Кейт Мур: Full Steam Ahead, Felix

But, that morning, Felix’s treat was not going down at all. Without wanting to gossip, it is fair to say that she has a reputation as a rather greedy cat, yet this morning even the temptation of a treat had not brought her to the globe’s side, as Mark had hoped. She looked at the scene with caution, none too sure about this latest prop that Mark had brought to their daily meeting. In the business world the mantra is ‘no idea is a bad idea’ – but it seemed that Felix did not subscribe to that particular ethos.

Mark was standing back, his phone ready to take the picture, while he encouraged Felix to come. Usually, she ‘obeyed’ promptly (as much as any cat ever ‘obeys’ a human), eager for snacks and photo shoots. But today she merely narrowed her eyes and looked suspiciously at the globe. Untethered, the beachball-like sphere was gently rocking in the breeze and its independent movement was clearly freaking Felix out. What was this brightly coloured creature, which wasn’t a mouse or a pigeon or a crow? What was she to do with it?

Mark could see pretty quickly that she was not going to come, so he reworked his vision. Instead of snapping Felix next to the globe, he would try to capture it in the foreground with Felix in the background (where she was keeping her distance from this unfamiliar foe). He took a few steps back to line up the shot.

Whoosh! A particularly blowy gust of wind whistled along the platform – and took the inflatable globe with it!

Well, Felix might have conquered her fear of crows, but she was not yet ready to tackle this strange new bird! She legged it – leaving Mark alone on the platform with a runaway globe.

He grabbed for it; it danced out of his reach. He stretched out his other hand; it rolled just that little bit further away. Then the wind gusted once more and the globe flew even further along the platform in the direction of the King’s Head.

Mark started sweating. He had visions of it changing direction and blowing on to the tracks, where it could potentially cause many hours of expensive delays (something that Felix’s employers – and the passengers – would be none too pleased about). Consequently, Mark threw caution to the wind and flung himself after it at top speed, his eyes fixed only on the prize.

Bang! In his focused quest he ran headlong into one of the Head of Steam’s A-frame hoardings. With a cacophonous clatter, the metal advert fell to the ground and all heads swivelled to the commuter. Teetering, he just about managed to retain his balance, if not his dignity, and somehow styled it out. Best of all, he managed to capture the globe. All in a day’s work for Felix’s Facebook manager!

What had been particularly striking for Mark, even in the relatively short time that Felix had become famous, was how very much she meant to her fans. Earlier that summer, there had been a dramatic incident at the station where an armed man had run into the train tunnels. Huddersfield station had been put in lockdown while the police resolved the dangerous stand-off. Felix, sensibly, had tucked herself away during the entire saga and was never involved, but her thousands of fans did not know that. As soon as news of the ongoing drama hit the headlines in the Huddersfield Examiner , her fans were on Facebook clamouring for an update from Felix to let them know she was OK. Mark – who had known nothing of the incident until his account was suddenly flooded with messages – was very happy to let them know that was the case.

Perhaps it was that incident that started more people coming to the station, needing to know she was OK – to see with their own eyes that the station cat was the same confident diva she had always been. There had been a rush of visitors when Felix had first been promoted, but this had tailed off in the intervening months. Nevertheless, that summer Huddersfield station had played host to Felix fans from Switzerland, New Zealand, Kazakhstan and Canada. There was even someone from the Isle of Wight! The team also remembered meeting a blushing bride who had come all the way from Australia to marry in England, and as she’d had a few days spare after the wedding she had chosen to use those first few days of married life to come to Huddersfield to meet the cat. Meeting Felix was, you might say, the icing on the wedding cake.

Felix wasn’t always ready to meet her public. She could be grumpy if she was disturbed from a catnap, and it wasn’t unknown for her to lash out if she was in a testy mood. At other times, she was simply AWOL, off on a patrol, and her colleagues had no idea where she was. However, on other occasions it was neither her mood nor her absence that was at issue. Passenger Stuart Gelder remembered walking through the ticket barriers one day and spotting Felix on the platform … enthusiastically licking a bin bag (one of her not-so-secret guilty pleasures). It was hardly her most glamorous moment. Yet Stuart added affectionately, ‘Even though she wasn’t at her most majestic, I was still ecstatic to have finally seen her.’

Many visitors wanted to see Felix dressed up in her famous yellow hi-vis jacket. Oh yes – she had one too, just like every member of the TPE team. She had worn the jacket when receiving her promotion and the adorable pictures of her in her ‘uniform’ had gone viral. But, not too long afterwards, Felix had thrown a diva strop about wearing the jacket – perhaps feeling, somewhat justifiably, that her pretty black fluff was already perfection … and how could anyone improve on that? Unlike the mere mortal human employees of the railway company, she felt the uniform was beneath her. She had chosen her moment carefully, and then, while dressed up in it one day, she had cleverly run off to one of her favourite hidey-holes: the disused train carriage on platform two. Here she had wiggled her way beneath the carriage, and then wriggled and jiggled until she’d managed to lose the coat. Ever since then, she’d insisted that her birthday suit was all the decoration she needed to meet her public.

It often fell to Angela Dunn, who worked in the lost-property office, to try to help the visitors meet their idol. Angela was a lovely lady with short grey hair and wire glasses. She had been a firm friend of Felix ever since the start. On one of Felix’s very first days at the station, Angela had found the kitten a soft brown bear from the lost toys she cared for, a friend to keep the kitten company in her new home. Felix and the bear had been inseparable for many years, but the bear was no longer on the scene. No one seemed to know what had happened to it, but Felix did not seem to mourn its loss: perhaps another sign that the little cat was all grown up these days. Felix always remembered Angela’s kindness, however. She was a very frequent visitor to Angela’s office.

Although, truth be told, Angela was never quite sure if it was her the cat had come to see – or the collection of snuggly coats and jumpers that made the perfect place for a catnap.

One day, Angela received a message from Mark Allan to say that the mother of an autistic boy had contacted him to ask if they could visit Felix. The team were always careful to emphasise that nobody could guarantee when Felix would be at home. With mice to catch and places to explore and nice long naps to enjoy, Felix simply could not be available 24/7. It wouldn’t have been fair to expect her to be. Nonetheless, Angela promised to do what she could to help the visit go smoothly.

When the day arrived, she discovered that Felix was indeed available and ready to meet her public. Perhaps the cat had taken inspiration from the bronze Harold Wilson statue that stood in St George’s Square outside the station, which the moggy passed day after day. The statue was engraved with one of Wilson’s quotations: ‘The leader of the party, and no less the prime minister, has a duty to meet the people.’ Perhaps Felix had taken his words to heart.