Meet Felix!

We knew he was living on borrowed time but it still came as a shock that this time he wouldn't recover. He just went off his food and despite the best efforts of the Vets, never regained his appetite. His blood sugar levels were up, which suggested diabetes but after a few days, his kidneys started to give up, so the kindest thing was to 'say goodbye' and not allow him to suffer further. Here is an appreciation of an amazing animal.

Felix arrived in our garden during the early months of 1992. We didn't take a lot of notice of him at first, there having been an influx of nosey cats following the demise in December 1991 of Fattypuss, who was notoriously territorial. However, this black and white cat seemed a regular, though a bit of a mystery; just when I thought he'd got green eyes, I would see him again and they looked amber; sometimes he let me approach him and other times he would run off. Then I twigged that there were actually two almost identical cats visiting. A nervous one with amber eyes and a slightly more confident one with green eyes. The latter was Felix. At this stage, I assumed that he had a home. However, one rainy day in March, I noticed him sitting in his usual place on the half wall across the garden, gazing at the house, so I went out and picked him up, brought him indoors, putting him on the conservatory window ledge and gave him some food. And that was how he became my cat. We rang round but no-one had reported such a cat missing, which seemed strange as he was really rather handsome and had obviously belonged to someone at some time as he didn't have the 'bits' the almost identical tomcat had!

We called him Felix, partially because his facial marking were similar to the cat in the photo adorning Felix cat food packaging but more after the cartoon Felix - 'Felix keeps on walking'! He was always on the move, with his tail very animated. We began to wonder if his original owner had abandoned him as he soon acquired the nickname of 'Mr Blobby', his large green eyes being just one similarity with the chaotic TV character. Things would go flying when he flew round the house. He was also growing ever larger, with an appetite to match and was very noisy, both with the way he thundered about and with a very loud voice and purr! When he had been with us a year, we realised no-one was ever likely ever to claim him, so took him to the Vet for jabs and a check-up. Our then Vet (he had retired by the following year) asked us if he'd stopped growing. When I answered that I hoped he had, he said he reckoned he was no more than two years old, which would mean he would have been around a year old when we adopted him. By now, he was considerably larger than the cat I'd muddled him up with at first, who was one of a feral colony from the allotments behind us, which spent much of its time between our house and that of an elderly couple further up the road.

As I said, Felix had a very loud voice, which it was impossible to ignore. Thus, he was often able to get his own way simply by persistant yowling. We had a small conservatory at our old house and he soon discovered that he could jump onto the roof from the adjoining fence. So, what did he do? He climbed to the top and sat there pretending to be stuck and demanding to be let in through the window. Of course, we let him in. So, what did he do next? He went downstairs, straight out of the catflap, onto the fence, up onto the roof and straight up to the window again. We tried ignoring the yowling but couldn't, so had to go through this rigmarole several times till he got bored with it. Fortunately, the novelty wore off after a few months! We had a similar experience when he discovered how to reach the front of the house via the side alleyway three houses along from us. Later, I would sometimes notice Felix playing around in the road at the front if I looked out from the bedroom window before going to bed (it was a cul-de-sac, so very little traffic that time of night). Usually, he did daft things like dashing across the road to shin up a tree or madly chase the autumn leaves, though I did once catch him taunting a fox from beneath a parked car. If I just tapped on the window to catch his attention he would rush to the front door and start wailing till I went down, unlocked the door and let him in.

After Felix had been with us for four years, our beloved Toby, who had been very ill but had recovered from that, died as a result of a sting in the mouth. Barry buried him in the garden next to where his great pal, Fattypuss, whom Toby had brought home as a playmate some ten years earlier, was buried. A few days later, I noticed Felix watching that spot of the garden very intently. His gaze then shifted to the garden next door and he appeared to be observing something swiftly moving up and down the garden path. Such was his interest that he even sat up on his haunches to see better over the tops of the plants, his large green eyes looking bigger than ever! I went out to see what was attracting his interest but could not see a thing. Our elderly neighbour, Ethel, came out into her garden but when I showed her what Felix was doing, she could not see anything there either. Later, we kept finding Felix staring at the spot in the kitchen where we had been feeding Toby. This all went on for a week or two and then abated. So, we eventually concluded that he must have seen the ghost of Toby re-united with his friend and playing with him in the energetic way they always used to do.

The following year, Topsy, the pure white, odd eyed, sister of Tigger and not a very nice cat - she used to really upset her brother by staring at him - had to be 'put to sleep' as she'd developed an inoperable growth and was in great discomfort from it. Now, Topsy hated other cats getting too close to her, swearing and hissing loudly to deter them. We buried her at the end of the garden, under the apple tree. A couple of days later, Felix flew in through the cat flap in the back door, not stopping till he reached the front windowledge, where he sat staring back in the direction of the garden, as though he had been pursued by all the demons in Hell. Assuming he'd encountered a dog or a fox, though he was usually fine with foxes, being nearly as big as one himself, I looked into the garden from the conservatory but coudn't see anything. I then went quietly to the back gate to investigate further but there was no sign of any other animal lurking in the alleyway either. However, Felix was so frightened that he only ventured outside gingerly for a week or so and we often found him sitting, staring at the end of the garden goggle-eyed from the safety of the conservatory window cill. We decided that, seeing some nice freshly dug soil, he had started to do what cats do in such circumstances and was immediately set upon by a ghostly white apparition.

This sort of reaction happened to Felix a third time a couple of years later but with several differences. One morning about six months after we moved to our current house, Tigger started 'fitting'. He came out of it fairly quickly, long enough to have a little more to eat and to give me a big 'thank-you' type of 'miaouw' but when it started again a few minutes later, he never recovered, despite the best efforts of the vets. As the new garden was so full of builders rubble under the surface, we decided to have him cremated, which was all organised by the Vet's, so we didn't come home with a body this time. After a couple of days and well before we were due to pick up what was left of Tigger from the Vet's, we noticed Felix, who was sitting on the back of the settee at the time, staring goggle-eyed at something in the garden. When we looked, we could see nothing. Again, this behaviour persisted for several days. I think you will be able to guess our conclusion! The only times we ever saw him staring like this were in the days following the demise of those three cats.

Between losing Toby and Topsy, my Father died. This led to us finding out just what a clever cat Felix was. Among the items I inherited, was a Victorial credenza with mirrors instead of the more usual glass in the doors, which had previously belonged to my Great Uncle Oliver. Felix was fascinated by this and quickly learnt to use it to his advantage by watching what was going on behind his back. By the summer, Whizzie had joined us, succeding Topsy and the complete opposite of her in both colour and temperament! From the start, Felix and he would play-fight and Felix took great delight in pretending not to have noticed Whizzie, when in fact he was watching his reflection in the mirrored doors. An unsuspecting Whizzie would happen to walk behind Felix, who would quickly round upon him and wrestle him to the ground, taking him completely by surprise. At meal times, Felix would watch my reflection to see exactly what I was doing. If I cut any part I didn't intend to eat from a slice of meat and showed it to his reflection, he was over to me straight away, yowling loudly for it.

His curiosity got the better of him when the house but one from us fell empty following the death of the lady who lived there. The house needed a lot of work and so the new owners weren't living there to start with. Now, the previous owner had a tumble drier upstairs, which was vented through the wall over the garage and when this was removed, there was a tempting hole left, through which Felix ventured one night. The first we knew was when he failed to appear for his breakfast. I went to look for him and thought I could hear him but couldn't work out where the noise was coming from. Eventually, I spotted him staring out of one of the downstairs windows of the empty house! He managed to escape by the evening but this was not till after I'd put a note through the door for the new owners, to explain that if they found a cat there, it was mine.

To start with, though friendly, Felix did not like to be handled or sit on laps. With persistance however, he eventually took to me, though rarely actually settled, preferring to knead my lap. Latterly he took to doing the same but behind me on the settee, where we had thoughtfully placed a piece of furry cat bedding. During his last few months, he started constantly nuzzling into my neck and running his claws through my hair, whilst 'meowing' loudly, directly into my ear. Poor pussy! He did use to get somewhat over excited at times!

We do miss him. It is so quiet even with Stanley, Whizzie and newcomer Pugwash.



To see cartoons about Felix, visit The Felix Files, if you haven't seen them already.