Felix The Railway Cat

The first morning he brought them in he greeted her with a scratch of the head, then got the treat bag out of his backpack. Immediately, Felix was up on her feet, gazing at him lovingly as though he was the most fascinating creature she had ever come across. She followed him eagerly to the metal bench where he normally sat and gobbled up the treats one by one; he gave her just a handful. They had a really nice time together before the 6.40 arrived and Mark ran to catch it.

The following day, the same thing happened: a head scratch, followed by a handful of treats on the bench. It wasn’t long before Felix grasped that this was a fellow she really wanted to be with every morning. Mark would never forget the day he entered the station and started walking down the platform towards the Head of Steam, only to find Felix sitting waiting for him on their bench. She turned her head towards him as he approached. ‘Welcome,’ the flash of her green eyes seemed to say. ‘Yes, you are blessed: I have deigned to wait for you.’ She greeted him affectionately when he sat down and rubbed behind her pointed black ears. From that moment, a new routine was forged.

Every morning, the cat and the commuter rendezvoused at 6.30 a.m. by the Head of Steam. The team no longer wondered where the cat was at that time – for she was always with Mark. Sometimes she’d eat the treats from his hand; at other times he’d flick one off the seat of the bench with his finger to turn it into a game. Felix, delighted, would bound off the bench and be after it at once, enjoying the drama of the hunt. He got to know her well and learned how streetwise she was; not only about crossing the tracks, but also at staying out of the way if a delivery arrived for the pub or if a catering trolley was being noisily loaded onto a train. Felix pretty much waited for him every day without fail, but if for some reason she was kept away, he would leave the treats for her on the windowsill above the bike racks.

When he came back in the evening, those treats were always gone.

Sometimes, Felix would run to meet him when she saw him striding along the platform towards her. The pair would then walk side by side back to their bench: the best of friends. Despite his previous disinclination towards felines, Mark found himself softening. He hadn’t especially liked cats before, it was true – but then he’d never met a cat like Felix.

As the pair grew closer, Mark staged more and more ambitious photo calls. One favourite was when he pulled his laptop out of its bag on the platform and opened it up for Felix to ‘use’. With a treat placed upon the keyboard, she was more than happy to pose with the computer. Mark added an amusing caption to the image: ‘Excuse me, can you press “ctrl, alt, delete” for me?’

Perhaps the funniest time, though, was when he brought a loaf of Warburtons in with him and asked Felix to pose next to it. The other commuters gave him strange looks as he crouched on the platform with a packet of bread and a cat – he looked like an absolute lunatic – but it was all in honour of his art. The caption read, with feeling: ‘Felix: the best thing since sliced bread.’

Come 31 October, he was having great fun with apps and posted an image of Felix where she was surrounded by cartoon ghosts in celebration of Halloween. He was getting a brilliant response to his posts, and by the time the team started joining in too, just before Christmas (Glenn and his girlfriend Teresa became heavily involved), the page was up to nearly 500 likes. Mark couldn’t believe it: this was beyond his wildest dreams! Never had he thought the page would become so popular.

Felix, had you asked her, would never have had any doubt. Day after day she showed her character and spirit. Andy Croughan was astonished one night shift when she escorted him to the takeaway shop: she sat outside and waited for him to order, before walking companionably back with him to the station, as though they were a couple who had just nipped out for fish and chips. Michael Ryan got a shock when a passer-by tapped him on his arm as he was walking through Huddersfield town centre one afternoon and said, ‘Excuse me, is that your cat?’ He looked round in surprise to find Felix walking neatly behind him; she’d been following him for five minutes ever since he’d left work, looking for all the world like a feline soldier on a passing-out parade. She was so far from home that Michael turned right around and walked all the way back again, Felix following meekly till she was home.

Sometimes, she playfully harked back to the days of her kittenhood. Andrew McClements was standing chatting with Dale, one of the customer-service team, one day when he saw a sudden look of surprise – and pain – cross his colleague’s face. Felix had decided to climb up his back, as she used to do with Gareth Hope when she was a tiny kitten.