Кейт Мур - Felix The Railway Cat

Nevertheless, the pest controller would watch him with a keen green eye as he made his way along the platform. She was in charge here, and if the fox put a foot wrong Felix would know of it.

Yet the fox always toed the yellow line. He now knew all too well what the team at the station had known for years: Felix was the Boss.

24. Clever Felix

The big black crow cawed its mocking caw.

Felix raised a weary eye from her lair by the bike racks and stared at the bird impassively. The crow was a real poser and kept flying about as though trying to impress his fellows. He had made it his habit, that spring afternoon, to keep landing on the platform to squawk at the station cat, trying to wind her up. Over and over he did it: flying off to his iron roost, then coming back down, his harsh cry getting more and more frustrated the longer that Felix didn’t respond.

But Felix merely sat there and watched him. She refused to get riled by his antics. She was Queen Felix – and even though she couldn’t fly, she had learned to rise above it.

Felix’s new maturity, and her confidence in her position as a gracious monarch, showed itself in her other interactions, too – in particular, in the way she behaved with her fellow residents of Platform 1. Though she still enjoyed a good stalking session with the posse of pigeons who scavenged at the station, the team were astonished to see that, when one of the pigeons was poorly, Felix could – in opposition to every instinct in her bones – actually be quite caring towards the suffering bird.

One afternoon, as Michael Ryan, who worked in revenue protection, was hard at work on Platform 1, he spotted Felix acting most strangely over on Platform 4. There was an injured pigeon, unable to fly, squatting helplessly on the ground over there, and Michael watched with a sense of grim fascination, safari-style, as Felix skulked over to the bird, expecting the station cat to slay the stricken creature as a lion might take down a gazelle on the slopes of the Serengeti.

But Felix did no such thing. First of all, she sat with the bird, as though she was a night nurse keeping a bedside vigil by her patient. Then she reached out a velvety white paw and patted the pigeon reassuringly, in a manner not unlike that which the same nurse might have used to mop her patient’s brow. There was no aggression nor even a mocking playfulness in that pat – she appeared to be comforting a friend.

At her encouraging touch, the pigeon, who had been trying to get to Platform 8 and given up, made a valiant effort and hopped a little further. Felix, her claws still retracted, gently touched its purpley-green feathers once again, and once more the pigeon moved on. Every time it stopped, Felix tapped it one more time, and thus escorted that pigeon all the way to Platform 8.

One could argue, of course, that she was just playing with it, and that the ailing pigeon, fearing for its life, had no choice but to ask, ‘How high?’ when Felix’s tap said: ‘Jump!’ But that wasn’t how it appeared to Michael Ryan, observing this strange scene from over on Platform 1. It was weird, but it really was like seeing Felix interacting with a friend.

The unlikely truce was maintained even when the pigeons weren’t poorly. Sam Dyson, who had worked with Felix ever since she’d arrived at the station, doing platforms, announcing and the booking office, watched one day as she and another pigeon kept each other company for roughly two hours of his shift. The pigeon had sat down on the edge of Platform 1, settling in as though he was an elderly gentleman with a rug over his knees at the seaside, wanting to watch the tide turn. He’d been there for quite a while, and Felix had eventually tottered out of the concourse to see what he was up to. She got closer and closer to him – not prowling, but rather moving with an interested, enquiring walk that took her, in the end, all the way up to him, so that she was standing right next to the bird.

The pigeon didn’t flinch or fly off, and neither was Felix fazed by him. She got so close that it was almost as if she was going to cuddle him, but eventually she decided to simply and gracefully sit down. And then she and the pigeon sat together on the platform and watched the world go by, like two old friends nestled on a comfy park bench, having a good old natter and setting the world to rights.

For all Felix’s maturity, however, in the spring of 2014 she showed Angela Dunn, at least, that she wasn’t always the smartest kitten in the litter.

‘Hiya, Felix,’ Angela said that day, as the cat appeared in the lost-property office, hopped over her open desk drawer and greeted her affectionately. Every now and then, Felix would lick Angela’s hand: a sign of real love. Given the cat’s sometimes grumpy behaviour with other people, the little rough-tongued kiss always took Angela by surprise. But she and Felix were old friends, and Angela made a point of never picking her up or pestering her, believing that the cat had enough people petting her to last a lifetime; and it seems that the cat genuinely appreciated the peace and quiet she promised. Angela was one of those figures who had been around for all of Felix’s station life too, like Angie Hunte and Billy – and Felix’s own brown bear (who was still a firm favourite, even after all these years).

Felix miaowed plaintively for a treat and, when Angela obliged, she performed her little trick of catching it with her paws. Ta-da! But although she purred and pestered Angela for an encore, to Felix’s immense disappointment her colleague tucked the little orange bag of Dreamies back in her middle desk drawer and shut it tight, telling Felix firmly that she had had enough for today.

Felix sniffed at the desk, from where the tantalising scent of the Dreamies drifted, and fixed her molten eyes on Angela, begging for more – but Angela had already turned back to her work. A moment later, when Angela looked up again, Felix had disappeared. Though she still loved to doze among the soft treasures of the lost-property cave, that activity was clearly not on the cat’s agenda for today.

A little while later, Angela shut the big bottom drawer in her desk with a satisfying clatter. Done! That was her paperwork completed: now for a platform patrol. She slipped on her yellow hi-vis vest – the colour all members of the TPE team wore on the platforms at Huddersfield station – and stepped outside to join her colleagues.

They were standing there chatting when they heard a distant: ‘Miaow!’

They looked around for Felix, expecting to see her behind the bike racks or further along the platform, but there was no sign of the fluffy black-and-white cat. That’s odd , thought Angela, I wonder where she’s got to .

‘Miaow!’ They heard again. It was a deep, echoey sort of sound, quite unlike Felix’s usual voice, but it was unmistakeably her.

‘Where’s Felix?’ Angela asked her colleagues, but nobody had seen her.

‘Miaow!’ The cat’s cries sounded more urgent now, so Angela started looking around for her properly. She searched in the station manager’s office and in the team leaders’ room; she checked Felix’s bed in the shower closet and called for the cat in both the male and female locker rooms. These were a favourite retreat as they offered peace and quiet … and copious comfy bedding options. She caused absolute havoc in the men’s room because the team often left their spare uniforms in there, and Felix would bed down in the cosy clothing and get cat hairs all over them. Once, a team member forgot to lock his locker, and when he came back the door was wide open and there was a cat all rolled up in his smart jacket inside the metal cavern: just two emerald eyes peeping out. Well , he thought, I can’t be mad with her; it’s way too cute! As well as sleeping in the lockers, Felix was also known to doze on the snug wooden shelves in the ladies’ locker room, or even on top of the locker units themselves: she had a perfect view out to the town of Huddersfield from the summit of the lockers in the men’s room, and it was one of her favourite spots.