Full Steam Ahead, Felix

22. Poorly Puss

After that day, Sara noticed that Felix never once showed her diva side to her again. It was as if she was on her best behaviour. She was kinder. Nicer. Maisie’s impending arrival seemed to make the station cat suppress her occasional flashes of fierceness and bring out her more maternal side – one that Angie Hunte hadn’t seen for a very long time, not since Felix had used to carry her brown bear around in her mouth many years ago.

Angie Hunte was feeling pretty maternal herself that summer as her friend Jacqui, her fellow team leader, came into work in June with an irrepressible smile on her face and a series of snapshots on her phone that Angie melted to see.

‘Look who’s moved in with me, Mrs H,’ said Jacqui with great excitement.

On the phone was a photograph of the tiniest little black-and-white kitten. He was eight weeks old and absolutely adorable, a new brother to Jacqui’s existing three cats.

‘This,’ Jacqui said, with all the pride of a new mum, ‘is Romeo.’

‘Oh, Jacqui …’ breathed Angie. ‘He is beautiful …’

It may have been that Jacqui heard the wistfulness in her voice. It may just have been that one idea snowballs into another. But as they chatted about the new arrival, Jacqui asked Angie, offhand, ‘Have you ever thought about getting another cat for the station?’

‘Oh yes, I have,’ said Angie honestly, for she adored cats. ‘But the company have been so great about Felix, I really don’t want to push my luck. We never thought we’d be allowed to get a cat in the first place! And how lucky are we to have Felix?’

Jacqui nodded. Lucky indeed.

‘It’s a shame, though,’ Jacqui added lightly. ‘I think it would be really good for Felix.’

Jacqui knew how much her own four cats liked each other’s company, and it seemed to her, in comparison, that maybe Felix was a little lonely – and perhaps even under pressure, too, with the responsibility for pest control falling entirely on her shoulders.

Whether it was good for Felix or not, Angie had to put the idea out of her mind. She had other concerns that summer – and foremost among them was Felix.

The summer of 2018 was a sweltering one – what proved to be England’s hottest ever on record. For Felix, swathed in her fluffy fur coat, the heat was pretty unbearable. Angie watched her with concern; everything seemed such an effort for her. The station cat slept even more than usual and seemed very lethargic, totally lacking in energy. Though she still went out at night, her daytime excursions dwindled to the absolute minimum. When she did rouse herself from her extended sleeps, rather than sitting outside, where the heatwave had made even the fresh air boiling hot, Felix tended to prefer the cooler climate of the interior corridor or the ladies’ locker room. Though Felix had never really been one for drinking from her water bowl before, it was so hot that Angie noticed that she was going for her water more and more. She made sure to keep her blue plastic water bowl topped up.

At times Felix would sit in her old favourite spot on the grey-carpeted floor of the little lobby by the former customer-information point. It was shady there, and it was really the only place outdoors that Felix seemed able to sit that summer where she didn’t melt in the heat. So it was there that her fans found her when they came calling. Though Felix barely had the energy to greet them properly, they didn’t mind.

The law had been laid down about treats from visitors the year before, but not everyone followed the rules. Lethargic Felix was just pleased that she didn’t have to lift a paw to be fed; as she reclined on the mat, people would give treats directly to her, much as a toga-clad goddess in ancient Greece might be fed peeled grapes by a minion. Felix, delighted, kept the secret, and only the widening curves of her hips gave her away …

The hot days passed by. Out in Russia, the England football team began their World Cup campaign, with their goalkeeper Jordan Pickford becoming one of the stars of the team. Only a year earlier, Felix might have given him a run for his money, but it was impossible to imagine her skidding across the concourse floor saving goals these days. She became more and more stationary. She explored less and less. More and more often, when Angie went to see if she was in the mood for meeting fans, Felix would allow it only if they came to her; she would not bother moving to the platform to see them. Visitors curtseyed by the radiator bed and Felix wearily allowed them a few minutes of stroking before sleepily closing her eyes again and drifting back to sleep. More and more often, she did not even wake when Angie entered, or would growl with grumpiness at having her nap disturbed, so her colleague would have to tiptoe back to the hopeful visitors and apologise for the fact that Felix was indisposed. There were simply too many visitors for Felix to be able to keep up. If only, Angie thought, there was someone else to help Felix share the load …

Someone else was watching Felix that summer with concern. And as he yelled at her to get out of his office, playfully stamping his foot like a starting gun to launch a new game, Geoff, the team leader, was worried to note that Felix did not respond to him at all. Before now, she had loved her ‘banter’ with him. Usually, her interaction with Geoff would get her going – she would leg it down the corridor with delighted skips at his raised voice, before returning to do it all over again. She loved to tease Geoff playfully, scampering back and forth as he criticised her, clearly egging him on, as though she was charmed that someone would still stand up to her despite her fame. She liked to taunt him, too, by peering in through the low window in the office door. Knowing he had banned her from the team leaders’ room while he was on shift, she would nevertheless prop her snow-capped paws up on the window ledge and gaze in longingly, like a child at a sweetshop window dreaming of sherbet lemons and chocolate limes. Geoff could shout all he liked – she was sticking to the rules yet reminding him who was really in charge. But these days, when he put on his cross voice and shouted out her name, she just blinked lazily at him and didn’t move a muscle.

‘She’s not right,’ he fretted to Angie. ‘She’s not like she used to be. I think she’s overweight again. I promise you, she’s not right well.’

Due to the dynamic nature of their games, Geoff was often the first one among the team to notice if Felix wasn’t well, so Angie listened when he raised the alarm. And on 19 June 2018, his dire predictions came true.

Luckily, Angie was on shift when it happened. Midway through the day, word reached her that Felix had vomited in the back-office corridor. It was Terry from the platform team who drew the short straw and went to mop up the mess.

Soon after, he came to see Angie with an ashen face. ‘Angie,’ he said. ‘Do you know …?’

‘Know what?’ she asked lightly.

‘Do you know there’s a bit of blood in Felix’s sick?’

‘You what!’ Angie cried. She abruptly sat up straight, all thoughts of work forgotten.

Terry explained gently that the little cat’s vomit had been red with blood – and not just a fleck of it. It had been very, very red. Felix, it seemed, was very, very sick.

Angie felt the bottom fall out of her world. Surely nothing could happen to her Felix; she couldn’t even compute the idea of harm befalling her. Without missing a beat, she marched straight into action, running quickly to the station manager’s office.

‘Andy!’ she hollered at the top of her voice.

The station manager glanced up from his paperwork in alarm. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Angie felt her panic trying to overwhelm her, but she swallowed it down. ‘It’s Felix,’ she burst out. ‘She’s not well, Andy. She needs to go to the vet’s at once. There’s blood in her sick, Andy. Oh my gosh, there’s blood in her sick …!’

Andy raised a calming hand to stop the anxious flow of words. ‘Just do what you’ve got to do!’ he exclaimed. Felix always came first.

Angie, released from duty, rushed Felix off to the vet’s. They fitted her in straight away, even though she didn’t have an appointment. The vet carefully examined her and soon called Angie back in to discuss his diagnosis. Angie crept into the sterile room, which was lit with fluorescent lights, and felt as though her own heart was on the operating table. Was the vet about to slice it open with his scalpel – or bring her back to life?

‘First things first,’ he said. ‘She’s fine. She’s going to be OK.’

Angie felt the breath that she didn’t know she’d been holding release from her lungs in a rush of air. Thank God for that.

‘It’s not internal bleeding,’ the vet went on. ‘If she keeps vomiting, we should get her back in to do some scans, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.’

‘What was it?’ Angie asked in trepidation. ‘What made her so sick?’

‘Well, we can’t be certain,’ replied the vet. ‘I think it could well be that she ate something that was bad for her – perhaps something left out on the station that she shouldn’t have had?’

Angie nodded, remembering open tins of tuna and bright orange Wotsits …

‘Or it could have been a mouse she caught, that perhaps had some poison in its system,’ he went on. ‘It basically could have been anything that disagreed with her, but there’s nothing specific I can tell you, I’m afraid.’

‘What can we do? How can I make her well again?’

‘Well,’ said the vet, ‘I’m going to prescribe some medicine to help her recover, and I want you to put her on some special food. She really mustn’t eat anything else for the next two weeks at least, so I recommend that you keep her indoors. OK?’

‘OK,’ said Angie, feeling relieved it was not too serious. But at the back of her mind she was thinking: Felix is not going to be happy about this.

Angie was right. Felix was not happy about it one bit. Against character, she actually coped with the change in diet quite well. The vet had prescribed some special gastro biscuits, which were crunchy brown balls. Felix sniffed at them cautiously when they were first served to her. Previously, she would never have touched biscuits in a million years – she had always insisted on a moist meal – but Angie was amazed to see that, after some initial reticence, Felix was soon eagerly gobbling down the biscuits from her white china dish, her little pink tongue regularly flicking out to lick her lips with satisfaction. Her demonstrably good appetite undeniably gave the dry biscuits her royal seal of approval. Perhaps, with a more mature palate, she was developing more refined tastes.

She was not a fan, however, of the medicine itself. It was a liquid that had to be administered from a syringe into a special wet food the vet had also prescribed. And her dislike of taking her medicine quickly led to the biggest problem of all: trying to keep Felix confined to barracks.

In some ways, one wouldn’t have thought that she would have been too bothered by the new rule to stay indoors, given she now slept most of the day in her radiator bed. But, as with all of us, the moment Felix was told she couldn’t go outside, there was nothing she wanted to do more in the world. Kept indoors, Felix’s only option was taking her medicine. Outdoors, on the other hand, was a whole new world of opportunities and forbidden treats from passers-by. Felix soon became determined to win her freedom.

It was a battle of wits between her and Angie Hunte. Felix made the first move. She would lie in wait in the back-office corridor, biding her time until a colleague came along and unwittingly opened the door.

But Angie was one step ahead. She put up eye-catching posters on both sides of the door that led out to platform one, which featured two huge eyes urging people to look out for the station cat. The message exclaimed: ‘Please be careful and watch out for Felix as you come in. She is trying to escape because she doesn’t like her medicine, so please be very careful. DO NOT LET FELIX OUT!’

In response, Felix upped her game. Rather than loitering in plain sight, she took to concealing herself behind the hulking structure of the reservation printer close to the exit, where she could cleverly camouflage her ebony fur against its firm black sides. Thus concealed, she would then make a mad dash from her hiding place as soon as the door was opened.

She also tried a brand-new tack. So Angie thought she was going to exit via platform one, yes? Well then, in that case, Felix would go a different route. She took to loitering ‘innocently’ close to the kitchen, whose door, as it happened, was right next to that of the booking office. When the office was open to the public, Felix knew only too well that the shutters would be up – and she would have a clear path through to the concourse. So, as soon as the booking-office door was opened, she made a beeline for the narrow gap that had just appeared, dashing through it with more speed than she’d displayed in months. Angie therefore found herself fighting a battle on two fronts.

Yet the team soon got wise to the wily cat’s ways. Angie put up yet more signs, this time also on the booking-office door, so that Felix’s secondary route was also closed off.

Nevertheless, despite all their best efforts, Felix did outwit the team every now and again. But, in a sign of the times, the escape artist’s victory was muted. If she did get out, the station cat went no further than platform one. She would go and sit on one of the benches – a sign she wanted attention. She would flop down with a sigh and merely lie there, much as a nineteenth-century lady who is weakening from consumption might cast herself upon her chaise longue and press a pale hand to her fevered brow. People would come over to the famous cat and Felix would gaze at them sadly, clearly feeling sorry for herself.

To Felix’s frustration, however, no matter how much she turned her molten, pleading eyes on her fans, making her large black pupils tempting pools into which her followers could fall, on the whole they resisted all her powers of persuasion. Felix couldn’t understand it.

Unbeknown to her, her old friend Dan had been up to his sign-making tricks. Dan, who couldn’t wait to be a father when his baby daughter Maisie arrived later in the year, found that he didn’t have to wait, after all; he could use all his fatherly instincts to care for Felix now. So he put pen to paper to protect the station cat, making new signs for the public’s attention, for those rare occasions when Felix slipped the net and managed to break out, Houdini-style, during her two weeks confined to barracks.

‘Felix and the station team need some help to make sure we can keep our resident celebrity happy and healthy,’ he wrote on the typed sign, which was displayed all over the station. ‘I’m afraid that Felix has been a bit unwell recently and the vet has prescribed her a special diet, one that we hope should make her right as rain. Understandably, this diet does not include treats of any kind, scraps from anyone’s dinner, or leftover takeaways discarded on the station … If you do see Felix, please don’t give her any bits of food, even if you think that you’re the only person doing it. We can almost guarantee you wouldn’t be, and it is very important that her meals are firmly managed to ensure she remains healthy and ready to receive her loyal fans again … Thank you for your help in looking after our girl.’

It was Felix one, station team two.