Кейт Мур - Felix The Railway Cat

And there was another email that came through, too: from a colleague asking if he’d mind if they sent the image to Mark Allan, for him to upload to Felix’s Facebook page.

Felix’s popularity on Facebook had been steadily growing. Only the day before, 29 January 2016, she’d hit a new milestone: 1,000 likes on Facebook. Mark and the team members helping him with the page had started adding videos as well as photographs to the site and that had perhaps encouraged more people to start following the feline. The railway cat had spent Christmas with Glenn and Teresa that year (they’d gone to town, buying Felix her own stocking full of cat-friendly presents and treats) and they’d uploaded a festive video of her playing with a bauble on their tree, tapping it repeatedly with her paw in transfixed fascination. Things like that enamoured Felix to her growing legion of Facebook fans, and the team involved with the page thought that Andrew’s image of the station cat in her hi-vis vest and name badge would go down a real treat.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Andrew said casually when they asked him. ‘No problem at all.’

At 5.54 p.m. on 30 January 2016, Felix changed her profile picture on Facebook to the hi-vis vest shot.

No one at the station knew it, but life would never be the same again.

31. Felix Is Famous

Andrew McClements was walking into the station concourse for his shift when he noticed a couple of the gateline team nudging each other as they looked at him.

‘Andrew,’ they called out. ‘That picture of Felix is gathering some steam online.’

Yeah , Andrew thought sarcastically, of course it is . He knew the Facebook page had got a few more likes since the profile picture had been changed; a couple of days afterwards, Felix had been up to 1,266 fans, which Andrew assumed must be what the team were referring to. He supposed it was pretty special – it had taken Felix seven months to reach 1,000 likes, so to get a quarter of that in just a few days was great. The ever-loyal Huddersfield Examiner had run a piece on Felix’s promotion (‘Felix the Huddersfield station cat gets a purr-motion’ read the headline) and even the online website Mashable had run a story on it: ‘I’m famous!’ posted Felix jokily on Facebook as she shared the link. But whether all that counted as ‘gathering steam’, Andrew doubted.

He headed into the team leaders’ office and sat down, his mind running over all the tasks ahead of him that day. Working at the station was a relentless job in many ways: the services ran day in, day out, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No wonder Felix took so many catnaps.

Just then, his work phone rang. ‘Hello?’ he answered.

‘Andrew McClements?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m ringing from head office at Bridgewater House. I work in the communications department,’ said the caller. ‘I’ll cut straight to the point: what’s going on with that cat of yours?’

They must have heard about the Examiner article , Andrew thought. ‘I didn’t realise you would have heard about this,’ he said in confusion, slightly unsure as to why the communications department for the whole of TransPennine Express was getting involved with such a local piece of PR.

He heard a laugh down the telephone. ‘I think you should check Facebook,’ said the caller.

Andrew drew his keyboard towards him and tapped out a few commands. Up came the familiar blue branding of the social-media site. As Andrew entered his log-in details, he still felt puzzled. Surely this wasn’t big enough for head office’s involvement?

Then he saw it. On the menu at the side of the page, listing the top trending news items, he spotted a familiar fluffy black face. ‘Huddersfield, UK/Cat gets promoted to senior pest controller’ read the associated link. It was right at the top of the list: the number-one trending item on Facebook! Reeling in amazement, Andrew clicked on the link. A second page opened up – with an awful lot of links to an awful lot of news outlets.

Felix was famous.

And the media wanted more. The phone kept ringing … and ringing … and ringing. The Daily Mail wanted a quote; they would be sending a photographer. National newspaper after national newspaper dialled the Huddersfield station number – and soon the broadcast media jumped on the bandwagon too. It all felt a little out of control, but Andrew hadn’t been put in the position of team leader for nothing. He hoped, if the station and TPE could respond to this quickly enough, that it would be a real opportunity for Felix. If he could give the media what they needed, then he felt that he could work with them – rather than everyone being swept away in this unexpected maelstrom of media attention.

Although this sort of thing was completely out of his comfort zone, he stepped up to the plate to address the avalanche of incoming reporters, all desperate for information on the now nationally famous station cat. Assisting him in dealing with the media were Chris Bamford on the gateline and Andy Croughan, the man who had been so closely involved in bringing Felix to the station in the first place – and who had just been appointed as Huddersfield station manager following Will’s departure in January.

They were just in time. Even as the trio started giving interviews and quotes to a sea of reporters on the phone, things started snowballing online. The Mashable article was shared nearly 3,000 times; Felix went up to 4,000 fans on Facebook … then 10,000 … then 20,000. Mark Allan watched the rising numbers with astonishment – and learned to turn his email notifications off pretty damn quick! After the Daily Mail article was published, it was shared nearly 30,000 times – which brought even more likes to the Facebook page. It was totally unbelievable; none of them had ever seen anything like it.

And then Andrew got a call from ITV. National TV. Gulp .

Although Andrew and the others were nervous about the media attention, the cat at the centre of it all seemed unperturbed. As one of her colleagues told Buzzfeed, ‘Well, the fame hasn’t quite gone to her head. As with most cats, they already think the world revolves around them.’

As the station started filling up with cameramen and photographers and journalists jumping off the train from London (via Wakefield Westgate), many team members found themselves doing peculiar limbo movements in order to stay out of shot. They might work with a suddenly famous station cat, but that didn’t mean they wanted to become famous themselves. But for Chris and Andrew, who had agreed to do the ITV interview together, there was no choice but to appear in front of the cameras.

‘Let’s split it between us,’ Chris had said to his colleague, as they nervously waited for the camera crew to turn up. ‘If we do that, we’ve got each other’s backs.’

But even with that reassurance, Andrew still felt apprehensive as he went to collect Felix for her big moment in front of the TV cameras. Although Chris and Andrew would be the ones doing the speaking, they didn’t kid themselves: it was Felix everybody was here to see.

She was hanging about the office, not up to much; totally unaware of her impending media stardom.

‘The ITV people are here, Felix,’ Andrew told her shakily. He knew she couldn’t understand the words, but he was speaking to calm himself as much as her. He opened his drawer and pulled out the hi-vis vest with Felix’s name badge pinned on it. All the media wanted Felix to be wearing her uniform in shot – she just looked so cute in it. ‘Time to get dressed.’

Felix stood patiently as he pulled on the little jacket and made sure she looked smart; but then, how could Felix the railway cat ever look anything but beautiful? As though picking up on Andrew’s tension, however, there was a bit of uncertainty in her eyes as he fastened it around her and then picked her up to carry her outside to face the cameras.