Felix The Railway Cat

Instead, the young announcer trotted down the stairs to the subway. He kept a light hand on Felix as they journeyed underneath the tracks. Huddersfield was a very old, Grade I-listed station – the foundation stone had been laid on 9 October 1846, when there was a public holiday and the church bells rang all day in celebration – and it was a little-known fact that, when it was first built, a vast labyrinth of rooms and passageways was also constructed on the subway level, which today is shut off to the public. In the nineteenth century, they were used as offices, coal rooms, lamp rooms and even the first-class lounge. But they had long since fallen into disuse and now they lay in darkness, their old-fashioned fireplaces no longer flickering with flames; everything abandoned, covered in dirt and dust. Though TPE used a few of the rooms for storage or technical operations, the rest of the crypt was a spooky, subterranean lair, more fitting for ghost stories than travellers’ tales. Gareth definitely didn’t want Felix to go exploring down there. It was a place that gave the shivers to several team members, and he didn’t want Felix to get lost. They stuck to the well-lit, public-access subway instead: a clean and bright tunnel, modern and manageable.

Up they popped on Platform 4. Felix whizzed her head about as they came up the stairs, taking in all the new sights and sounds. Between Platforms 4 and 8 was a buffet room, but it was closed at that early-evening hour; it did a roaring trade in the mornings, when the smell of frying bacon and the clatter of plates tempted in bleary-eyed commuters. Peering towards the south end of the station as they came up from the subway, Felix glimpsed Platforms 5 and 6, which were tucked between Platforms 4 and 8 using a different bit of track. It was just as well she wasn’t numerically minded, as the station’s layout would have foxed a mathematical genius; but for those keeping tabs, Huddersfield has no Platform 3 or 7.

But Felix wasn’t interested in the platforms or the people. Instead, her eyes narrowed sharply as she looked up at the station’s roof.

Huddersfield station is only partly covered by its corrugated iron roof. There is a gap in it, running parallel to where the train tracks divide Platforms 1 and 4. But the open sky wasn’t what had caught the little kitten’s eye – it was the crows.

They lived on the station: a number of big black beasts who claimed the place as their own. The roof was supported by a cross-hatch of several steel girders, providing the birds with plenty of prime perches. They were cocky, confident creatures with slick, oil-like feathers, and at that time were larger than Felix herself. As she watched them swoop down to the platforms to pick over the crumbs the customers had left behind, she gave a worried frown, as though to say she wasn’t sure she liked those birds.

As Gareth continued his security circuit by walking along Platform 4, however, something else happened which drove all thoughts of the crows from Felix’s mind. There was a silent, still train sitting at the platform as they walked along it: a local stopping service which had been slumbering there quietly before its journey began. The pair were just passing the train when its engine suddenly came to life and revved up with the most enormous roooaaarrrr!

Felix was still on Gareth’s shoulder. When she heard that booming, jarring sound, her claws came out in fright and she dug in as hard as she could, trying to get as close to her friend as possible, in order to feel secure.

Gareth yelled in pain, and he got the sense that if Felix could have done so she would have yelled out loud, too. As it was, she dug in even harder, until Gareth reached round and gingerly lifted her off. He cradled her in his hands and, seeing that she was scared, rushed her back to the safety of the announcer’s office. He ended up with claw marks all over his shoulder, but Felix was OK.

Although it was clear that Felix was none too sure about the thunderous engines, the team at Huddersfield knew – from the success stories of those happy railway cats living up and down the country – that they simply needed to persevere in getting her used to the trains and Felix would be fine. She was simply like a child who puts her hands over her ears at the roar of a jet engine on an aeroplane; in time, that sound would become nothing to fear, just a part of everyday life. Felix was a station cat; she would get used to the noisy engines.

Her colleagues had read about how important it was to expose kittens at a very early stage to the things they expected them to consider normal and safe when they were adults. Anything they don’t experience at that young age might be viewed with fear and caution later on in life, to the detriment of the cat. It was why the team had wanted to give a kitten a home in the first place, so that she could learn the ropes as she was learning life itself.