Felix The Railway Cat

But there were some at the station who were not as pleased as Felix. While many of her colleagues thought her international fame was cool, others considered it a load of nonsense. They couldn’t believe the world had reacted in this way to her. To them – so they said – this social-media ‘icon’ was just a lazy cat who sat in the station and got in everyone’s way.

Team leader Geoff was one of those who thought her popularity very strange indeed. He still shouted at her to get out of the office whenever he saw her appear. It was just a cat at the end of the day; why were people so interested?

Her many thousands of adoring Facebook fans could tell him that.

32. Back to Work

‘Oh my God, it’s her! It’s her! It’s Felix!’

Felix almost raised an eyebrow as she heard the excited voices. But she didn’t flinch or flee: this was a regular occurrence by now. She was sat on duty at the customer-information point, and the eager tourists crowded round her, smartphones out to take selfies with the famous railway cat.

In the light of Felix’s celebrity, Huddersfield station had suddenly become a key destination for her tens of thousands of fans.

They travelled for miles – Andy Croughan had met people from China, Germany and Canada who had come to see her. It was the same at home. English fans altered their travel plans so they could alight at Huddersfield in the hope of catching a few minutes with Felix; regular commuters came that little bit earlier in the mornings just to have some fun. Though people never fought over her, the team sometimes noticed looks of disappointment crossing people’s faces if Felix was already holding court with someone else when they walked by. At other times, especially if Felix was in a playful mood, whole crowds would gather around her as though she was a street performer in Covent Garden who had painted herself blue from top to tail.

That was the magic of the railway cat.

The team got a big kick out of seeing how happy customers were to meet her. Felix brightened people’s days. It could be a family walking through: a mum now with a beaming grin, her seven-year-old daughter skipping out of the station as she held her dad’s hand and chattered away about the beautiful cat. Or a young couple in their early twenties – a redhead in Doc Marten boots with her long-haired boyfriend – who might sit right down on the floor to feed the cat a treat. People would literally lie on the floor and clamber over benches and bikes to be near her. Others couldn’t believe their eyes.

‘Is Felix real?’ Andrew was asked by two girls from New Zealand one day.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, somewhat taken aback.

‘Well, we’ve seen all the pictures, but it’s hard to believe something like that,’ they said doubtfully, as they chatted with him at the booking-office window. ‘Is it real? Is it all real?’

Andrew had just finished feeding Felix, so he knew she was nearby. He brought her out to show the girls that, yes, the station cat was definitely real. Their faces were a picture.

‘She does exist!’ they exclaimed in wonder.

Though Felix was happy to accommodate all this attention when she was on duty – ‘She handles it well,’ said Angie Hunte proudly, ‘she handles everything well’ – Felix was not, of course, just a celebrity. She was a railway cat: she had a job to do and platforms to patrol – and all-important catnaps to have. Her social-media fame hadn’t curtailed her independent explorations, nor changed the way she wrote her own rota for the day. Inevitably, on some occasions when excited fans turned up at the station Felix, sadly, wasn’t there to greet them.

Wanting to avoid any disappointment to her many admirers, she took to warning people of her busy schedule on Facebook, asking them to leave a five- or six-hour timeframe for their visit to Huddersfield if they really wanted to see her, in case she wasn’t on duty when they first called by. She hoped they would understand. After all, she was a cat, not a showgirl. She didn’t appear on demand – what cat would?

Luckily, most cat lovers knew that all too well. In fact, the unpredictability of whether Felix would be on duty or not made the joy of actually meeting her all the greater.

‘Finally!’ a lady cried aloud on the platform one morning when Angie was on shift. ‘I’ve finally seen Felix, the Huddersfield station cat!’

The best things come to those who wait.