Felix The Railway Cat

The two little kittens looked blankly at him, not understanding this new game. In the end, he scooped each one up and placed them together in the grey plastic carry case for their journey to the station. They sniffed suspiciously at their new surroundings, and began mewing plaintively at their unfamiliarity. The plastic arched over their heads; at the front of the carrier was a wire mesh door, which Chris now closed firmly.

The kittens cried even louder as it clunked shut, but their mother didn’t respond to their melancholy mews. Lexi had wanted to go out, earlier, and was off having her own adventures in the large garden outside. To Chris’s mind, she had had enough of her offspring by now and wanted to get on with her own life. Three of the kittens had already left home; when the Briscoes got back to Rotherham that night and let Lexi back in, she would merely sniff at the basket where she’d reared her family, realise the kittens had now all gone, and then carry on with her life, with no visible sign of distress at their departure.

The same could not be said for her kittens at that moment, though. As Chris lifted the carry case and he and Joanne made their way outside, both tiny tots scurried to the back of the carrier as fast as they could, looking for a place to hide. They huddled together, senses alert, as Chris and Joanne made their way to a nearby station: they were catching the train to Huddersfield, taking the Penistone line.

Deep inside the carry case, as close to the back wall as they could get, the kittens clustered together, their ears pricked up as high as they had ever been. The world for them was suddenly full of loud, never-before-heard noises: the slam of car doors, the trilling of birdsong, the electronic beep of the ticket gates. New smells flooded in through the mesh door, too – earth, air, plants, animals, humans – and new sights seemed to burn their very retinas, all spot-lit by the brightness of the July sun. It was totally overwhelming. The terrible twins fell into a terrible silence – and as they boarded the train with the Briscoes and heard the colossal roar of the engine booming into life, they scarcely dared to breathe. What on earth could make a noise like that?

Yet, as the journey progressed, and the kittens slowly grew more used to the gentle, rocking motion of the train and the intermittent noises, they found their courage gradually returned. Egging each other on, as they had done when scaling curtains higher and higher in the Briscoes’ home, they edged closer to the wire door and bravely peeped out, noses pressed to the gaps in the wire and twitching furiously, as they tried to decipher the cryptogram of smells that accosted their tiny nostrils.

Halfway to Huddersfield, Chris and Joanne decided to check on their precious cargo. But when they discovered the duo at the front of the case, the kittens, spooked by the intrusion, skedaddled to the back once again. They were very, very quiet throughout the whole journey, so Chris and Joanne leaned back in their seats and left them to it. Gone were the noisy, outgoing twins who had caused such mayhem wherever they went. This first trip to the outside world had left the kittens reeling.

After about half an hour the train screeched to a halt at their destination: Huddersfield.

The station cat, though little did he know it, was home.

Yet it wasn’t a very happy homecoming. Both kittens had been frightened by the banshee scream of the brakes and the subsequent beep-beep-beep of the opening doors. They started crying again – a mewling noise that seemed to say, ‘Mum, where are you? I need you’ and ‘I’m hungry and so cold’ and ‘Where am I?’ all at once. But as Chris lifted the carrier and he and Joanne disembarked from the train, the kittens’ cries were suddenly curtailed. They felt the swaying movement of the basket around them and realised with a nervous gulp: something’s up.

Once off the train, the world seemed even noisier. Though it was a relatively quiet time on the station concourse – about mid-morning, so well after the rush hour – for the kittens, experiencing their very first day in the outside world, it was like landing on a whole new planet. Even the air felt different, colder and fresher than they were used to at home, but it was the loud noises and the alien smells that were really mind-boggling. Station announcements robotically echoed around the chamber of the carrier; running footsteps punctuated every pounding heartbeat in the kittens’ tiny little chests; and all the while the terrible twins swayed and scattered inside the roomy carrier as they were buffeted up the platform in rhythm with Chris’s purposeful strides.