Despite the ‘rules’, when Angela lifted down the carry case from its home on top of the ladies’ lockers, Felix backed away slowly. Angela moved ever so gently as she placed the carrier on the floor and opened its detachable door, but Felix had such fear in her eyes that you’d have thought Angela was asking her to step inside the mouth of a whale, and not the mouth of a basket that was already lined with a soft fleecy blanket.
Angela knew how much Felix hated the carry case. She’d recently invested in a new one for her – a grey carrier with a wire mesh door at the front – which she’d purchased with a voucher that one of Felix’s fans had sent her for Valentine’s Day. The new case was larger than Felix’s previous carrier and Angela had hoped that having more space might help the cat feel better about it. But whether it was large or small, Felix still hated it.
That morning, she ducked her head as Angela lifted the box down and tried to hide in plain sight on the locker-room floor – almost as though she was a toddler playing hide-and-seek, who thought that closing her eyes made her invisible.
When Felix realised that her dastardly plan had failed, she turned tail and ran into the ladies’ loo. Her too-fluffy tail flicked crossly, as though she was using it to signal ‘No, I am not going in there!’
As though she sensed that her tail was not emphatic enough for this particular desperate scenario, her voice soon joined in too. Angela never heard Felix be more talkative than when she had to go in her carry case. She hissed and she howled and she squeaked and she growled … even though all Angela did was pick up the carrier and take a small, slow step towards the station cat.
‘In you get, Felix,’ Angela urged. ‘Please go in.’
‘Miaow!’ shouted Felix, her voice high and shrill.
‘Just go in, and then it’s finished with,’ Angela encouraged her. ‘Come on, my love …’
But Felix darted round her and headed straight towards the locker-room door, where she mewed loudly, hoping someone would come to her aid.
‘You’re not getting out, Felix,’ Angela told her. ‘You’re getting in.’
Eventually, Angela somehow managed to ‘scoop’ Felix into the carry case. The station cat gave a final little squeal and then there was silence. As Angela attached the wire mesh to the front of the carrier, Felix scooted forward until her fluffy black face was pressed right to the edges of the metal grille. She looked rather like a convict then, trapped behind bars, her green eyes looking gloomily out. But, funnily enough, now that the battle was over she calmed down and adapted to her situation. By the time Angela had pushed on her sunglasses and collected her car keys, the cat was sitting contentedly in the case, watching the world go by through the metal bars. Angela knew, after all the fuss, that Felix would now travel quite happily in her car to the new grooming destination.
The sun beat down hard on their heads as Angela and Felix crossed St George’s Square to reach the station car park. It was more than 30 degrees that day and both Angela and Felix panted a little in the heat. As Angela cranked up the air conditioning in her car, cooling them both down, she wondered what Felix might make of the place she had found. She was rather intrigued to know – because it was like nowhere Felix had ever been before.
Felix gazed out through the bars of her carry case as the car began to climb steeply up a hill. They had been driving for about twenty minutes and were now out in the rural countryside surrounding Huddersfield. All around were rolling hills and valleys, their lush grasses green under the hot summer sun.
Felix’s curiosity was piqued as Angela brought the car to a halt and came round to open the door for Queen Felix. As Angela pulled it open, Felix’s senses felt suddenly assaulted by all the unusual scents that rushed in from the outside. Where had Angela taken her this time?
Angela lifted Felix out of the car in her carry-case chariot and the station cat’s nose went into overdrive. What were all these new smells – and sights and sounds? What had happened to the familiar roar of the trains and the rumble of suitcase wheels on platform one? And what on earth made a noise like that?
‘Moo!’ heard Felix.
For the first time in her life, Felix the railway cat was on a farm.
It was a working farm, with cows bred for their meat, and Felix’s nostrils twitched in trepidation as the earthy smell of manure and animal hides hit her fully in her fluffy black face. Being a city cat, used to the stink of engine oil, it was a very different smellscape for her out here. Her green eyes peered eagerly out of the wire-mesh door, trying to identify all the different elements.
Felix saw that she was at the top of a very steep incline. A drystone wall bordered the track that she and Angela had driven up, beyond which was a severe drop down into a plunging valley. Angela had parked beside a traditional farmhouse with duck-egg-blue doors and brightly coloured flowers in pots; on the opposite side of the track were farm buildings and garages. Hay was strewn across the farmyard in thick yellow strands, while mud-splattered wheelbarrows and tractor buckets cluttered up the drive.
In the distance, Felix heard a dog barking excitedly, its clarion call brought to fever pitch by the sound of the car on the track outside. Meanwhile, closer to home, her attention was caught by a white-and-tabby cat who prowled possessively among the plant pots. But the cat paid little attention to Felix, being used to the comings and goings of animals at her home.
Felix’s nose twitched again. Further down the track were the cows she could smelclass="underline" a herd with pale brown hides, who chomped mindlessly on the green grass of the fields that surrounded the farmhouse. And now she smelled something else, too: a new human, coming to say hello to Angela.
‘Good morning!’ said a cheery female voice.
‘And a very good morning to you!’ replied Angela. ‘Thank you so much for being willing to take her – despite her reputation as a diva! As I explained on the phone, she really needs some help, bless her. She needs all the lumps and bumps and the loose fur taking out. Can you help her, please?’
The woman in her early forties with close-cropped blonde hair smiled easily, smoothing down the red tabard she was wearing. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll give it my very best shot.’ She bent down and she and Felix gazed at each other through the bars of the carry case, as though sizing each other up. ‘Hello there, Felix,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m Louise. Welcome!’
Louise was the cousin of a friend of Angela’s. She had come highly recommended as a wonderful pet groomer. A shy, rather unobtrusive person, she had never advertised her services, but had nonetheless built a successful pet-grooming business over the past twenty-five years simply through word of mouth. She’d been grooming animals ever since she’d left school. Louise actually groomed more dogs than cats, but when Angela had phoned to ask specially if she might give Felix a makeover, she’d agreed to give it a go. Cats were very familiar to her too – two of them officially lived at the farm, but at one point they’d had more than twelve in residence, as strays often found their way up the steep lane and subsequently set up home in the farm’s outbuildings. Louise and her family never had the heart to turn them away.
Angela was very pleased to notice that Louise had a lovely calm demeanour. Angela knew that Felix needed a firm touch, but she also needed a kind one; Angela hoped that, in Louise, she might just have found the perfect person for the job.
As Louise took Felix from her and walked with her new client into her grooming ‘parlour’, Angela felt increasingly confident. For ‘parlour’ wasn’t really the right name at all. Rather than operating in some soulless salon or a clinical room that smelled scarily of chemicals, Louise worked in a small, neatly proportioned garage that was attached to the main farmhouse. It had a homely feel to it, despite its concrete floor, and smelled distinctly of animals. There was a black table for the grooming; a white bath within a dark green exterior; and a couple of cages for the animals to wait in, although these were empty today. It was anything but a sparkling poodle parlour with bells and whistles, more a practical establishment where Louise simply got the job done. To Angela’s mind, it was exactly what Felix needed.