To Felix, it was all a bit of a game, but the team were worried. Though Felix wasn’t too overweight – and her daily patrols up and down the platforms meant she got a fair amount of exercise – if this continued, they were worried she might get sick. For who knew what she might potentially eat next? In addition, human food is well known to be no good for cats – a cat eating just 25g of cheese is the equivalent of a human eating 3.5 hamburgers. A single Wotsit, meanwhile, is the equivalent of half a chocolate bar. Once again, the team appealed to people to be sensible about feeding Felix …
They could only hope that, this time, they would listen.
6. Christmas Wishes
‘’Tis the season to be jolly! Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!’
The harmonies of the TPE choir soared right up to the high ceiling of the concourse of Huddersfield station. Dressed in their smart navy-and-purple uniforms, about a dozen of the TPE team – from all over the network – got together each December to go carol singing around all the stations. It was a railway tradition that always told the team at Huddersfield that Christmas was just round the corner.
And what a year it had been for Felix the railway cat. She had started 2016 as a hard-working but relatively unknown station moggy. Now, twelve months later, not only did she have the promotion she had always dreamed of, she was also a global Facebook phenomenon. Whoever was doing her end-of-year appraisal surely had to give her top marks!
It certainly seemed that Felix’s accomplishments had not gone unnoticed – and not just by TPE. As the year came to a close, a few attempts were made to headhunt the station cat for a whole new career.
‘Training up the new British Transport Police recruit!’ was the caption on one Facebook photograph, of friendly Felix beside a uniformed BTP copper. ‘Detective Felix at your service!’ Given her criminal career as a cat burglar, however, it perhaps wasn’t the wisest move …
On another occasion, Stephen Hack from Reading, who was a railwayman himself at Basingstoke, tried to coax Felix away to tackle their pigeon problem. (Little did he know about Felix’s ‘pigeon issues’, but she did excel at banishing them from the platforms at the very least.) Basingstoke station was home to so many pigeons that on one occasion more than thirty of them had lined up along a road bridge at the end of the platform, as though they were posing for an end-of-term class photo. Yet Stephen’s attempt to bribe the station cat with a lifetime’s supply of Dreamies was doomed to failure; Felix wouldn’t leave the wonderful family she had at Huddersfield. And that family now turned their attention to one of the loveliest activities of the live-long year: putting up the station’s Christmas tree on the concourse.
Ever since she was a kitten, it was one of Felix’s favourite days. The moment she saw Dave Chin ambling along the platform with his arms full of Christmas tree, or Chrissie from the booking office gathering up her box of festive decorations, excitement began to build in her belly. TPE always chose a gloriously tall tree and for Felix it meant a tip-top playground.
For years, Felix had made it a habit to climb all the way to the top of the tree. There, she would cling to the tallest branch like a lookout on a pirate ship, watching below for trouble or treasure. Allegedly, the gold cardboard angel who shared the uppermost branch with her was the climactic ornament in Chrissie’s multicoloured display, but Felix knew the truth. She was the bestest, fluffiest bauble of them all.
With great excitement, Felix skidded into the lobby and surveyed the playing field. Chrissie had already completed her decorations, so Felix enjoyed a bat-and-forth session with the glinting spheres, as they spun and sparkled on the ends of the quivering, pine-scented branches. Soon enough, however, she turned her attention to the big climb.
Felix arched her neck backwards as she looked up at it. It seemed a very, very tall tree this year. Did she really use to go all the way to the top? Felix gave a harrumph and sat with a sigh on her ever-increasing bottom. It seemed an awfully long way up this year … Nevertheless, undeterred, she flexed the sharpened claws of her paws and went for it, scurrying up the tree trunk with nimble efficiency.
Unusually, this year she abruptly stopped halfway up. Then, like a high-wire artist edging out from the rooftop of a New York skyscraper, she tiptoed out on to a sturdy midway branch. Feeling it was more than strong enough to take her weight, she then settled down with her back against the wooden trunk.
Well, what a cosy spot! Green pine branches attractively fringed her viewpoint as Felix curled up in the scented grotto of her elevated lair. With branches all around her, it was a snug in every sense of the word. In fact, in some ways this was even better than the top of the tree, for the overhead branches partly concealed her from view. Felix, a cat who was so often on display, seemed to enjoy carrying out covert ops for once.
She gazed below her at the concourse. There were Karl and Sara, talking nineteen to the dozen as usual; Sara let out a huge guffaw at some joke that Karl had cracked. She could see, too, the purple-shirted Friends of Huddersfield Station, as they guided visitors to Huddersfield’s hidden gems. The station also regularly played host to local companies who sold homemade cheese, bread or pies right by the gateline, and her nose twitched wistfully as she watched shoppers being handed their tasty treats.
There was another attraction in the lobby too: a portrait of Felix herself. And not a simple child’s drawing or a rough sketch – this was a top-notch, bona fide professional painting, such as might hang in the corridors of power in a stately home. Its magnificent vision suited Queen Felix down to the ground.
The portrait had, in fact, had its grand unveiling just a few days before, and the guest of honour at the dedication ceremony had been the town’s deputy mayor. Displayed in a dramatic, bespoke and rather gaudy golden frame – which included a diamanté tag declaring its subject as ‘Felix’ – the portrait was now unmissable in the lobby, hung prominently on the white wall beside the gateline. It had been painted by the professional artist Rob Martin, who regularly travelled from the station as he went about his work. Earlier that year, the team had mentioned to him about doing a painting of their senior pest controller and the idea had become reality.
It was an incredibly striking piece of art. You perhaps noticed first – as you did with the real cat – Felix’s gorgeous big green eyes, which were wide and reflective. Rob had captured her fluff and her whiskers, her tufty ears and her white-tipped tail with genuine skill – all the more impressive when you learned that he had not asked Felix to pose for him (as fun as it might be to picture Felix in modelling mayhem …) but had instead worked from a photograph. Controversially, however, Rob had decided that, in light of her oft-confused gender and her Yorkshire roots, he wanted to paint her wearing a dress – a green-with-red-bow dress, which was actually modelled upon one worn by the famous Yorkshire novelist Charlotte Brontë, whose bicentenary of birth was celebrated in 2016.
Well, from the moment it had been unveiled by the deputy mayor, the picture had certainly provided a talking point! Straight away, people wanted selfies taken with it; and if Felix’s fans ever failed to find their flesh-and-blood idol while on a visit, they at least now had her portrait to gaze upon instead. It wasn’t unusual to see people stopping in their tracks on their way into or out of the station, doing a double take as they first caught sight of the artwork and then paused to drink it in. Folk gazed up at it thoughtfully, much as art aficionados muse upon the work of an old master. Rob’s desire to paint a proper portrait of Felix had real impact; it would not have looked out of place on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, hanging alongside esteemed portraits of the kings and queens of England. For Queen Felix, of course, that was perfectly apt.