Кейт Мур - Full Steam Ahead, Felix

Angela knew which train the mother and son were arriving on and she decided that she wanted to give them a royal welcome from Queen Felix. So she scooped up the cat – Felix, for once, allowing herself to be carried – and headed out to platform one to await their arrival.

Though Angela had never met the family before, she instantly knew – even before they’d left the train – exactly who they were. The beaming smile on the mother’s face told her everything she needed to know. She watched from the platform as the mum guided her son, who was about fourteen, off the train. He wore a bright-blue T-shirt and comfortable Adidas sweatpants and seemed oblivious to the world around him, locked as he was in the world created by the big fat headphones placed over his ears. Yet, as they stepped off the train, his mother touched his arm to command his attention and pointed out the cat, who was now waiting patiently on the platform for him.

The boy turned his head slowly. Once his eyes alighted on Felix, a broad grin spread across his face. He walked over to her and plonked himself down on the platform beside her. And, having homed in on her, she became his world. He simply sat there with her happily, occasionally stroking her or tickling her behind her tufty ears. Somehow, she seemed to be able to tell that she was needed for the long haul, so she lay right down on the platform with him, stretching out on her side and relaxing her snowy-white paws. For the next fifteen minutes, she was completely his. Angela Dunn, watching closely, could tell that the whole experience was pure pleasure for the lad.

Though the boy remained silent, his mum seemed to feel the need to speak. ‘He just loves Felix,’ she confided to Angela. ‘He read about her and he saw her on TV, and I knew it would make his day to come and visit her. And will you look at that?’ she whispered, her voice catching as she watched her boy with the cat he loved. ‘Will you just look at that …?’

Truth be told, the mother wasn’t the only one with a tear of happiness in her eye.

Perhaps a week or so later, Angela happened to be passing by when another family with an autistic child asked to see Felix. This time, the family asked another member of staff, who was not as familiar with Felix’s movements as the lost-property lady. Politely, he had said, ‘Sorry, she is not available’ – but without actually checking for Felix in her favourite hidey-holes.

Well, the little lad was absolutely crushed. There were tears and tantrums and a wailing voice that caught at your soul: ‘But I really wanted to see Felix!’

Angela stopped where she stood, deliberating. The family were already walking away, their shoulders slumped. She hesitated for only a second longer, and then ran after them.

‘Excuse me!’ she called out.

They turned round, the boy still hiccoughing with hurt.

‘I hear you’d like to see madam?’ Angela said brightly, using her personal nickname for Queen Felix. The family nodded, hope darting back into their eyes as they looked at the kindly woman. ‘I can’t make any promises,’ she told them, ‘but let me see if she’s free.’

She found her fluffy colleague dozing in the back office, and on this occasion Felix did not object to being woken. So that little boy got to meet the station cat, just as he had dreamed.

For Angela Dunn, it was a watershed moment. For while she always put Felix’s welfare first, she felt that if Felix could make somebody’s dream come true in such a simple way, it was really important to try to make it happen. After that, she became the main contact for visitors at the station who had come to see Felix (along with the ladies in the booking office, if Angela wasn’t on shift). It didn’t happen all that often, but it soon became a fairly regular occurrence for Angela to assist people who wanted an audience with Her Majesty. She would usher them in to meet the queen and talk them through the etiquette of interacting with such a feisty cat.

That summer, Angela was fifty-three. She had never expected to change career at her age. But it seemed that it was never too late to become a lady-in-waiting – at least, not when it came to Queen Felix.

5. Cat Burglar

As the autumn of 2016 unfolded, Angela found her services were in demand – but not always needed. Lucky customers sometimes had to look no further for Felix than the serving counters at which they bought their tickets.

Felix liked to hang out in the booking office. When open, it was always staffed, so it was the perfect place to chill out if she wanted company. She could often be found sharing a shift at a serving window, sitting proudly up on the counter. She had even been known to inspect customers’ discount railcards for validity, her green eyes going over every detail.

Another favourite perch was the top of the printer where the tickets came out. Here her fluffy tail would frequently get in the way of the output of those cream-and-orange train tickets. Funnily enough, no one ever seemed to mind.

There was much to explore in the ticket office. Sometimes Felix simply wandered about the place, sniffing out what was new. That year, a life-size model of the railway cat was one such – perhaps surprising – new addition. Back in the summer, Felix had completed a 5k charity ‘fun run’ (via a GPS tracker on her collar) for the children’s charity Fairy Bricks – which donates Lego sets to children’s hospices and hospitals, brightening the lives of sick children – and in gratitude for the £5,200 she raised, the charity arranged for a life-size model of Felix, made from Lego, to be built and given to the station. It had immediately taken pride of place in the booking office. And as Felix’s popularity had continued to grow throughout the autumn, it now formed the centrepiece of a sort of ‘Felix gallery’, in which ceramic cats and children’s sketches of Felix joined the big Lego model.

Goodness only knew what Felix thought of it all as she investigated each new addition with a sniff of her velvety nose. What did she see as she stared into the life-size model’s plastic eyes? What did she make of all these ‘other’ cats – who were actually only representations of her own spectacular beauty? Felix’s reaction was not completely out of character; after a full study, she tended to turn her back, curl up and go to sleep.

The booking office was a favourite location for a snooze. Here she slept on top of the Delay Repay forms, or among the lever-arch files on the metal shelves, or even on the black-plastic photocopier, which could get nice and toasty after it had been used. A super spot was the shelf right above the electric fire. She would curl up there contentedly, near the kooky sign that read: ‘A very spoiled cat lives here’.

There was perhaps no one who spoiled Felix more than TPE’s maintenance man, Dave Chin. Not when it came to cuddles, at least. Dave – a weather-beaten chap who had big rough hands and an easy smile – was not based at Huddersfield but roamed all over the railway network, wherever his services were required. If anything went wrong, a cry would go up for Dave, and Dave would come, practical and handy in his orange hi-vis suit. He had once spent a fair amount of time at Huddersfield, as he used to do all his paperwork in the station buffet on platform four, but with a lot of the records now going digital, he came to the station far less frequently.

But, when Felix had been a kitten, he’d spent a lot of time at the station getting to know the railway cat. So close had they become that Dave had become known as the Felix-whisperer. Felix had quite the reputation when she wanted to throw a strop – and plenty of staff members had the scars to prove it. Never did Felix want to throw a strop more than when she had to travel in her carry case. (The irony of a railway cat who hated travelling was not lost on anyone.) She would fight every journey with all she had. Due to their closeness, for a long time it was only Dave who could get the reluctant cat into her carry case. There was something about the maintenance man that made Felix putty in his hands. Even at the great age of five and a half, Felix would allow him to cradle her like a baby: on her back in his arms with her belly exposed and a silly-sausage expression stuck to her sweet fluffy face. If Dave had been willing, she’d have let him walk round with her all day like that.