Full Steam Ahead, Felix

3. The Pest Controller in Action

With a careless coo in his irritating voice, the pigeon pecked his way along the platform, chirruping to his mates about all the tasty treats he was finding. With narrowed eyes, Felix watched him from afar.

Felix and the pigeons were at war. It was not – as yet – a bloody war, but it was nevertheless a long-running enmity that showed no sign of ceasefire. The pigeons had been at Huddersfield long before the pest controller had first reported for duty. No matter what Felix tried to do about their invasions on what she saw as ‘her’ territory, they were not giving ground to the station cat.

That didn’t mean that Felix didn’t do her best to hunt them down and see them off, however. If she saw a pigeon on the platform, she would delicately rise to her feet and lower her belly to the ground, as though she was a commando creeping through a battlefield. Before she took a single step, she would wiggle her behind, building up momentum, getting her hips and legs and paws all limbered up, ready to strike. Watching her, the TPE team thought it looked as though she was giving herself a pep talk. ‘I’m gonna get this one. This one’s mine …’ But every time she launched an attack, the pigeon would easily see her coming – a blur of black and white – and it was far too easy for it to flap its grey wings and fly casually away, leaving Felix denied once more.

It was ever so frustrating – not least because Felix had more than earned that promotion to senior pest controller. After a slow start on the pest-controlling front – it had taken her a while as a kitten to find her four feet – she now excelled at mouse-catching, regularly leaving little ‘gifts’ for Angie Hunte. (‘That’s lovely, Felix,’ Angie would say in a pantomimed voice. Then she’d holler with feeling, ‘Help!’ She loved Felix dearly, but not those grim gifts.)

Others were more respectful of Felix’s achievements in her chosen field. She had impressed Dale Woodward, who worked with her on the platforms, when they had shared a night shift one evening. Dale was a fellow in his fifties with a balding head and prominent features, who’d worked at the station for more than a decade. That night they had both been out on platform one when Dale had suddenly spotted Felix assuming her hunting pose, her back haunches tense and tight and her eyes fixed firmly on the far rail, next to the wall of platform four. Dale had followed her line of sight and squinted hard. I can’t see nowt, he’d thought in confusion. But within thirty seconds, Felix had run from her position, dived down on to the tracks and across that rail, and returned with a dead mouse in her mouth, having completed her mission with laser-like accuracy. Pleased as punch, she had then trotted along the platform to the customer-information point, where she deposited her handiwork with ill-disguised pride. She always left her offerings there; sometimes, the early-turn staff would arrive to find two or three dead mice laid out on the mat – something that was guaranteed to turn their stomachs at that particular hour of the day.

Felix hunted mice all over the station. On the platforms. On the tracks. But perhaps her favourite haunt for hunting was Billy’s garden. It was not quite as well maintained as it had been in Billy’s day – though Adam and the other volunteers tended it from time to time, their focus was on the floral displays in the plant pots, which often proved such an all-consuming task that it was difficult to keep on top of the garden too. But the lack of maintenance was certainly not a problem for Felix: in fact, she found that she liked the overgrown plants and the tall sheaves of grass even better than she had before – for they provided perfect camouflage for her hunting. It was not uncommon for the TPE team to be looking about for her, wondering where on earth she’d got to now, when they’d suddenly see a fluffy black-and-white head pop up from where she’d been hiding among the tall grasses, as she prepared to pounce on yet another unsuspecting subject.

But despite her mouse-catching prowess, the pigeons continued to elude Felix. It was such an embarrassing disappointment for the senior pest controller. After all, it was not as though her failure wasn’t apparent. While her team members said proudly that, thanks to her hard work, they never now saw live mice at the station, the pigeons still boldly strutted about the platforms as though they owned the place.

Nor were they the only birds with whom Felix had to contend. Huddersfield station was also home to a small contingent of big black crows, who chose to roost alongside the pigeons on the steel girders that criss-crossed beneath the station’s corrugated-iron roof. They had terrorised Felix when she was a kitten, but by now she had called a truce. Though they still tried to taunt her, swooping down from their perches in packs of two or three, Felix would not take the bait. Whenever this murder of crows would congregate beside her, cawing out derisively, Felix merely looked at them levelly with her big green eyes, knowing that, for all their bluster, they did not dare attack. The crows no longer had any power over her: after all, they came in numbers for protection, while she was a superior, solitary queen.

But her failure to catch the pigeons did bother Felix. Time and time again she would try to stalk one to success; time and time again she failed. She must have felt as though she would never, ever achieve her ambition.

Summers in Huddersfield were always busy times on the station. Children were on holiday from school, families were going on vacation, and there were days when the platforms were so packed to the rafters with holiday-makers, each with their own bulky suitcase, that there was an awful lot of clutter about. On one such day, Felix was hard at work on platform one, greeting passengers. She was midway through expertly weaving in and out of all the new obstacles with aplomb, as though they had been placed there simply for her entertainment, when she came across a very chilled-out family who were waiting for their train to the airport. They were already so much into their holiday vibe, dreaming of sunlit islands and sangria, that they did not notice the determined black-and-white cat prowling among their bags.

Someone else didn’t notice her either: one Percy Pigeon, who was gaily grabbing what crumbs he could as he paraded in front of those self-same suitcases …

Felix spotted him and froze. Even as she watched, Percy let out a contented coo as he gobbled down some tasty morsel. Felix’s green eyes narrowed, and tension slowly spread through her limbs.

To her back was the Coffee Xpress concession. This concentrated the boundaries of her stalking field, as though she was in a bunker or a foxhole, with only the enemy ahead.

An enemy who could not see her.

The cases provided the perfect cover. As the family excitedly chattered away above her head about their upcoming holiday, Felix took a single, slow step forward, being very careful to remain behind the shield of their suitcases. The family had unwittingly parked them up in an ideal configuration, allowing her to plot her attack and make her advance, while still keeping eyes on the pigeon.

‘Coo, coo!’ called Percy happily.

Behind the suitcases, Felix took another step forward.

‘Coo, coo!’ he called again, with no sense of the terrible danger he was in.

Like the calm before the storm, Felix paused for a pregnant moment, gauging strike distances and speed and space. Her brain whirring, in a few short seconds she had completed the complex calculations that she hoped would see her succeed. Never before had she had such an opportunity. She knew, all too well, that she might never get such a one again.

There was a slim gap between the cases ahead. Felix eyed it with interest and intent. She knew she had one chance to get this right; she had to dart through that gap, before which the pigeon pranced, and at just the right moment pin him down with a swipe of her perilous paw.

‘Coo, coo!’ called Percy, as though encouraging her. Bring it on. Felix was ready to answer.

She gathered her legs beneath her till her muscles quivered. She was right beside that all-important gap, her velvety black nose almost poking out from her lair, trying as hard as she could to keep her whiskers still so that she did not give away her position. If Percy looked her way right this minute, he would see her: game over.

But Percy was far more interested in pecking at the crumbs on the platform. He did not turn his head.

In her mind, though she did not know the numbers, Felix must surely have been counting down, choosing the right moment to strike. But little did she know: time was running out. For, above her head, the orange digits of the station display board moved on. The Manchester Airport train would soon be here. Which would make its move first: the locomotive or the lion-like cat who was even now hunting her very own Huddersfield ‘gazelle’?

Three, two, one …

A scream tore through the station.