Кейт Мур - Felix The Railway Cat

Above all, though, he and Joanne were simply pleased that the kitten would be going to a permanent, loving home, where the Briscoes could be sure that it was going to be well looked after. In fact, judging by the grin on Angie’s face when he agreed that she could have one of the kittens, it was going to be downright spoilt .

‘We’d like a boy,’ Angie added, almost as an afterthought, as they drew the conversation to a close. After all, she and the team didn’t want to push it: it felt like a miracle that HQ had agreed to the station cat. Nobody thought that the powers-that-be would appreciate having kittens on top of that, so everyone felt safer if the new recruit was a boy.

As it happened, Chris didn’t actually know the gender of the kittens. And when the train dispatcher who planned to take the two tabby cats came to visit her new charges at his home he openly confessed his ignorance.

‘I don’t know how to sex kittens,’ he admitted. ‘You’ll have to do it yourself.’

Unfazed, the dispatcher picked up the tabby cats and said, ‘That one’s definitely a boy and that’s definitely a girl.’ She would go on to call them Percy and Max, respectively. Then she reached over and plucked one of the black-and-white kittens from the basket and turned it upside-down. ‘Definitely a boy,’ she announced. She picked up his twin, the fluffy one, and did the same. There was so much long-haired fur around its bits that it was a little harder to see, but she made a pronouncement nonetheless. ‘Definitely a boy.’ She seemed to know what she was talking about.

Chris let Angie know the good news: both the black-and-white kittens were boys, so she could take her pick. There was good news for Chris, too: a lady who worked in the Huddersfield booking office, Pam, had said that her mum would give a home to whichever kitten the station didn’t want, so both of them would be off his hands for good.

Joanne and Chris assessed the terrible twins as they scampered boisterously about the house. Apart from the fact that one was a lot fluffier than the other, there was barely any difference between them. They’d noticed only one thing that marked them out. The kittens, as you’d expect, had a heap of toys to play with (some actual toys and some hijacked by the kittens in fun). They had a scratching post with a ball on a string and in their turn all the kittens had climbed up the pole and then dived off, jumping on the ball; there were half a dozen squeaky mice for them to pounce on, too. And it was one of these mice toys that differentiated the twins. It was one of those toys where you’d pull the string at the side and the mouse would vibrate really, really quickly, making it skid along the floor. One of the black-and-white kittens was absolutely terrified of it – but the other was in his element. Over and over, he’d jump on it, pounce on it … boom : game over. Killer instinct in action.

‘So which one do you think should become the railway cat?’ Joanne mused aloud. She was a short, smiling woman with blonde highlights and a great sense of humour, though this issue was no laughing matter. It seemed a rather serious question: to be debating the future of these kittens as they gambolled obliviously about the place, investigating every new sight, sound and smell with a kitten’s classic inquisitiveness. The five hadn’t been outdoors at all yet, as they weren’t inoculated, but there were enough new experiences in their home to keep them occupied for weeks. But what new experiences awaited the station cat: the lure of the train tracks, the rhythm of the trains, the hours and hours of walking about on cold platforms in the middle of the night …

To Joanne’s mind, the fluffier of the two seemed more suited to this occupation. For even at this young age that kitten seemed to be taking after his dad, Gizmo, who was a total fluff-ball and enormous because of it. Surely a nice thick fur coat would stand a station cat in good stead? The other kitten had shorter hair and was nowhere near as large.

Chris described them both to Angie. ‘One’s really big and fluffy like his dad,’ he told her.

‘Well, we’ll have that one then,’ she said decisively. Angie liked the idea of having the fluffiest cat – and this little kitten really was a fluff ball, currently no larger than the size of a man’s hand. Chris sent her some snapshots of the kittens – and that’s when the team really knew this dream was coming true.

Angie showcased the photographs all around the office, more smile than woman as she did so. ‘Meet our little cat,’ she said to Gareth as she showed off the photographs as proudly as any new mum would snaps of her newborn.

Gareth grinned right back at her. ‘We’ve done it, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘We’ve only gone and done it!’

But there was still a lot to sort out before the railway cat could arrive. He couldn’t leave his mum until he was at least eight weeks old, so in the meantime the station team began preparing for their little boy’s arrival. They got fleecy blankets for him to sleep on, and bought a white plastic double-aperture bowl for his food and drink. There was a lot of excitement around the office at the thought that, soon, the newest member of the team would be joining them. Judging by the enthusiasm on everyone’s faces, this little kitten was going to be the most popular colleague at the station by quite some distance.

But not everyone was thrilled by the promise of the new arrival. Some colleagues even started talking up the fact that they were highly allergic to cats, and that therefore the whole plan should be called off – but these ‘allergies’ were something they had never once mentioned during Gareth’s three-year campaign to get a cat, so he didn’t really buy it.

But Chris Briscoe, for one, was definitely looking forward to the terrible twins moving out. Each night he and Joanne had to have a roll call for the kittens to find out where they’d got to, as they were forever playing hide-and-seek and trying to get into places where they shouldn’t be. ‘Right, how many have you got?’ Chris would say, his hands full of tiny tabby cat, as Joanne picked her way across the living-room floor and exclaimed, ‘There’s one at the side of the fireplace!’

Those two would be returned to Lexi’s side, placed gently into the snug brown-and-white cat bed, but by the time the other three had been located, the first two would have gone AWOL again. Tiring as it was, Chris’s daughter thought she would be very sad to see her new friends move on, as they were due to any day now. Lucy Briscoe was eleven years old and besotted with the kittens. She and the Briscoes’ grand-daughter, six-year-old Ellie, had taken the lead in getting the kittens used to humans, so they were forever picking them up and giving them cuddles – as were Joanne and Chris, in all honesty. All five little ones had received an equal amount of human playtime, personal affection and friendship in their formative first eight weeks. The Briscoes would, in some ways, be sorry to see them go.

And that day came all too soon. On Tuesday 12 July 2011, the kittens reached an all-important milestone: they were now exactly eight weeks old. It was time for the members of the litter to say goodbye to each other – and hello to their brand-new homes.

Spadge was the first to leave, moving out to live with the Briscoes’ son in Sheffield; a day or so later Max and Percy headed off to their new lives in Manchester. Now only the as-yet-unnamed black-and-white kittens remained. Both would be heading to Huddersfield station on Thursday 14 July. Aged eight weeks and two days, it was time for the terrible twins to take a journey they would never forget.

4. Welcome to Huddersfield

‘In you get,’ Chris Briscoe urged the terrible twins.