Felix The Railway Cat

Grey gravel had been laid out between the two metal rails that formed the train track running beside Platform 1. Felix now picked her way across it carefully. As she crossed the second rail of this first train track, she paused once again, her front paws safely across the rail and her back ones still on the wooden sleeper, as the ridge of the rail touched her fluffy belly. She stood as still as a statue, assessing, adjudging, and then determined it was safe to move on.

She had made it successfully to the midway point between Platforms 1 and 4. Beyond was another set of train tracks, the ones that ran alongside Platform 4 – but Felix suddenly decided that two sets of tracks was rather too much to tackle on her first trip out. Halfway across would do for today.

She turned back to face Platform 1, seeing her home turf from an entirely different perspective for the very first time. Felix carefully checked both ways before once more crossing back towards Platform 1. At the foot of the sheer wall she paused, gazing up at the precipice above. The platform was awfully high up. Yet she had confidence in her abilities. In one lithe, athletic jump Felix ascended from the tracks to the platform, and once more crossed back over the yellow line. She was home and dry.

She had an even greater desire to explore.

To begin with, however, her track-crossing adventures were always curtailed at the halfway point. She would get so far, then turn tail and retreat. But Felix’s courage and confidence were building by the day, and soon she felt secure enough in her knowledge of the railway to cross not one but two sets of tracks and make it all the way to Platform 4.

Angie Hunte, watching her little cat making her way in the world, thought that Felix’s new accomplishment in learning how to navigate the tracks safely needed formal recognition. On the railway, employees have to complete what is called a Personal Track Safety (PTS) course before they are allowed to work on the tracks. As walking on the tracks is so dangerous, employees are not allowed to set foot on them until they are in possession of a PTS certificate to show that they have successfully completed their training. They are also issued with a PTS ID card, bearing their photograph; these cards expire every two years.

As it happened, around the same time that Felix completed her own personal track safety ‘exam’ and became adept at crossing the tracks, maintenance man Dave Chin’s latest PTS card expired.

‘Could I have that please, Dave?’ Angie asked him, a smile playing on her lips and a twinkle in her eye as she cooked up a little plot.

‘’Course you can,’ he told her, intrigued.

So Felix was soon the proud bearer of her own, personalised PTS card, granting her the authority to walk on the tracks. Angie carefully stuck a photograph of Felix in the appropriate space on the cream-and-red card, then scribbled on it in a black marker pen: ACCESS TO ALL AREAS.

It was official: Felix had the run of the place, and she had a PTS card to prove it.

20. Queen Felix

The customer came rushing onto the concourse. ‘There’s a cat on the track!’ he exclaimed in horror. ‘She’s going to get run over!’

The team in their hi-vis jackets sighed – not another concerned customer.

‘She’s fine, sir,’ they reassured him. ‘She knows what she’s doing.’

‘But what if a train comes?’

‘Trust us, it’s fine. She’ll get up and walk away.’

Outside, at the centre of all this fuss, was Felix, sitting calmly at the midway point of the tracks while commuters gathered in concern, looking as though she was saying, ‘What?’ with a disdainful flicker of her big green eyes. In truth, it had become a bit of a favourite game of hers to saunter out to this centre-stage point, a bit of a wind-up that gave everybody on the platform a good old fright; clever as she was, people never, ever saw her on the tracks when a train was actually due.

Felix herself was no longer frightened of those trains. The kitten who used to run for home whenever they roared into the station now blinked at them nonchalantly. If she was in the middle of a really thorough wash, she might not even look up. The lack of fear didn’t mean that she was less cautious, simply that she felt completely confident in her skill and in her knowledge of the station.

That knowledge grew wider day by day. With her access-all-areas pass, Felix’s horizons expanded. She started coming back to the station with brambles and bushy bits in her fur – clear evidence that her explorations were taking her further afield. Even on the station itself, she would strut about authoritatively, strolling along the front entrance as if she owned the place – and what a place it was.