Felix The Railway Cat

Angie got her bits and pieces together, picking up the cat partly to give him a cuddle, but also because she needed the very bit of paper the kitten was lying on. That Billy, she mused wryly to herself. He could moan for England, it was true – but it hadn’t escaped Angie that, for all his cantankerous words, he hadn’t actually moved the kitten from his comfy place of rest. Billy, despite the toughened exterior and his prickly ways, was a big old softy at heart – though he wouldn’t like her saying so.

Though Billy didn’t have the heart to move the kitten, as the shift continued and Martin, Huddersfield’s other announcer, arrived for work, Angie discovered there were some colleagues who were not so susceptible to the kitten’s many charms. When Martin pulled his chair up at his desk and readjusted his thick glasses on his nose, he looked down to discover the kitten draped across the keyboard, as was now his wont. Martin shook his head: all was not right with his world. He cleared his throat and spoke awkwardly to the cat.

‘You can’t stay there,’ he told him. ‘Come on, get down.’

When the kitten didn’t move so much as an inch, Martin reached out and closed his hesitant hands around the little body, before lifting him up. He placed him down on the carpet, from where the kitten looked up at him quizzically, his bright eyes drinking him in.

‘Go on with you, now,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve got to do some work.’

But the kitten kept watching him, as though Martin was the most fascinating creature on the planet. Only when Martin shooed him away did he scamper off, thinking it was a new game, before darting round the office at full speed. For the kitten, everything was a new game.

And there were certainly plenty of opportunities for fun. As the cat grew more comfortable with his surroundings, he grew more daring. The office furniture became an obstacle course for jumping and leaping upon: in three easy bounds, he could dart from the floor to the squishy seat of an office chair, up onto the narrow beam of the chair’s arm, and then, the big finish, from his tippy-toes on the beam to the crash mat of the desk, which had a perfect surface for skidding and sliding on, just as a rock-and-roll star might do. The larger pieces of equipment, meanwhile, provided handy nooks and crannies for countless games of hide-and-seek, the skyscraper-like sides of the photocopier giving the kitten a safe cityscape to run and play and hide in.

And the cat had no shortage of playmates. It wasn’t long before all twenty-six people on the TPE team at Huddersfield had met him – not to mention the staff from other train companies who also ran services out of the station. Everybody wanted to play with the railway cat.

It was understandably a little overwhelming for the kitten at times: with each new colleague to whom he was introduced, he would at first be timid and shy. Soon, however, he began acquiring favourites. Jean Randall, who worked in the booking office, was one. Her philosophy with animals was that, as you’ve chosen the animal to come and live with you (and they didn’t choose you), you have a duty to make their life as lovely as possible. A cuddle with Jean, whose curly black hair was almost a mirror image of the kitten’s fluffy dark fur, soon became a highlight of his day.

But Jean worked in the booking office, where the team were locked in for security reasons, and the cat-burglar kitten wasn’t allowed in either, so those cuddles had to happen before or after Jean’s shifts, or for a snatched five minutes on her coffee break. The kitten spent far more time with Gareth – sleeping on his lap for the announcer’s entire shift – or with the team leaders than with anyone else, and so these people became his closest family and friends. The brown bear, too, was a constant companion: though it was a bit of a struggle for the kitten on account of its size, he’d tenderly clamp his jaws around its arm or leg so that he could drag it around everywhere he went.

With the kitten settling in brilliantly, the next pressing issue was his name. Gareth turned again to his trusty computer and rustled up a new station-cat poster – one he never thought he’d be in a position to create.

Huddersfield Station Cat

Here’s your chance to name Huddersfield station’s latest recruit!

Only 50p a go!

Write down your name and your suggestion for the cat’s name and it will be drawn from a hat on Tuesday the 19^th of July.

‘Well,’ commented Angie, ‘we couldn’t call him “kitten” for forever and a day.’