Felix The Railway Cat

As Angie watched in terror from Platform 1, she saw Felix’s fluffy black back begin to rise in the middle. Soon every hair on the cat’s body was standing on end. In cats, this can be a sign that they’re frightened – which, considering the fierce nature of the fox Felix was facing, might have been the case – but it can also indicate that they are really annoyed.

The fox had chosen to mess with the wrong cat. Felix was angry, and her body language was shouting, ‘This is my territory here!’

Felix’s ears flattened. Her back was arched as high as Angie had ever seen it. Tension radiated from the cat’s body as Felix stood her ground. This was her station – and the fox had to know it.

The stand-off continued. Angie felt her heart hammering in her chest. Cats’ hearts beat nearly twice as fast as those of humans, yet given her intense fear, Angie felt certain that, at that particular moment, her and Felix’s hearts were beating as one.

Still, the station cat and the fox continued to stare each other down. Felix’s back went up a touch higher – and the fox turned tail and ran. He vanished into the dark winter’s night, back to wherever his lair was located. The battle for Huddersfield station had been won by Felix the cat.

Seeing him go, the moggy relaxed and carried on with her plans for the evening, strutting along the platform on her way to Billy’s garden. The enemy had been vanquished, much to her satisfaction.

It wasn’t the last time the fox appeared on the station. At about four or five o’clock in the morning, every now and again, the night-shift team would see him pottering around and walking hesitantly along the platform, maybe on his way to hunt the tasty wild rabbits who frolicked at the bottom of Platform 2. But following their encounter, he and Felix had reached an understanding: the fox ignored her and she ignored the fox. They respected each other’s boundaries.

Nevertheless, the pest controller would watch him with a keen green eye as he made his way along the platform. She was in charge here, and if the fox put a foot wrong Felix would know of it.

Yet the fox always toed the yellow line. He now knew all too well what the team at the station had known for years: Felix was the Boss.

24. Clever Felix

The big black crow cawed its mocking caw.

Felix raised a weary eye from her lair by the bike racks and stared at the bird impassively. The crow was a real poser and kept flying about as though trying to impress his fellows. He had made it his habit, that spring afternoon, to keep landing on the platform to squawk at the station cat, trying to wind her up. Over and over he did it: flying off to his iron roost, then coming back down, his harsh cry getting more and more frustrated the longer that Felix didn’t respond.

But Felix merely sat there and watched him. She refused to get riled by his antics. She was Queen Felix – and even though she couldn’t fly, she had learned to rise above it.

Felix’s new maturity, and her confidence in her position as a gracious monarch, showed itself in her other interactions, too – in particular, in the way she behaved with her fellow residents of Platform 1. Though she still enjoyed a good stalking session with the posse of pigeons who scavenged at the station, the team were astonished to see that, when one of the pigeons was poorly, Felix could – in opposition to every instinct in her bones – actually be quite caring towards the suffering bird.

One afternoon, as Michael Ryan, who worked in revenue protection, was hard at work on Platform 1, he spotted Felix acting most strangely over on Platform 4. There was an injured pigeon, unable to fly, squatting helplessly on the ground over there, and Michael watched with a sense of grim fascination, safari-style, as Felix skulked over to the bird, expecting the station cat to slay the stricken creature as a lion might take down a gazelle on the slopes of the Serengeti.

But Felix did no such thing. First of all, she sat with the bird, as though she was a night nurse keeping a bedside vigil by her patient. Then she reached out a velvety white paw and patted the pigeon reassuringly, in a manner not unlike that which the same nurse might have used to mop her patient’s brow. There was no aggression nor even a mocking playfulness in that pat – she appeared to be comforting a friend.

At her encouraging touch, the pigeon, who had been trying to get to Platform 8 and given up, made a valiant effort and hopped a little further. Felix, her claws still retracted, gently touched its purpley-green feathers once again, and once more the pigeon moved on. Every time it stopped, Felix tapped it one more time, and thus escorted that pigeon all the way to Platform 8.