Кейт Мур - Felix The Railway Cat

He didn’t care at all, however, for the regal cat who now decided that his growing plants and damp soil bed were the perfect setting for her royal commode.

‘Felix has been in my garden again!’ he would complain to Angie – and with good reason, for he often heard his fellow team leader say to the railway cat: ‘Isn’t that a lovely garden? Are you going to pay it a visit?’

‘Don’t you dare encourage her, Mrs H!’ Billy would say grumpily. He had a real love/grump relationship with the station cat.

As she did with the other team leaders, Felix would follow him around devotedly on his shift. Billy was still as unimpressed as he had been when Angie had first proposed he used the cat harness; he’d look down at his little shadow and mutter, ‘I’m not wandering round with a cat at my heels.’ But Felix wanted to be with him because he was fun … occasionally. Time and again his colleagues would walk in on him dabbling his fingers through the hole in the desk for Felix, as the cat’s captivated eyes followed their every move.

There were times, though, when Felix thought he was playing, and Billy was most definitely not. During one infamous night shift, Billy was working on his period-end paperwork, stacking up all his papers in tall, organised towers that literally took him hours to erect in the correct order. Felix slipped inside the team leaders’ office and surveyed those towers with glee. Then she flew across the room, pouncing and playing, sending the papers flying all over the office in her wake. The Destroyer had struck once more.

Felix may not have been endearing herself to Billy very much at that time but she had clearly impressed the railway powers-that-be. In the June of 2013, Huddersfield station installed electronic ticket barriers at the main entrance for the first time – and Queen Felix found she had her own personal cat flap installed to allow her to come and go as she pleased.

As with any royal event, it was covered by the press: once again Felix made the hallowed pages of the Huddersfield Examiner . This time it was the station manager, Paul, who spoke to the journalists, telling them, ‘Customers and staff hold Felix in great affection and she’s very much part of daily life here at the station. We strive to offer the best service possible to both customers and their four-legged friends and we know Felix is certainly the cat that got the cream with her very own VIP entrance and exit!’

It was a very smart creation, edged in blue and with a cartoon image of a black-and-white cat on the flap itself – and cartoon trains on the surrounding framework. TransPennine Express had commissioned original artwork, for the cartoon cat, just like her real-life inspiration, wore a hot-pink heart-shaped name tag. The pièce de resistance and final flourish was that, above the flap itself, Felix’s own name was picked out in handsome blue lettering, leaving no one in any doubt that this edifice was just for her.

But despite their commendable efforts, Felix was not impressed. In a diva-like response that was typically Felix the station cat utterly refused to use the bespoke cat flap installed for Her Majesty. If she wanted to get from the main entrance to Platform 1, she would run straight at the booking office and leap up at one of the serving windows, little caring if her sudden appearance made the customers standing at the counter jump ten feet in the air. She would bestow on them a gracious nod, then head straight on through, jumping down from the desk inside the office and sauntering confidently to the interior door. There, she would sit and wait, wagging her tail, until a minion had opened the door for her and she could continue on her way.

If the booking office was shut and Felix was forced into a tight corner, she still wouldn’t use the flap. People had seen her heading towards it but, at the last moment, choosing to squeeze round the edge of the frame that held the cat flap – for there was a slim gap between the frame edge and the wall, which she could just slink through – rather than going through the flap itself.

It was just the sort of behaviour her colleagues were coming to expect from Felix. Angie had noticed that she no longer drank the water regularly laid out for her in her bowl. Instead, she would jump up to the sink, where the tap would sometimes be dripping. Felix would carefully shuffle on her bottom to the very edge of the sink, gracefully thrust her head forward and stick out her tongue to catch the fresh water drops, as if tasting manna from heaven.

She was a bit of a fussy eater, too. Though sometimes she would wolf down her ‘Felix’ cat food hungrily, at other times she would merely lick the jelly from the chunks of meat, as though selecting the choicest morsels, and leave the rest.

Billy thought she was spoilt, especially with her brand-name cat food.

‘Oh, just go into town and get a tin of any old cat food,’ he used to tell Angie. ‘She’ll eat it, mark my words. When she’s hungry, she’ll eat it.’

There came a day when one of the other team members completed the food shop for Felix and indeed picked up a tin of any old cat food. It was a household brand name, so it was tasty, high-end stuff, but it was not the eponymous ‘Felix’ that Felix herself had always favoured.

That night, as usual, Felix wound her way through Angie’s legs and miaowed for her dinner. She had had a hectic day patrolling the station and was in need of nourishment. Angie scraped the new branded food into her bowl and set it down, to the musical accompaniment of Felix’s satisfied purrs that her demands for food were being met.

Then the purrs stopped abruptly. Felix’s nostrils and whiskers quivered as she inhaled the unfamiliar aroma of her dinner. She dropped her head and looked at it quizzically. She edged a little closer and gave a deep sniff, as though making absolutely sure. Then she sat back on her haunches haughtily and looked up at Angie with an imperious glare, as if to say, ‘What is this ?’

Angie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Eat,’ she encouraged her. ‘It’s good.’

Felix bent down again to her supper dish and gave it one more sniff. Back up to a sitting position she came again, and once more gave a demanding ‘Miaow!’ But there was no other food available.

As soon as Felix understood that, she took off from her meal and made a disgruntled exit: a most dissatisfied customer. She left that unappetising new food in her dish, and did not go near it again.

Angie fretted to Billy about it, but he gave her short shrift.

‘She’s ruined, that cat,’ he said bluntly. ‘She’s spoilt. When she gets hungry enough, I promise you, she’ll eat anything. Ours do at home. Just leave her be and she’ll come round.’

But this was a battle of wills that Billy was not destined to win. He and Felix both dug their heels in, but Felix was adamant she would not break. She was Felix the station cat and she liked ‘Felix’ cat food – and she would eat nothing else. In the end, Angie ended up going out mid-shift to the shop on the corner and buying some ‘Felix’ for her to eat. Felix gobbled it up gratefully, glad the stand-off was over and all was right with the world again.

With such grand behaviour becoming infamous in and around Huddersfield station, what happened next was perhaps no surprise.

Felix was summoned to the theatre. Her star potential had been spotted – and she was about to take to the stage.

21. Curtain Up

Felix had already proved herself a consummate performer. When interacting with the team, she had soon learned that mastering some little tricks made it much more likely she would be able to elicit a treat or two from them. (For with the station cat’s weight now normal and a formal feeding regime in place under the direction of the team leaders, the rules about giving the occasional cat treat had been relaxed a little.)