses. Dale Woodward, out working on the platforms, watched her with interest, given it had been so long since he’d seen her explore the garden.

A train began to pull slowly into platform one and Dale turned his attention back to his work. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Felix jumping down into the four foot and crossing back towards her bike racks, but he paid her little mind; she was expert at crossing the tracks by now, and at knowing the timetables of the trains, and he knew she wouldn’t put herself in danger.

Sure enough, as Felix reached the bottom of the four foot on platform one, she gathered her haunches beneath her and sprang upwards, summoning a single burst of energy from somewhere to propel herself to the top. Further down the platform, the train continued to pull in and Dale subconsciously admired her timing – she’d got it just right so that she would be safely on the platform by the time the train arrived.

But, on this occasion, something went wrong. Was it because of the wet platform? Was it slippy, perhaps? Or did Felix, sleepy Felix, simply not have the energy to make the leap?

Either way, something in Dale’s mind registered that Felix hadn’t popped up on the platform after her leap. He looked across at her directly, his heart beginning to pound. And all he could see was her little face peering above the platform edge – as her two front paws clung on for dear life. Try as she might, she couldn’t pull her back legs up. She was hanging from the cliff edge of the platform, her hind legs dangling behind her in mid-air, kicking furiously but failing to find any traction.

Dale began to walk towards her, panic powering his own legs. But even as he watched, Felix the cat failed to find the strength to survive this leap. First her head disappeared from view, and then her white-capped paws, as she let go of the platform edge. Despite all her efforts, she hadn’t had the ability to hang on for any longer.

Felix had fallen back down into the four foot. And the train was still coming in.