Felix The Railway Cat

Reassured by his presence, Felix turned back to face Platform 1. She sat down in the doorway, perhaps a little abruptly. She took a few moments to take it all in, her head moving from left to right as she assessed everything that lay before her. The concrete of Platform 1 rolled gently to its edge. It was bordered by a shocking yellow line, and Felix felt no desire to see what was beyond its cliff-like edge, where the platform dropped away into nothingness. Beyond, across the blank emptiness, there was another platform, Platform 4; and if she looked to her left, she could just see the outer reaches of Platform 2, located at the very foot of her home on Platform 1. Platform 2 eventually tapered in a slope to the ground, but Felix couldn’t see that from the doorway; it might as well have been in Siberia, it seemed so far away to the little kitten. To her immediate right were the bike racks; and they struck her, even on that first scout outside, as a rather safe-looking haven. Perhaps she made a mental note for the future.

As the station cat quietly surveyed the scene, the evening breeze stirred her fur for the very first time, ruffling all that ebony fluff so that each cat hair quivered and moved in the August air. She blinked those big green eyes of hers. She twitched her long white whiskers, sniffing all those brand-new smells. She looked rather as though she was thinking: Wow.

Felix, meet the world.

World, meet Felix.

Though the kitten didn’t know it yet, all this would be her kingdom.

9. Brave New World

‘Coming, Felix?’

Gareth Hope paused at the doorway of the office, a day or so later. The kitten didn’t need asking twice. She dived across the office, scampered up his long thin legs, and nestled herself on his shoulder, like a pirate’s parrot.

‘Today, Felix,’ he told her, ‘we’re going to be doing security checks.’

These were a regular part of every shift, important to make sure that the station was running smoothly and safely. They involved a circuit of the entire station, including investigation of various nooks and crannies, so it was a good way to introduce Felix to the wider parameters of her new home. She was still so small, she wouldn’t be walking: instead, Gareth would become her long-legged chariot, transporting her all the way.

Since her first taste of the station’s exterior on that summer’s night a few days ago, Gareth and some of the other team members had accompanied her outside again. She hadn’t gone much further than the doorway, and had only ever gone out late at night. Between the hours of 00.30 and 05.00, Huddersfield station locked its large, panelled, blue front doors and bolted them with a sturdy bronze pole. During the night, they were only opened again sporadically, fifteen minutes before the departure time of the services that ran in the wee small hours, then closed immediately afterwards. When the doors were locked, only Felix and the two team members on duty were around, so it was the perfect time to introduce the kitten to a trainless, customerless Platform 1. She was too timid to explore very far, but she did like to go behind the bike racks. The metal docking stations towered above her like an iron forest, and she seemed to feel secure behind those thick steel ‘branches’, with the yellow-brick wall of the office just a pace or two to her back.

That evening, Gareth was taking her out a little earlier than she was used to, before the sun had set. It had been a glorious summer’s day, and the heat was still shimmering around the station as Felix and Gareth set off along Platform 1. Felix’s enormous green eyes darted this way and that: there was so much for the little kitten to see. More customers were about for a start, and her ears pricked up at the rumble of a wheelie case along the concourse, or the sound of a man’s deep laugh. She was very used to people by now, so these noises didn’t trouble her; nor did the humans who kept doing double takes at the duo as Felix and Gareth passed them.

Felix bobbed along happily on Gareth’s shoulder, noting the coffee bar on Platform 1, and the doors to their right that led through to the main entrance of the station (and, beyond that, to St George’s Square and Huddersfield’s town centre). She started a little as a strange, moving glass box rose into view like a whale from the deep: it was the lift, which connected the platforms to the subway below. Felix looked back over her shoulder at it, perplexed, but she and Gareth weren’t going that way.