Felix The Railway Cat

Transpennine Express

and

Kate Moore

FELIX THE RAILWAY CAT

Contents

Introduction

  1. A Madcap Idea

  2. A ‘Mouse’ in the House

  3. A Star Is Born

  4. Welcome to Huddersfield

  5. First Day on the Job

  6. What’s in a Name?

  7. Felix Works His Magic

  8. New Discoveries

  9. Brave New World

10. Doctor’s Orders

11. Learning the Ropes

12. A Very Special Cat

13. Missing

14. Angel Felix?

15. The First Farewell

16. On the Night Shift

17. The Pest Controller

18. Stranger Danger

19. The Final Hurdle

20. Queen Felix

21. Curtain Up

22. It Must Be Love

23. The Battle for Huddersfield Station

24. Clever Felix

25. Meet the Boss

26. Santa Claws

27. The Hardest Goodbye

28. A Helping Hand

29. Felix the Facebooker

30. One Night in January

31. Felix Is Famous

32. Back to Work

Epilogue

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Follow Penguin

Introduction

If you go down to Huddersfield station in Yorkshire, you may be in for a big surprise … For greeting you at the ‘Customer Information and Assistance’ point, waiting patiently to attend to customer enquiries, might not be a bright young woman or a helpful old man dressed in the purple-and-navy uniform of TransPennine Express.

Instead, the team member on duty may be Felix, the Huddersfield station cat.

She sits proudly at the desk, her ears attuned to the familiar cacophony of station sounds, her green eyes alert and intelligent as you approach. Her fluffy black tail – tipped with a dash of white – flicks back and forth rhythmically, almost wagging, as though she is delighted to see you.

But Felix is a working pest controller, not a house cat, and years of being patted and prodded by customers have made her, at times, wary of strangers. Yet when she knows you, whether you’re a colleague or a commuter, her affection knows no bounds.

With a single, graceful leap, she dives from the desk to the floor and winds her way around your legs, her long white whiskers twitching as she investigates the possibility of you being in possession of a treat. Felix lives for treats and, despite her initial grumpiness, the most unfamiliar of strangers can soon become a lifelong friend in the right circumstances.

Yet a cat cannot live on treats alone; and for Felix adventure gives just as much sustenance. So although Felix can be found most days at the station – on duty at her desk, patrolling the platforms, or helping to check tickets at the gateline – she also explores far beyond the station’s borders. Watch her as she goes: passing the bronze statue in St George’s Square outside with a friendly flick of her swishing tail; bypassing the beflowered garden on Platform 4; or disappearing into the darkness of the railway tunnels, on her way to who-knows-where. She crosses the train tracks with a certain cockiness: a swagger to her swaying walk. Things weren’t always this way but, just as Felix has grown on the job, so, too, have her confidence and courage.

Much as Felix relishes her role in charge of the station – and make no mistake, this cat is most definitely the Boss – it’s fair to say that she does have a rather regular habit of falling asleep on the job, for she’s just as likely to be found curled up in a colleague’s jacket in the locker room as meeting and greeting customers on the concourse. If she’s not on duty when you call by, hoping for a few words with Huddersfield’s most famous railway star, forgive her absence, for she’s probably catching up on a few ‘zzz’s … before trying to catch some more mice, a key part of her official role as senior pest controller.

For now, though, we leave her sitting at the customer service desk, those sharp emerald eyes missing nothing as she surveys her kingdom, her glitzy purple collar shining brightly in the morning sun. A slim gold disc dangles from it, bearing her name and her home address:

FELIX, PLATFORM 1.

This is the story of the Huddersfield station cat.

1. A Madcap Idea

‘What this station needs,’ announced Gareth Hope one morning in the summer of 2008, ‘is a station cat.’

His colleague, Andy Croughan, laughed out loud. When the two mates got together – as they did most days, after the morning rush hour was over, to kick about some conversation during the quiet phases of their shift – they were always coming up with daft ideas, but this one had to take the biscuit. A station cat? Oh, it was a good bit of mischief, but nothing that would happen in a million years.