From her perch amid the Christmas tree, Felix couldn’t actually see her portrait – but she could see the queue of customers at the busy booking office. Maybe she watched with some amusement – certainly, superiority – as they unwittingly passed her by. Little did they know that the famous station cat was lurking overhead, sitting partway up in the fairy-lit tree. Only those with their eyes peeled like Christmas Day spuds spotted that amid the twinkling lights was a pair of emerald eyes shining brightly alongside them.
But, once she was spotted, the secret was soon shared among the passengers queuing to buy tickets below.
‘Look! She’s in the Christmas tree!’ someone might gasp in delight, as they suddenly caught sight of the secretive spy cat.
Those same words would echo down the line, like a festive feline version of Chinese whispers.
‘She’s in the tree …’
‘She’s hiding, look.’
‘Oh, look, how sweet is she?’
The answer, of course, was very. So much so that in December – in light of Felix’s stellar achievements and rising fame – TPE decided to release a limited-edition Felix-focused calendar. Featuring twelve adorable pictures of the station cat, it included images of Felix as a kitten, on patrol and playing in a cardboard box. It even included the snapshot that had launched her to global fame: Felix in her yellow hi-vis vest with her senior pest controller badge proudly on display. December’s image, of course, was Felix in a Santa hat – even if, due to her diva demands, she wasn’t so much wearing it as momentarily consenting to have it draped upon her. The company planned to sell the calendars online, with all proceeds going to the Huddersfield Samaritans.
Felix’s calendar was released for sale on 7 December 2016 – and very quickly caused chaos, much as the cat herself could do when left alone with a packet of Dreamies. Though TPE, sensibly, had chosen to retail the calendars on a bespoke website (and not the one they sold their train tickets through), not five minutes after the calendars had gone on sale, the website crashed. Thousands of people were clamouring for a calendar! They wanted a little bit of Felix magic every day of the coming year and this was the perfect way to secure it.
Jack Kempf, who worked in communications at head office, had taken responsibility for the calendars. He somehow managed to get the website back up – only for the first thousand calendars he had printed to sell out instantly. He organised a second printing, but again the website crashed – and, in the end, TPE had to get a whole new server just to manage the demand! Within eighteen hours, every single calendar had gone.
In less than a day, Felix had raised a staggering £18,000 for the Samaritans. It made a huge difference to the charity. The Huddersfield Samaritans office was located down a dark, quiet street. With the counselling service being run 24/7, volunteers sometimes felt unsafe arriving or leaving in the middle of the night. Thanks to Felix, they were able to add new lighting and CCTV to help with security, so that the people giving up their time to help others could feel protected.
There was also enough money to change the signage on the building, which had previously been so old that it hadn’t even had the phone number on it – quite an important thing for the Samaritans to promote. Finally, Felix’s fans had given so generously that the charity was also able to refurbish its waiting room. It meant that people who came to them in person had a warm, safe and clean space to wait until a counsellor became available. It made a real difference to people’s lives. And it was all thanks to Felix. What a special cat she was.
One little girl in particular was about to discover that for herself. Towards the tail end of 2016, just before Christmas, Eva came through the station one day with her mum, Helen. Eva had blonde hair with a curl to it and enormous big blue eyes, which were framed by huge pink glasses. She was dressed in a deep-blue coat that was covered in stars. Judging by the irrepressible energy she had, which bubbled within her like the burble of a brook in a summer meadow, she was something of a star herself.
‘Look, Mummy, look!’ she called as she and Helen entered the station to catch a train. They came through Huddersfield station regularly – once or twice a week – on their way to visit Helen’s parents in Shepley. But on all their previous visits, three-year-old Eva had never before noticed the exciting thing she was now pointing at.
Helen’s eyes followed her little girl’s finger … and then she started giggling too. Eva had spotted the station’s cat flap, with its friendly-looking cartoon cat and those five letters spelling out ‘Felix’.
‘Who’s Felix, Mummy?’ Eva asked eagerly, once Helen had told her what the letters said.
‘Felix is the station’s cat,’ Helen explained. She had heard that Huddersfield had one, though she had never seen her.
Eva’s little mouth circled to an ‘o’ of wonder. The idea that there was a railway cat was so marvellous that she was momentarily struck dumb – but it lasted only a beat before she started excitedly asking questions. ‘How come the station has a cat, Mummy? Does she go on the trains like us? Do you think she goes exploring? How brilliant is it that she’s got her own way through to get on the trains, Mummy? Do you think she is having an adventure right now?’
Eva’s questions lasted all the way through the gateline, on to the train to Shepley and all the way to Grandma’s house. Helen, quickly researching online to find the answers to her little girl’s barrage of questions, soon found Felix’s Facebook page. She excitedly showed it to Eva. After that, every day, they looked online to see what Felix was up to. Doing so soon became the highlight of their day.
Eva was a very imaginative little girl. In her mind, Felix had more adventures than even the Facebook page showed. She had a fairy tale in her head that the station cat went on escapades all across the country, every day leaping on to a different train and going off to see the world. (In fact, since arriving at Huddersfield as a kitten on the Penistone line, Felix had never once stepped foot on a service.) Eva’s passion was art and it wasn’t long before she was regularly drawing pictures of a fluffy black-and-white cat called Felix. She would stick her artworks up on the fridge when she was done and then chatter away to her brand-new friend.
Helen encouraged her to paint Felix as much as she could. It was good for Eva – but not only because it’s good for all children to be artistic and express themselves. It was good for Eva in particular because Eva needed all the help she could get to try to improve her poor eyesight. When she drew or painted or crafted, as she loved to, she had to use her failing vision, and Helen hoped that her sketching might just strengthen it, as the doctors said it might.
It had been the year before, when Eva was only two, that they’d first identified a problem. It was Helen’s dad, Grandad Peter, who had realised that their beloved girl’s left eye was slowly turning inwards. They’d taken her to the opticians, who’d quickly realised her vision was poor in both eyes, and glasses had been prescribed. The first time Eva put them on, she’d exclaimed in delight, ‘Mummy! Wow! I can see!’ It broke Helen’s heart to think about how Eva must have struggled before then.