Felix The Railway Cat

But Felix was a clever little kitty. She had sussed out which colleagues – and it was most of them – kept treats for her hidden in their desk drawers or their pockets, and by now she had located all the hotspots. The only one who knew where they all were was Felix, and she’d hover in the relevant area until the magical treats arrived. Every member of the team had a little something on their person to comfort or tempt the cat – but they little realised that every single colleague on each separate shift was dishing out the same. Kittens at that age are recommended to have three meals a day, but as her multitude of carers nursed her back to health, Felix was getting fed a lot more than that …

But who could resist that lovely kitten face? Felix started to find her voice, too – and if she wanted food she would mew. Loudly. Until you’d fed her. Cats can change their miaows to manipulate humans, often imitating the cry of a newborn human baby when they want food. Felix had clearly mastered this art and was playing them all like a master puppeteer.

But even though her adoring fans readily gave in to her every whim, the kitten wasn’t averse to making her own luck too. One Sunday shift, when it was quiet, Gareth decided to nip to Tesco and pick up a bit of shopping for home, including some Go-Kat kitten biscuits for his little Cosmo, who was only a few months older than Felix. He dropped the bag in the corner of the office and went back to his announcing, thinking nothing more of it. It was only at the end of his shift, as he picked up the carrier bag in readiness to catch his train home, that he realised a cat burglar had been at work. Someone had torn through the bottom of the bag with what looked suspiciously like sharp claws, then chewed a hole in the bottom of the cardboard box and helped themselves to biscuits.

Gareth surveyed the damage and glared accusingly at Felix. She was busy washing herself, looking as innocent as anything, and simply batted her eyelashes at him when he said sternly, ‘Felix!’

She never did admit to doing it. Gareth supposed it could have been Andy …

As if coping with the aftermath of the operation wasn’t enough for poor old Felix, around this same time she also had to contend with another big change. While she had been settling into Huddersfield station and getting glamorised with her sparkly collar and fuchsia name tag and harness, the station itself had been undergoing something of a makeover too. The back offices were being entirely rebuilt and the new layout was now ready for action. The team would be moving into the swish new set-up, while the old offices would be knocked down.

The new offices were still in the same location – Platform 1 – and they were still by lost property and still had a customer-service window, but they were very different inside. Gone was the large, communal, carpeted announcer’s office; that became a tiny, tiled room just big enough for a desk and a microphone. The space behind the scenes was dedicated instead to smart staff facilities: male and female locker rooms, a shower, a mess room/kitchen, and a brand-new office for the team leaders, with enough room for two desks and a couple of filing cabinets. The shower now became a favourite Felix spot and was where her bedding (a black blanket with white paw-prints, among others) was placed permanently for her, at the foot of the towel rack. Some wag made a proprietorial ‘this is my room’ wooden sign saying ‘Felix’, which hung above her bed for a while – until she knocked it down, thinking it was a toy. All the new rooms opened off one long corridor which now became the setting for one of Felix’s favourite pastimes.

Her brown bear was still her constant companion, but Felix gradually stopped pining over her baby and allowed the bear to be turned into a playmate. One of her very favourite games in the world was to stand between Andy and Gareth as each stood at either end of the corridor. One of them would have hold of the brown bear. Slowly, deliberately, he would seat it on the floor of the corridor, as Felix watched with a keen, excited, beady green eye. The bear would be sitting upright, leaning slightly forward. Then Andy or Gareth would take a step back, a run-up, and kick the bear so hard that it soared high into the air. Down the corridor the bear would fly, and Felix would watch it coming with growing pleasure, then chase it and dive as it got closer, taking total joy in their reunion. She would spend hours darting between Andy and Gareth as they booted the bear up and down the corridor: running, leaping, prowling, chasing, diving … never seeming to tire.

With the kitten clearly on the mend, Angie took her back to the vet’s for her follow-up appointment after her operation. She was expecting him to say that everything was fine, as Felix was clearly full of beans.

But as the vet checked her vital statistics – and weighed her – he realised she was rather full of cat treats, too.

‘She’s a little … tubby,’ he began.