Felix The Railway Cat

‘All right, lovey,’ Angie said, not too concerned about this behaviour; Felix did sometimes choose to stay at home. ‘Day off, is it? You have a nice nap then. I’ll see you later.’

Angie’s next few shifts were at night, when Felix happily came out and trotted around after her, so it wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that it became evident that something was seriously wrong.

In the daytime, when it was busy, Angie noticed that the confident cat she had always known and loved so well had vanished. Instead, if Felix was outside at that time of day, she would cower against the platform floor as the customers passed her by. Jean Randall noticed that she flinched if she heard children playing and would not go near them anymore. But it wasn’t just children: she suddenly seemed terrified of everyone who was not a station employee, and the sunny, sociable cat became a thing of the past.

‘Somebody’s hurt her,’ Angie fretted to Dave Chin. ‘Somebody on the platform.’

They didn’t know who, of course. It could have been an unwitting, overly enthusiastic child who had unintentionally pulled her fur too roughly. Or it could have been something more malevolent – perhaps an adult with a chip on their shoulder and an unforgiving black boot. The result was that Felix now withdrew into herself. She would back away if a colleague opened the door for her to go out at rush hour, and spent most of her time at the window in the booking office, looking out, feeling protected by the presence of Jean and Pam and the other women who worked there. She stayed indoors, and would only brave the outside world during the night shift, when the station was deserted and she could once more claim the platforms as her own.

It broke everyone’s hearts to see her that way; she wasn’t the same cat at all. They gave her a lot of love, a lot of care, and they hoped against hope that she would somehow be able to find her way back to them – and start to trust again.

It took a long, long time. One month passed, then two. Not until the Christmas carollers were singing in the square outside did Felix, gradually, start to become a bit more confident again. She still spent her days in the booking office, but she gained the courage to sit in an area of the windows where the customers could gain access to her. It was terribly brave, but as she was sitting right next to her colleagues working the windows, she wasn’t entirely alone. They would look out for her, she knew.

One busy day that December, Felix was with one of the girls, who had a jaunty Santa hat on her head as she served the customers. The cat was sitting tall and upright and proud – perhaps still a little tense and stiff – taking everything in and courageously facing the world.

A male customer reached the front of the queue and approached the window manned by Felix and the Santa girl. ‘Hello, there,’ he said warmly to Felix.

While the girl processed his order, he reached out a rough, flat palm and gently stroked the cat. Felix leaned her head into his touch and let her chin rise contentedly into the air. He tickled her underneath that chin, then she dipped her head and asked for another stroke. He was more than happy to give it.

And just like that, Felix was back to her old self. It was the best Christmas present the team could have wished for.

19. The Final Hurdle

Felix gazed up at the iron roof girders with an increasing sense of annoyance. The crows were sitting up there, looking down at her, staring her out. Now aged two, Felix wasn’t quite so terrified of them as she had been as a kitten, but that didn’t mean that the crows were any closer to showing her the slightest sign of respect. They would cockily fly down to the platform and walk around when she was on duty, as if she was nothing.

Felix wasn’t going to stand for that. She would prowl at them, then rush at them, but they would merely rise into the air like supersonic spaceships, fly up to their iron roost and sit there, cawing down at her. They seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in winding her up, knowing there was nothing she could do about it.

They even teamed up to do it. One day a single crow left the safety of his perch and landed on the platform. Felix was out and about and he had started crowing at her. There was a mocking tone to his caws: ‘na-na-na-na-na’. Felix had narrowed her green eyes and started to creep towards him. She had not got far before her attention was diverted by a second crow, who swooped down and landed behind the cat, so that Felix was like a piggy-in-the-middle between the two birds.