Кейт Мур - Full Steam Ahead, Felix

Ever since she was a kitten, it was one of Felix’s favourite days. The moment she saw Dave Chin ambling along the platform with his arms full of Christmas tree, or Chrissie from the booking office gathering up her box of festive decorations, excitement began to build in her belly. TPE always chose a gloriously tall tree and for Felix it meant a tip-top playground.

For years, Felix had made it a habit to climb all the way to the top of the tree. There, she would cling to the tallest branch like a lookout on a pirate ship, watching below for trouble or treasure. Allegedly, the gold cardboard angel who shared the uppermost branch with her was the climactic ornament in Chrissie’s multicoloured display, but Felix knew the truth. She was the bestest, fluffiest bauble of them all.

With great excitement, Felix skidded into the lobby and surveyed the playing field. Chrissie had already completed her decorations, so Felix enjoyed a bat-and-forth session with the glinting spheres, as they spun and sparkled on the ends of the quivering, pine-scented branches. Soon enough, however, she turned her attention to the big climb.

Felix arched her neck backwards as she looked up at it. It seemed a very, very tall tree this year. Did she really use to go all the way to the top? Felix gave a harrumph and sat with a sigh on her ever-increasing bottom. It seemed an awfully long way up this year … Nevertheless, undeterred, she flexed the sharpened claws of her paws and went for it, scurrying up the tree trunk with nimble efficiency.

Unusually, this year she abruptly stopped halfway up. Then, like a high-wire artist edging out from the rooftop of a New York skyscraper, she tiptoed out on to a sturdy midway branch. Feeling it was more than strong enough to take her weight, she then settled down with her back against the wooden trunk.

Well, what a cosy spot! Green pine branches attractively fringed her viewpoint as Felix curled up in the scented grotto of her elevated lair. With branches all around her, it was a snug in every sense of the word. In fact, in some ways this was even better than the top of the tree, for the overhead branches partly concealed her from view. Felix, a cat who was so often on display, seemed to enjoy carrying out covert ops for once.

She gazed below her at the concourse. There were Karl and Sara, talking nineteen to the dozen as usual; Sara let out a huge guffaw at some joke that Karl had cracked. She could see, too, the purple-shirted Friends of Huddersfield Station, as they guided visitors to Huddersfield’s hidden gems. The station also regularly played host to local companies who sold homemade cheese, bread or pies right by the gateline, and her nose twitched wistfully as she watched shoppers being handed their tasty treats.

There was another attraction in the lobby too: a portrait of Felix herself. And not a simple child’s drawing or a rough sketch – this was a top-notch, bona fide professional painting, such as might hang in the corridors of power in a stately home. Its magnificent vision suited Queen Felix down to the ground.

The portrait had, in fact, had its grand unveiling just a few days before, and the guest of honour at the dedication ceremony had been the town’s deputy mayor. Displayed in a dramatic, bespoke and rather gaudy golden frame – which included a diamanté tag declaring its subject as ‘Felix’ – the portrait was now unmissable in the lobby, hung prominently on the white wall beside the gateline. It had been painted by the professional artist Rob Martin, who regularly travelled from the station as he went about his work. Earlier that year, the team had mentioned to him about doing a painting of their senior pest controller and the idea had become reality.

It was an incredibly striking piece of art. You perhaps noticed first – as you did with the real cat – Felix’s gorgeous big green eyes, which were wide and reflective. Rob had captured her fluff and her whiskers, her tufty ears and her white-tipped tail with genuine skill – all the more impressive when you learned that he had not asked Felix to pose for him (as fun as it might be to picture Felix in modelling mayhem …) but had instead worked from a photograph. Controversially, however, Rob had decided that, in light of her oft-confused gender and her Yorkshire roots, he wanted to paint her wearing a dress – a green-with-red-bow dress, which was actually modelled upon one worn by the famous Yorkshire novelist Charlotte Brontë, whose bicentenary of birth was celebrated in 2016.

Well, from the moment it had been unveiled by the deputy mayor, the picture had certainly provided a talking point! Straight away, people wanted selfies taken with it; and if Felix’s fans ever failed to find their flesh-and-blood idol while on a visit, they at least now had her portrait to gaze upon instead. It wasn’t unusual to see people stopping in their tracks on their way into or out of the station, doing a double take as they first caught sight of the artwork and then paused to drink it in. Folk gazed up at it thoughtfully, much as art aficionados muse upon the work of an old master. Rob’s desire to paint a proper portrait of Felix had real impact; it would not have looked out of place on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, hanging alongside esteemed portraits of the kings and queens of England. For Queen Felix, of course, that was perfectly apt.

From her perch amid the Christmas tree, Felix couldn’t actually see her portrait – but she could see the queue of customers at the busy booking office. Maybe she watched with some amusement – certainly, superiority – as they unwittingly passed her by. Little did they know that the famous station cat was lurking overhead, sitting partway up in the fairy-lit tree. Only those with their eyes peeled like Christmas Day spuds spotted that amid the twinkling lights was a pair of emerald eyes shining brightly alongside them.

But, once she was spotted, the secret was soon shared among the passengers queuing to buy tickets below.

‘Look! She’s in the Christmas tree!’ someone might gasp in delight, as they suddenly caught sight of the secretive spy cat.

Those same words would echo down the line, like a festive feline version of Chinese whispers.

‘She’s in the tree …’

‘She’s hiding, look.’

‘Oh, look, how sweet is she?’

The answer, of course, was very . So much so that in December – in light of Felix’s stellar achievements and rising fame – TPE decided to release a limited-edition Felix-focused calendar. Featuring twelve adorable pictures of the station cat, it included images of Felix as a kitten, on patrol and playing in a cardboard box. It even included the snapshot that had launched her to global fame: Felix in her yellow hi-vis vest with her senior pest controller badge proudly on display. December’s image, of course, was Felix in a Santa hat – even if, due to her diva demands, she wasn’t so much wearing it as momentarily consenting to have it draped upon her. The company planned to sell the calendars online, with all proceeds going to the Huddersfield Samaritans.

Felix’s calendar was released for sale on 7 December 2016 – and very quickly caused chaos, much as the cat herself could do when left alone with a packet of Dreamies. Though TPE, sensibly, had chosen to retail the calendars on a bespoke website (and not the one they sold their train tickets through), not five minutes after the calendars had gone on sale, the website crashed. Thousands of people were clamouring for a calendar! They wanted a little bit of Felix magic every day of the coming year and this was the perfect way to secure it.

Jack Kempf, who worked in communications at head office, had taken responsibility for the calendars. He somehow managed to get the website back up – only for the first thousand calendars he had printed to sell out instantly. He organised a second printing, but again the website crashed – and, in the end, TPE had to get a whole new server just to manage the demand! Within eighteen hours, every single calendar had gone.