
It's a sodden morning at Sutton Coldfield railway station, a few miles outside Birmingham, but at the café on platform two, spirits are being buoyed by a small black cat.
Betty (last name Macchiato) was found, her owner and the café's proprietor Alex Light reports, in a bin near the station in April last year. Only recently out of kittenhood, she wasn't in good shape: "She was mangy, full of worms, full of fleas, and she had three kittens with her. She was a proper teenage mum." Light took her in with a view to feeding her up and getting her well enough to be rehomed. Betty, however, had other ideas, and established herself as the station cat.




