Felix The Railway Cat

28. A Helping Hand

With a hiss of its brakes, the train from Leeds pulled into Huddersfield station on a Monday morning in September 2015. Off stepped a nervous gentleman, self-consciously smoothing down the lapels of his smart navy jacket. He cleared his throat, then squared his shoulders and went to find the station manager. It was his first day in his new job. His name was Andrew McClements, and he was the new team leader, replacing Billy.

They were very big shoes to fill. As he was introduced to the team, perhaps Andrew sensed a certain surprise in his new colleagues’ expressions as they covertly checked him out, in the way of all existing employees when they meet a new co-worker for the first time. For Andrew, who came from St Helens, near Liverpool, was not only very different in personality to Billy – he was friendly and laidback, with an easy smile and an approachable manner – but he was also more than forty years younger. Andrew was just twenty-two years old.

He was younger than even the youngest team leader by over a decade. He had worked at TPE for a couple of years already, selling tickets first at Warrington and more recently at Manchester airport. In the wake of Billy’s sad passing, the team leader role at Huddersfield had been advertised, and Andrew felt incredibly lucky to have secured the position. It would provide a rare opportunity to get to grips with a genuinely hands-on operational role, and would also give him a really good flavour of what the railway was all about. Yet he also knew it was going to be one hell of a challenge.

He had been hired by Will, the new station manager who had joined earlier in 2015. Will was a sharp dresser – he always donned a smart suit – with close-cropped dark hair. He showed Andrew about the station with great energy, for he was one of those characters who was always running round effervescently – something that didn’t gel too well at times with the presence of the railway cat. Will would often discover Felix sprawled in the middle of the concourse, sunbathing, just at the very moment he was darting across it. He would have to leap into the air to avoid treading on her, with a cry of, ‘Come on, cat, get out of the way!’ But his colleagues had also spotted him stroking her – with Felix sitting squarely on the station manager’s own desk, as though she really did run the place – so it was clear that he was as susceptible to her many charms as everybody else.

Andrew at least didn’t have the anxiety of meeting the Boss for the very first time that day. TPE ran its team training at Huddersfield station – there were bespoke training rooms located in the upstairs part of the staff-only area – so Andrew had encountered Felix once before, when he’d been attending a course there.

‘Have you seen the cat?’ the trainer had asked him.

‘No, what cat?’ he’d responded, surprised. Then he’d gone downstairs and found Felix asleep on top of the photocopier. She’d opened one green eye, a bit grumpy at having her catnap disturbed, but she’d obliged when he’d given her a bit of a pet and a cuddle, and then the pair had gone their separate ways.

By the time he’d landed the team leader job, though, Andrew knew a little bit more about her reputation. During her years at Huddersfield, Felix’s fame had slowly been spreading. By now, everyone locally knew of her, and everyone within TPE did too. There were times at the station these days when a small crowd of people would form around her when she was spotted on duty, all wanting to pet her and give her treats. Her Majesty, on the whole, received them as any monarch might a group of eager courtiers.

But although he knew all about Felix’s fame, she wasn’t at the forefront of Andrew’s mind when he started working at Huddersfield – to what would have been her great displeasure, had she known. He had bigger concerns than the station cat: he had an awful lot to learn.

There was the operational side of things: the nightly unit diagrams and shunt movements to manage. There was the night-shift work itself; Andrew had never worked nights before, and didn’t know how he would find it. There was the finance: the team leaders had to balance thousands of pounds a night in cash and perform a lot of complex accounting. There was the line managing and the security checking … and so much more! He felt as if his head was going to explode as he tried to get to grips with it all. Moreover, as Angie Hunte had found before him, being a team leader meant you were dealing with it all on your own, for he didn’t want to show any weakness to his team or to confess that he was struggling. He knew that he was young to be in this role and he felt some pressure to prove himself.

The other team leaders gave him invaluable advice during his induction period, and he learned as much as he could from them all. Time and again he realised just what big boots he had to fill, following in the footsteps of Billy. He felt quite apprehensive as he cleared out the old-timer’s drawer and, eventually, commandeered his pigeon hole. By that time, at least, there was no longer a sadness in the air any time that Billy was mentioned. People were at the stage where they were openly and easily talking about him and recalling funny stories of the times they had once shared: ‘Do you remember when Billy …’

Much as he might have wished he could, Andrew couldn’t stay in training forever. The night finally came when he was left to run the station on his own.

He slid the big metal bolt across the front doors and walked through the silent station on his way back to the office. Felix accompanied him, and he absent-mindedly held the door open for her as the duo went into the office, his brain already ticking over everything he had to do in these long, quiet hours before sunrise. He decided he would start with the finance.

It wasn’t long before he became thoroughly stressed out. The computer software wasn’t doing what he wanted it to and the piles of cash before him just didn’t balance. He didn’t want to get it wrong and let everyone down – but it was like one of those nightmares where you realise your very worst dreams are coming true.

‘Come on, come on,’ he said aloud to himself. ‘I just want to get through this.’

He ran his hands worriedly through his short dark hair and sighed deeply. Anxiety was building inside him, growing from a small seed in his stomach and sprouting all the way up to his shoulders, which felt tense and tight. Think, think! he told himself.

Felix was lying next to him on the desk. She gave a sleepy little yawn and stretched out, making herself comfortable. The slight movement caught Andrew’s eye and he stared at her for a little bit as she dozed on the desk companionably. Her presence made him realise: you are not alone.

He would have felt like that, otherwise. He would have felt that no one was around to help him, and that he had this insurmountable mountain to climb all by himself. But a problem shared is a problem halved, and the simple fact of Felix being in the office with him made his troubles seem suddenly lighter and more manageable. She had a soothing presence, a calming, peaceful and companionable spirit, and he found himself taking deeper breaths, in rhythm with the lazy flicking of her tail. Suddenly, the mountain didn’t seem quite so tough to climb after all.

As Andrew settled into the job, he found that Felix was always on hand whenever he needed support. He’d be getting worked up about the shunt movements – because if he got that wrong, it would result in massive, very public delays and an awful lot of money wasted – but Felix would usually be out and about on the platforms at that time, hunting down the fawn-coloured moths that were attracted by the station’s bright lights. Seeing her pounce determinedly on her prey would fill him with determination too, and he’d turn back to the complicated diagram with a new sense of purpose. As he wrote reports, she’d lie on his lap, and he’d find himself typing with one hand and stroking her with the other. Why is it taking me so long to write this? he’d wonder.

In more ways than one, Felix was the answer.

Of course, the railway cat wasn’t doing this entirely out of the goodness of her heart. It was a quid pro quo. Felix was a working cat – and she wanted paying for services rendered.

Andrew was cashing up one night in the office when he noticed Felix looking up at him from the floor and mewing.

‘Just give me a few minutes, Felix,’ he said, trying to keep track of the complex calculations in his head.

He went back to his money-counting. Gradually, Felix got closer and closer to him. She inched along the ground. She leapt lightly up onto the desk. She stood there for a little bit, miaowing, but when Andrew didn’t respond she edged forwards once again … and again … and again, as though she was playing her own version of Grandmother’s Footsteps. It finally got to the point where Andrew realised he couldn’t see anything but Felix’s fluffy face directly in front of his, completely obscuring his vision.

‘All right, cat!’ he said, giving in at last to her demands for attention. He scribbled down the figures he’d added up so far and gave her a bit of love.

‘Right, then, that’s enough for now,’ he said, a few minutes later. ‘I’ll feed you just as soon as I’ve finished cashing up, OK?’

He picked up Felix and moved her to one side, then carried on with the accounting.

Well, Felix wasn’t going to be so easily diverted as that. Patience wasn’t part of her repertoire. The white-tipped paws came out. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap … On his arm, on his shoulder, on his chest. Eventually, she sat straight up on her hind legs and put both front paws firmly on him, leaning her whole body against his. Her oh-so-persuasive pats seemed to be saying, ‘I know it’s a bit early for my supper and I know you’re in the middle of something important, but I am really rather peckish!’

And when even that didn’t work – ‘I just need one more minute, Felix,’ Andrew said pleadingly. ‘Look: I’m on the last pile!’ – she bent her head to his hand and gave it a gentle little nibble. Not with any aggression, and not to hurt him, but just to assert herself. ‘Come on, laddie,’ that nibble said. ‘Enough messing about. I’m the Boss, and when I tell you I want something doing, you do it. Understood?’

‘OK, OK!’ Andrew said, hands in the air, surrendering. He left the money on the desk and stood up.

The moment Felix saw him move, she sprinted as fast as she could to the filing cabinet. Once, its uppermost drawer had held official documents and top secrets – now, it was the cat-food drawer. It belonged to Queen Felix, and the cat knew it well. In excitement, she leapt up on top of the cabinet and stared pointedly at her drawer until Andrew opened it.

Felix purred in approval: ‘That’s more like it.’ Stiff as a board, ears to attention, she watched as he pulled out a pouch of ‘Felix’, then shadowed him into the kitchen. Only once he’d set her bowl down for her would she give him any peace. It was quite an example for the young team leader of how tenacity, commitment and determination could get results.

Yet it wasn’t all work and no play. As Andrew and Felix bonded, he got to know her personality well and came to appreciate how playful she was. A favourite game during the night shift was ‘hide and seek’, especially amid the tourist-information leaflets in the lobby. The wooden holder that displayed them read ‘Welcome to Yorkshire’, but to Felix’s mind it was more like ‘Welcome to the Best Cat Playground Ever’. She would duck and dive behind the leaflets – and just when Andrew thought he’d caught her, she’d dart out and start a running race with him. He noticed, though, that as she legged it onto Platform 1 and he followed in her wake, as soon as she hit the yellow line she turned left and ran along it, never once crossing it. It was always safety first for the station cat.

Felix liked a bit of rough and tumble, too, playing hunting games and rugby with her soft mouse toys and the moths. Rugby league had been established not fifty paces from the station, in 1895 at the George Hotel in the square, and Felix seemed determined to honour that heritage in the way she enthusiastically rugby-tackled the brown bear that Andrew kicked for her and threw herself into all their games.

Everything at the station could be made into a game in Felix’s mind – even if she didn’t always intend it to be that way. She had a somewhat embarrassing episode shortly after Andrew started at the station that she really had to style out as intentional fun. The station was getting a new computer installed, and Felix was delighted to discover that – when the computer was still inside it – the brown cardboard box it came in made for a splendidly solid, comfortable location for a catnap. The box had arrived at the start of the week but the computer wasn’t being installed till later on, so for the next five days or so Felix got into a regular routine of jumping onto the box and lazing about on top. She was always doing that with various items around the office; another favourite spot for a sleep became the (switched-off) paper shredder, on which she could only just fit; her tail and even her back legs would dangle down, but she professed to be comfortable.

By the end of the week, Felix knew all about that cardboard box – or so she thought. Safe as houses, she believed. But, unbeknown to her, Lisa Gannon, the IT manager, came in one day to set up the new equipment and took the computer out of its packaging – leaving the now-empty box in its usual place.

Lisa was working away when Felix came wandering into her workspace, strutting about with her customary confidence and poise. Up she leapt onto the supposedly sturdy cardboard surface … and fell straight through the open top into the empty box below.

Well, that was a surprise!

Felix quirkily stuck her head out of the top of the box, as though checking if anyone had noticed. Lisa was giggling away at her, so Felix brushed it off with a ruffled shake of her fluffy body. In fact, once she’d recovered her equilibrium and her dignity, she found the empty box made for a rather entertaining setting: she spent at least five minutes sitting happily in it, before jumping out and trotting off to find another adventure.

There was always one about at a station like Huddersfield. As the autumn nights grew colder, however, Andrew realised that some of Felix’s adventures weren’t merely for fun. A lot of the time, they were much more important than that.

One serious issue that railway stations regularly have to deal with is runaway children. Shockingly, 100,000 children in the UK run away from home every year – and many of them, having nowhere else to go in the cold, dark nights, are drawn towards railway stations where there will be light, and maybe food and company, and at least a roof over their heads when the rain is driving down outside. Even in the relatively short time that Andrew had worked at Huddersfield, it was plain it was an issue; the team encountered a runaway child in the station sometimes as often as once a month. They had a duty of care to them, of course, so they would step in and call the authorities, so that the children could be looked after and not slip through the net.

It was a particularly bitter Yorkshire night towards the end of November 2015 when Andrew clocked on for the night shift. Christmas was within touching distance and you knew it from the weather alone. Andrew blew on his hands as he patrolled the platform throughout the early hours of his shift, feeling very glad for the warmth of his thick winter coat.

He cast his eyes up and down the platforms. Used to the patterns of the trains, the team were always conscious of someone who seemed to have been around on the station for rather too long. Andrew’s gaze settled on a young lad further along Platform 1, who had caught his eye earlier too. He’d been on the station for a long time now, so Andrew started walking towards him, wanting to see if he needed any help.

As he approached, he could see that the boy was shivering. He was wearing scruffy trackie bottoms and a T-shirt with a thin black coat over the top. Given the freezing temperature, Andrew would have expected him to be wearing a scarf, gloves and a hat, but there was nothing like that on the lad. His hands looked red raw from the cold.

‘Are you all right there?’ he asked him.

The boy shot him an anxious look and nodded, saying nothing. He was perhaps eleven or twelve years old.

‘Where are you travelling to, then?’ Andrew enquired. You did sometimes get kids travelling by themselves on the station, and he didn’t want to jump to conclusions. But alarm bells were ringing for him – it wasn’t far off 11 p.m. and the lad had been there too long. He had to find out more. ‘Have you got a ticket?’

The boy shook his head. He seemed very shy.

‘Are your parents meeting you here or at your destination?’ Andrew went on delicately.

The boy looked as though he’d been thrown a lifeline. ‘My mum’s coming to get me,’ he said hurriedly, perhaps thinking that his answer would buy him a little more time in the shelter of the station.

He had a strong southern accent and Andrew could tell instantly that he wasn’t a local. Though he had a lovely manner about him and his reply seemed convincing, it was evident nonetheless that he was extremely vulnerable.

‘OK, that’s fine,’ Andrew said slowly, not wanting to scare the boy off – he was safer by far here at the station than out on the streets and he didn’t want the child to panic and run. ‘Do you want to wait in the waiting room? Can I get you a drink?’

The boy nodded again, and Andrew took him into the waiting room and fetched him a hot drink from the back office. The lad clasped his hands around the warm cup eagerly, blowing on the steaming brew. As he drank his drink, Andrew tried to keep chatting with him in order to find out more about his background, asking him where he’d travelled from and similar queries. None of the boy’s answers added up.

‘My mum’s coming to get me,’ he kept saying, over and over, but it plainly wasn’t true.

In the end, the boy realised that Andrew wasn’t fooled and started opening up to him, explaining what had gone on. He’d recently been moved to a care home up north and had run away from it on impulse, without any kind of itinerary or plan. He obviously had a fair few issues and Andrew knew he’d have to call the police. Not wanting to alarm the boy, he told him he’d be right back and quietly slipped away to the office where he could make the call. He informed them of the situation, and they told him they would come and collect the boy – but they couldn’t be there for half an hour or more. It was up to Andrew to try to keep him safe on the station.

To begin with, it wasn’t too hard. The boy was a rail enthusiast, and when a freight train began to rumble by languorously, he asked if they could go out onto the platform and watch it pass. Andrew went with him, a bit concerned that the suggestion was just an excuse for the boy to leg it – but it wasn’t. The train’s lights lit up the child’s face and for the first time since Andrew had met him he looked happy, watching the freight train pass.

But after its red taillights had disappeared into the darkness, the young lad and Andrew were left alone in the cold night, with the clock ticking by so slowly. The boy didn’t know the police had been called, and Andrew wanted to keep him there until they showed up. Half an hour wasn’t long at all in the grand scheme of things, but as each second ticked sluggishly by on the orange-digit display boards above their heads, it suddenly seemed like an eternity.

Andrew was just starting to panic when a brainwave hit him: Felix. If anyone could keep the boy safe, it was her. She was just having a wander about, so Andrew picked her up and placed her on the bench next to the boy.

‘Have you met Felix?’ he asked him brightly. ‘She lives here on the station.’

The lad, who’d been staring glumly at the ground, looked up in surprise to find a black-and-white cat sitting next to him. Felix’s fame hadn’t spread down south and the boy didn’t know that the station had its own cat. He stared in some astonishment at her, uncertain what to do next.

Felix sat very still on the bench, as though assessing the situation. Her tail, hanging off the back of the seat, flicked to the right, to the left, as she considered the child before her. Then, very slowly, as though conscious of his vulnerability, she stood up and edged towards him.

‘Why don’t you give her a treat?’ Andrew asked the lad. He handed him some Dreamies. Felix sat down again at once, knowing the drill.

‘Would you like one?’ the child asked her hesitantly.

In response, she flickered and flashed her green eyes at him, almost as if she was rolling them and saying in affectionate amusement, ‘Stupid question, my lad.’

A bit timidly, the boy extended an upturned hand towards her, the treat nestled in the middle of it. Felix very gently bent her head to his hand and took the treat from his palm with her rough pink tongue. She licked her lips afterwards, as though to say politely, ‘Thank you so very much indeed.’

‘Another?’ the boy asked, warming up, taking pleasure in her pleasure.

Felix didn’t need asking twice.

The two of them sat together on the bench, and Felix entertained that child as only she knew how. After the treats had been eaten, she happily let him pet and stroke her, sitting calmly by his side and never once showing the slightest grumpiness. In truth, she was simply doing her job as part of the customer-facing team of Huddersfield station – and doing it brilliantly. The boy was still stroking her when, thirty minutes later, Andrew saw two uniformed officers walk out onto the platform.

He went to meet them and together they cautiously approached the runaway. Now calm, he didn’t flee – or lie. The police took a statement from both him and Andrew, then told the child that it was time for them to take him back to the care home.

The boy stood up bravely. Before leaving, he turned back to face the railway cat.

‘See you, Felix,’ he said, with a slight smile twitching at the edges of his lips. ‘Goodbye.’