Felix The Railway Cat

Platform 2 was not in use much that particular afternoon, so Felix wasn’t spooked at all as she poked her nose about and generally had a really satisfying investigation. Gareth kept glancing back at the station clock: they’d been out five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen … There was an automated announcing system in place at Huddersfield, which meant most announcements were triggered by a train coming into the station; the human announcer didn’t have to do a thing. This freed up Gareth to enable him to follow the cat about for a fair amount of time. But there were still some announcements he had to make …

Yet on this day, Felix showed no sign of wanting to return to base. They’d been out twenty minutes; now twenty-five … Gareth kept heading towards the kitten, hoping he could scoop her up and carry her back inside with him, but every time he went near her, she moved somewhere else.

After all, there was so much to see! Felix prowled to the very end of Platform 2, where it started tapering down towards the floor, like a bespoke ramp for an inquisitive cat. Beyond this, the yawning mouth of the train tunnels loomed, black and empty-looking. Felix blinked at them with interest, cocking her head to one side – what went on in there? Then her head flicked sharply to the right, to look down on the grassy area over which the tracks ran, just before the entrance to the tunnels. Her ears went up, her eyes brightened, and her legs instinctively crouched down.

On the grassy area before the tunnel, she saw a flash of a little white cottontail – and then another. Boing! Boing! A family of brown-and-white bunny rabbits frolicked before her very eyes. Felix watched them, captivated, as they darted about and then – perhaps sensing the feline’s interested observation – bounded suddenly away to safety.

Felix shook herself and gave a big stretch, all the way along each leg to the tips of her snowy-white toes. The world was so interesting! What more can I discover? she seemed to wonder, as she set off once more on her exploration.

Gareth Hope watched her – in contrast to his name – in total despair. He’d been out of the office for thirty-five minutes and he really needed to get back.

‘Felix! Come on!’ he urged her, but he knew she wouldn’t respond. Cats were famed for their acute sense of hearing, but Felix’s was uncannily selective when she wanted it to be.

I really need to go, he thought. But I can’t possibly get her back.

He watched the cat as she sniffed and prowled about, so confident and carefree in this environment that she now knew relatively well. Gareth and his colleagues had been watching her closely outside for almost two months now. They knew she was a sensible cat: that she wouldn’t cross the yellow line and go down on the tracks; that she knew where home was and could run for it if scared. Gareth glanced back up at the station clock. Forty minutes!

I’m going to have to leave her, he thought. It was a heart-wrenching moment.

‘Felix, I’m going now,’ he told her. The cat ignored him. ‘I’m walking …’ he said, as he turned and took the first step. ‘I’m going …’ He hovered, but Felix wasn’t even looking at him. His shoulders slumped dejectedly. ‘I’ll be back in the office if you need me.’

He plodded up the platform, throwing worried looks over his shoulder, but Felix was absolutely fine. With every step, he fretted. If something happens to her now …

Then he remembered the CCTV and almost ran back into the office. On his computer screen were the various images relayed from the cameras across the station. He scanned through them, looking, looking … And there, frolicking in front of the camera trained on Platform 2, was Felix: a flickering black-and-white figure happily sniffing her way along the ground and absolutely safe.

Gareth pulled the microphone towards him and made his next announcement, the relief audible in his tone, although the customers listening would have had no idea why.

His little kitten was just fine – and the mother hen could be sure of it.

After that, Gareth would occasionally watch Felix on the cameras when she was out and about and he was stuck in the office, but eventually he knew he didn’t even need to do that. His little kitten was growing up fast; she was now too heavy for her climbing trick and was way too big to balance on his head. Where once she could curl up comfortably and settle there, like a cherry on top of a Gareth-shaped cake, she now realised that it was a little too wobbly at the summit, and settled for staying on his shoulder instead.