Кейт Мур - Felix The Railway Cat

‘Well, we can’t be having that!’ Angie continued, switching from shock to indignation with the smooth ease of an Oscar-winner. ‘We eat in there!’ She took a deep breath and said, more lightly than she felt, ‘Belinda, could we not get a cat?’

Belinda paused for a moment before replying, coolly assessing this formal request from her colleague. Then she bobbed her head decisively. ‘Yes, I dare say we can sort something out,’ she said. ‘We can put the cost under pest control or something like that. I think Windermere have a cat, too, and we pay for its food. Don’t worry: we’ll get it sorted.’

Angie listened in amazement. Though it was well-known on the railway network that the former British Rail had given their station cats joke wage slips, she had never heard of the privatised companies doing it, of covering the costs of a cat’s upkeep. But in fact the station cat at Windermere was not the only one – there were station moggies up and down the country, as lovingly cared for by the railway staff as they had been throughout history. Manchester Oxford Road was at one point rumoured to have as many as thirteen cats, though in recent years, with some of the cats adopted, they were down to four: Jumper, Tom, Jerry and Manx. A white-and-tabby cat, Rabbit, along with her up-and-coming assistant, the black-and-white Quaker, resided at the recently restored Kirkby Stephen East station, Cumbria, in the north-west of England. And even down south, Southend Victoria was home to little Jojo, while Tonbridge in Kent had recently erected sombre memorial plaques in honour of their two felines, Jill and Louis, who had both sadly died in the past few years after many moons of service. It seems having a station cat was not a thing of the past at all – and Huddersfield station was now about to become part of that illustrious tradition.

Angie waved Belinda off through the crowd with a cheery flick of her hand, though she was careful not to appear too excited that Belinda had given her the nod. As the manager from HQ disappeared from view, however, and Angie turned and headed straight for the announcer’s office, her excitement began to build. By the time she had closed the door behind her and turned to face Gareth, who was sitting wriggling on his chair, waiting to hear the verdict, Angie felt ready to burst.

‘Oh my God!’ she whispered, joyously but cautiously, because there was a rush hour going on outside and she didn’t want to alarm the customers with mad screams coming from the office. ‘Oh my gosh! Gareth, we’re gonna have a cat! We’re gonna have a cat!’

Gareth’s mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘Are you being serious?’ he asked.

Angie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Gareth leapt up, delighted. ‘So we’re getting a cat then?!’

‘We’re getting a cat.’

‘We’re getting a cat!’

It was like a tidal wave of euphoria sweeping through the station. After a campaign of almost three long years, it was a genuinely emotional moment. All anybody could talk about was the cat, the cat, the cat.

It had been decades – if ever – since Huddersfield had had a station cat. The last known animal residents had been Bess, Dolly and Tommy: the final shire horses employed by the station, who used to act as shunt ponies pulling train wagons into sidings, either to rest them or to enable new trains to be made up from the various carriages they moved about the tracks. But the horses had been made redundant in 1952, and since then there had been no record of any other formally employed animal residents; the greedy pigeons who populated the metal beams of the corrugated iron roof most definitely didn’t count. Now, nearly sixty years on, the team at Huddersfield – entirely through their own efforts – had overcome all obstacles to get the ‘yes’ they needed. A railway cat would be making its home there, so the team hoped, in the very near future.

But who would that cat be?

3. A Star Is Born

‘Shh,’ said Chris Briscoe, a revenue protection officer with TransPennine Express, ‘listen.’

It was the middle of the night on 17 May 2011, and in Chris’s semi-detached house in Rotherham nothing should have been stirring. But something had woken him and his wife, Joanne, from their slumber – and he thought he knew what it was.

He and Joanne listened intently into the dark night. Yes – there it was again: a timid squeaking, which sounded as if it was coming from the airing cupboard. Chris threw back the duvet and tiptoed down the landing, rubbing his hands across his bearded face to shake himself awake. Though it should have been shut tight, he could see that the airing cupboard door was standing ajar and, as he edged closer, could hear the multitude of tiny squeaking noises growing louder as he approached.

He gently eased the door open a bit wider and looked down. And there, at the bottom of the cupboard, spread luxuriously across the Briscoes’ best Egyptian cotton towels, like a film star in a perfume advert, was his eleven-month-old, black-and-white cat, Lexi. When he’d gone to bed, there’d been one heavily pregnant cat slinking about; now, as he peered down at the wriggling shapes surrounding her, he counted five minuscule kittens and one very happy cat.

Lexi was an affectionate pet, the only cat Chris had ever known who licked him, and she’d become even more so during her pregnancy. While she’d been carrying the kittens she’d barely moved five feet away from Chris: if he sat down for an instant, she’d climb on to his lap; if he got into bed, a moment later he’d feel the warm, solid weight of her as she snuggled down on top of him. He’d known her time was near, so he’d got a special flocked cat bed for her and tucked both that and an old blanket away, somewhere private, so that she could give birth in peace and comfort when she felt ready to do so. Lexi, however, had clearly had other plans – thus the little family currently sprawled out on the softest, most expensive towels known to man.

Chris crouched down and examined his lovely, tired-looking cat and her new children. He reached into the mess of kittens and first checked Lexi over, then did the same with the newborns, making sure that their airways were clear and that their mum had nipped off the umbilical cord properly; all was as it should be. Everything was grand. There was no hissing or biting from Lexi as he did any of these checks; she wasn’t that kind of cat. Instead, she happily nuzzled each tiny kitten as it was returned to her, making sure they were all well.

There were five of them: three tabby cats and two black-and-white ones. The latter were so similar that it was almost impossible to tell them apart. They looked the absolute spit of their mum: mostly black, but with almost identical markings to Lexi – a white V-neck bib, and white paws that looked as though the kittens had dipped their paws in paint; or perhaps, given the elegance of their bedding, had slipped on ivory-coloured kid gloves. In fact, all five kittens had those tell-tale white paws: a family trait that had come through strongly in each and every brand-new cat. Having just been born, their eyes were shut tight, and they mewed only for their mother, who attended diligently to each one.

Having made sure all was well, Chris gently closed the door, leaving it just ajar, as Lexi had wanted, before he and Joanne left them to it.

Lexi’s pregnancy had come as something of a surprise to the Briscoes. They owned two cats, Lexi and Gizmo. Both had been found abandoned on a council estate up near Collingwood, and were taken in by Chris and Joanne as they were looking for a pair of cats to help with mousing. Their house had a massive garden and they’d set aside an area at the top of it to keep chickens and a couple of golden pheasants in an ornamental cage. Because of the grain for the birds, mice had soon taken up residence, too, and since the Briscoes hadn’t wanted to put down poison to address the issue, a duo of cats was the answer.