Bless her, she did look sorry for herself, as the water splashed on to her coat and weighed her down. Many cats famously hate water and Felix was no different. She was used to being dry and would really rather have preferred to stay that way. She looked bedraggled, sitting glumly in the big white bath, as the three humans fussed around her, Louise carefully wielding the shower hose as gently as she could. The water flattened Felix’s fur until she looked more like a drowned rat than a famous Facebook cat who had captured the hearts of thousands.
At least there was no conditioner to follow; it can leave a residue on a cat’s coat, and as Felix would soon be washing herself with her tongue, it wasn’t a good idea to use such a product. But, to Felix’s great displeasure, the job still wasn’t over; next up was the blow-dry.
She was such a fluffy cat, it took a good twenty minutes to complete. Louise, sensitive to her new client’s mood, worked as quickly as she could, blasting Felix with the long tube of the hairdryer-on-wheels as her parents turned the station cat this way and that to make sure her coat was fully dry. Towards the end, Louise decided to towel off her white-tipped paws. They were still a little damp, but they would dry off soon enough, and it was better to leave Felix like that than to stress her out with too much blow-drying.
‘Nearly there!’ Louise said cheerily to Felix. Felix glared back at her, sulking. Her Formula One team then ‘drove’ her back to the black grooming table and Louise gave her a final comb-through, to ensure they’d fully got out all the dead undercoat and tangles. To Louise’s astonishment, yet more fluff was still emerging from the station cat.
She carefully continued to groom Felix, all over – lifting up her front paws to get to her armpits, smoothing out her intimate nether regions and brushing down her fluffy black back. After all Louise’s careful work, each comb stroke now was smooth. Felix’s coat looked gorgeously silky, shining in the bright lights of the garage. Though she’d fought it every step of the way, Felix had been transformed. The dirty fluffball was now clean and sleek. And the thick, heavy pelt that had been weighing her down for so long was gone.
Angela returned to collect her after a full ninety minutes of grooming.
‘Felix the Tiger is ready for collection!’ Louise had texted her, in order to summon her back to the farm.
‘OMG!’ Angela had replied, aghast at the nickname. ‘Hope all is OK?’
‘Still got fingers attached,’ responded the groomer, ‘but only just!’
As Angela walked into the garage to collect her friend, she couldn’t believe the difference. The grooming may have taken ninety minutes, but my goodness they were ninety minutes well spent. Angela’s real shock, though, came when Louise handed her a carrier bag.
‘What’s all this?’ asked Angela in confusion. She peered inside it and did a double take; Louise seemed to have given her an unmoving second cat.
‘That,’ said Louise, ‘is all the fur that came out of her. No wonder she’s been too hot. She’s been wearing the coats of at least two cats!’
Angela looked again at the huge amount of fur with utter astonishment.
She couldn’t wait to tell Angie Hunte about it all when she got back to the station. She emptied the bag of fluff out on to the floor and stood Felix next to it, so Angie could see just how successful Louise’s grooming had been.
‘Bloody hell!’ cried Angie. ‘That’s another cat! You could literally make another cat!’
The two women looked at each other in amazement.
But while the big pile of fur was certainly a talking point, the real conversation centred on Felix. And it wasn’t about how marvellous she looked – although she did. Nor was it about how much she’d been physically transformed – although that had happened too. It was about the fact that Felix – the old Felix – was finally back.
‘The best thing that ever happened to her,’ said Angie Hunte with glee, ‘was when Angela took her to the groomers. The difference in her when she came back … When they removed that “other cat” from her, it was like she got the spring back in her step. It was as if she’d taken off a heavy fur coat and put on one of those lightweight cagoules instead. You could see her thinking it: “Phew! Thank God for that. This is what I’ve been waiting for!”’
Everyone could feel the difference – especially Felix. She felt so much better that her behaviour changed. Though she was still hot, she was much less lethargic. It was as if she could breathe again. She perked up. She walked better. She moved more easily.
The cat was back – and not a moment too soon. Felix was about to be needed more than ever.
24. A Day to Remember
Nobody was happier to see Felix back to her usual self than her Facebook fans. For lots of them, checking her Facebook page each morning had become the highlight of their day. They loved to see new portraits of the beautiful cat or to watch one of Dan’s ‘Floof Files’ videos. Felix was an incredibly photogenic pussy and a single snapshot of her patrolling the platforms or sitting up on the counter to check that a passenger’s Metrocard was valid was more than enough to send people away happy, their hearts a little lighter thanks to the station cat.
She helped people all the time, even those many thousands of miles away. In the mountains of Switzerland, for example, a woman in her fifties found Felix online while she was still grieving for the loss of her own cat, Pauli, a black pussy who had passed away aged fourteen in September 2017. Gisela missed Pauli so much it felt like her heart had been torn out. She cried many tears and was in a very dark place. She was still in it when she first discovered Felix on Facebook about eight months after Pauli’s death.
But then a strange thing happened. As she began following Felix on Facebook, the darkness seemed to subside. Reading Felix’s posts and the lovely comments of her friends from all over the world made Gisela’s own world seem brighter. Looking in Felix’s eyes through her photographs seemed to show her that there was still potential for her to find lightness again. She felt full of thankfulness to be part of the Floof Fan Club. She loved being a member of such a warm and loving community – and at the centre of it all was a cat who seemed to have such wisdom and love in her big green eyes.
Slowly, Gisela felt that Felix was giving her back the strength that she’d lost after Pauli had gone. Her neighbours commented that the light had come back into her eyes as she told them stories about this wonderful cat she’d met online. And, after a while, Felix made the biggest difference of all. Gisela had always felt she could never give another cat a home, as Pauli was just too special, but she began to realise that she did have a lot to offer, after all. Felix made her want to offer a cat from a shelter a cosy home and it became something she was determined to do. Really, Felix simply made her want to live again.
It was a gift indeed.
Another woman who had fallen hard for Felix was a lady called Gloria, who lived in Tiverton in Devon. She had always loved cats, though she’d never had one of her own, something she regretted. After making friends with Felix online, she eventually made plans to meet her in person in October 2018 – almost to her surprise. Initially, she had thought Felix was ‘just’ a cat and hadn’t necessarily felt the need to take their friendship offline; it had seemed strange, back then, even to think of travelling five hours to meet a cat. But over the months that Gloria had been following Felix on Facebook, the cat had slowly grown on her and she had come to realise how very special she was – until meeting her not only seemed sensible but desirable, even essential. Seeing her online every day – getting to know her through her pictures, captions and charity work – had made her a big part of Gloria’s day-to-day existence and she was really looking forward to visiting Huddersfield. But on 2 July 2018, Gloria’s life changed forever – and the fallout affected her distantly scheduled trip too.