Felix The Railway Cat

30. One Night in January

Andrew McClements tore at the Amazon packaging surrounding his parcel, and sniggered a little bit when he saw what was inside. But, when he heard the door open behind him, he quickly shoved the package into his desk drawer: nothing to see here.

It was one of the other team leaders, Geoff.

‘I’m heading off now,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ replied Andrew confidently. It was 29 January 2016 and by now he was an old hand at running the night shift on his own – if not quite an old-timer. ‘Have you seen Felix, by the way?’ he asked, keeping his voice light, as though he wasn’t all that interested.

‘Not since I sent her packing earlier,’ Geoff replied curtly. ‘But you know what that cat is like: she’ll be back.’ He looked rather gloomy at the idea. ‘Night, then.’

‘Night, Geoff.’

Andrew waited until he was gone, then checked on the package in his desk drawer once again. He couldn’t wait for this night shift to begin.

A few hours later, in the early hours of 30 January, Andrew once again rolled open his drawer and pulled out the brown cardboard packaging. Felix was sitting on the desk with him and she sniffed with interest at the unfamiliar smells carried on the package which had travelled through the mail.

‘Guess what, Felix?’ Andrew said to her brightly. ‘This is for you.’

Her head jerked upwards and she fixed him with those big green eyes. ‘For me?’ they seemed to say.

Andrew reached a hand inside the package and pulled out a tiny, pet-sized, yellow hi-vis vest – just like those worn by the human members of the team on the platforms of Huddersfield station, but this one was especially for Felix.

The fluffy cat bent her head to the luminous fabric and examined it quizzically. It had long been apparent to the team that Felix recognised their bright jackets – now, she was getting one of her very own.

Andrew had told no one that he’d ordered it. It was a surprise for them all and he’d kept it completely secret, even after the vest had arrived, as he wasn’t quite sure how Felix would react to it. She could be a diva, after all. She’d never worn any sort of clothing before and Angie Hunte had told him that, although Felix looked absolutely fabulous in her purple glittery collar and wore it quite happily once it was on, she could be a little madam when the team or the groomers tried to get it on or off her. He feared that the temperamental terror might well throw a strop when asked to model her new uniform, so Andrew wanted to introduce Felix to it privately to give her time to get used to it. He wasn’t sure quite how much convincing she might need to wear it.

But Felix seemed delighted with his gift as she gave it a thorough investigation, twitching her enormously long white whiskers. The jacket lay flat upon the desk, its two hi-vis stripes catching the office light from time to time, as she sniffed at it and prodded it with a curious paw. It wasn’t made specifically for cats, but pets in general; it had an adjustable Velcro strap so that dogs, cats and all sorts of creatures could wear it safely.

Ordering it had been Andrew’s idea alone. As he’d settled into Huddersfield station, over the passing months he’d come to realise just how much Felix was an essential part of the team. She was very much considered a member of the team and he knew from his own personal experiences with her what a very special contribution she made to the station. But even though she spent hours and hours of her life out on the platforms with her human colleagues – patrolling or sitting up at the customer-information desk – she wasn’t properly equipped for the job. How was it fair, when she did her duty so diligently, that she didn’t have her own uniform? If she truly was a member of staff – which she undoubtedly was – Andrew thought she deserved her own hi-vis vest, just like her colleagues. He had searched online and found one easily. With a click of a button, Felix’s hi-vis vest was on its way.

The cat finished her sensory exploration of the jacket and sat down on her hind legs, looking pleased as punch. Her right ear twitched backwards as she heard Andrew rustling a second package.

‘More?’ her fluffy face seemed to say. ‘For me?’

There was more. Much more. For the team at Huddersfield didn’t only wear yellow hi-vis vests as they went about their work: they wore company-issued name tags showing their job titles. These were official TransPennine Express ID badges that came direct from head office. In Andrew’s opinion, it was rather unfair that Felix had to work without one.

So, in secret, he had emailed headquarters at Bridgewater House in Manchester.

‘Can we have a name badge for Felix, please?’ he’d written, and waited with bated breath for their response.

Well, they’d thought he was nuts – absolutely nuts. But they agreed to make one anyway. Andrew had been delighted with it when it arrived. It was exactly like the formal badges he and Angie and the other team members wore, totally proper: a silver metal badge with a smooth white front and a safety pin on the back. Felix’s name was written in clear black letters in the middle of it, while the formal TransPennine Express logo was positioned artfully in the top-right corner. It looked even more splendid than Andrew had imagined.

‘All right, we’ll do it!’ HQ had emailed him. ‘What job title do you want on it?’

Now, forget ‘To be or not to be?’ – that was the question. From what Andrew had observed, Felix did way more customer-service work than actual mouse-catching – so should her badge reflect that massive contribution she made every day to the commuters and customers of Huddersfield?

But no – it didn’t seem quite right to give her the same job title as everyone else.

Felix, as befitted her feline form, was ordinarily termed ‘the pest controller’ by colleagues – it was what she had been called by the team ever since Angie had filled in her very first disbursement form for Felix’s food: Pest controller needs nourishment … It was a long-standing joke.

Yet that didn’t seem quite right either. ‘Pest controller’ seemed a bit too ordinary for Queen Felix. The cat clearly thought she ran the station – and according to the hierarchy chart that had hung in the office for many years, she did. ‘Pest controller’ didn’t recognise her many years of experience, for she now outranked in years of service many of the newer members of the team; after all, she’d been there longer than Chris Bamford and Andrew himself. She needed a job title which rewarded that service and her extensive expertise, and which also recognised her own regal sense of superiority over the station. What could it be?

As Andrew pulled the metal badge from the package and formally presented it to Felix, there were three neatly typed words written below her name.

SENIOR PEST CONTROLLER

Felix had been promoted.

Andrew felt rather too self-conscious to say ‘Congratulations!’ as he handed it over, but Felix looked thrilled nonetheless. She sniffed enthusiastically at the badge to begin with – though, admittedly, her eagerness soon faded once she realised it wasn’t a badge-shaped treat.

Andrew took the badge back from her curious twitching whiskers and securely fastened it to the chest of the hi-vis vest.

‘So, how about it then, Felix?’ he asked her. ‘Shall we give this a go?’

The cat inclined her head against his proffered hand. He gave her ears a good scratch to encourage her, and then picked up the station cat’s new uniform.

‘I’m going to put it on you, now,’ he told her, like a practised dresser working backstage at the New York Ballet, reassuring his charge during a quick change. He opened up the jacket and placed it across Felix’s fluffy black back. She looked up at him enquiringly as he did so, as though to say, ‘What are you doing?’

The jacket had two Velcro straps – one for under the belly and one for around the chest. As Andrew fastened them, he chattered away in a friendly fashion to Felix, stroking and reassuring her, but in truth she didn’t seem to need it. She appeared curious more than anything else, and once it was on she didn’t mind it at all.

In fact, she seemed quite happy.

Released from Andrew’s hands, the railway cat promptly had a walk about the desk wearing her brand-new uniform, rather as we humans do when we’re trying on new shoes.

‘Well, don’t you look smart,’ said Andrew proudly.

And she did. The luminous jacket glowed brightly against her dark fur, while the neat fastening around her chest made her look somehow pulled in and puffed up, like a proud peacock. Her long white whiskers skated along the edge of the jacket, and as Felix put her best foot forward on the desk, she looked as well turned out as any child might on their very first day of school.

Felix seemed to enjoy her new official get-up. In pride of place on the left-hand side of her chest was her name badge bearing her new job title. Andrew didn’t want to miss the opportunity to record this momentous milestone in Felix’s career so, while she happily strutted about on the desk, he slipped out of his chair and started taking pictures.

Snap! Felix prowling past the blank screen of a computer.

Snap! Felix pausing on the edge of the desk, as though conducting a shoot on a clifftop, her fur blowing in the breeze. She stared expertly into the middle distance as Andrew moved and clicked around her.

He took shot after shot. She looked brilliant! He couldn’t believe how well it had all come together. For about five minutes, Andrew and Felix were hard at work on their modelling shoot. Andrew took as many photos as he could, trying to get the best one possible. It was about 4 a.m. and the rest of the station was completely deserted and still – except for this hive of activity in the team leaders’ office. The perfect shot came when Andrew was crouched down awkwardly and looking up at the senior pest controller from below, as she posed nobly on the end of the desk. Taking the shot from below somehow emphasised her stature now that she was a senior member of staff.

He glanced at his smartphone after he had taken it. That was a great photo – Felix looked so professional! Her smart new name badge was clearly visible in shot, as was the vest. Most importantly of all, Felix’s face was a picture: she wore a very serious expression, as though she were about to head out onto the platforms right that minute and begin her diligent duty. She had one paw slightly forwards, taking a step: ready, as always, for action.

‘You look great, Felix,’ Andrew said with feeling. Gently, he eased her out of the outfit and tucked it away in his drawer again.

Felix shook her fur – for it had been flattened a bit by the jacket and she needed to puff it out again for the golden-girl glamourpuss look that she favoured. Then she jumped down off the desk and wandered away, thinking no more of it.

But Andrew’s work wasn’t yet done. Chuckling a bit to himself, he went through the pictures and pulled out that money shot. He attached it to an email addressed to all the team at Huddersfield station and wrote in jest:

Date: 30/01/2016

Time: 04.42

Subject: Felix’s new uniform

Hi all,

Below are some pictures of Felix in her new uniform, please make sure this is worn at all times; regardless of any injuries you may sustain when attempting to dress her.

Of course, Felix was never actually going to wear the uniform on duty – she was too much of a diva for that. It was all part of the joke. But the real joke was going to be that picture. His colleagues had known nothing of his plan to get Felix a hi-vis vest – let alone an official name badge too – and Andrew couldn’t wait for their reaction. If it was anything like his own, this was going to go down brilliantly.

And it did. All that day throughout Huddersfield station there were guffaws and giggles as team members opened up the email and saw Felix kitted out in her brand-new uniform.

‘I thought it was brilliant!’ exclaimed Angie. ‘Super! Wonderful!’

Everyone thought it was really cute – and a lot of fun. Andrew also got quite a few cheeky emails back, telling him he was mad because of what he’d done and the lengths to which he’d gone to do it: absolutely mad.

And there was another email that came through, too: from a colleague asking if he’d mind if they sent the image to Mark Allan, for him to upload to Felix’s Facebook page.

Felix’s popularity on Facebook had been steadily growing. Only the day before, 29 January 2016, she’d hit a new milestone: 1,000 likes on Facebook. Mark and the team members helping him with the page had started adding videos as well as photographs to the site and that had perhaps encouraged more people to start following the feline. The railway cat had spent Christmas with Glenn and Teresa that year (they’d gone to town, buying Felix her own stocking full of cat-friendly presents and treats) and they’d uploaded a festive video of her playing with a bauble on their tree, tapping it repeatedly with her paw in transfixed fascination. Things like that enamoured Felix to her growing legion of Facebook fans, and the team involved with the page thought that Andrew’s image of the station cat in her hi-vis vest and name badge would go down a real treat.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Andrew said casually when they asked him. ‘No problem at all.’

At 5.54 p.m. on 30 January 2016, Felix changed her profile picture on Facebook to the hi-vis vest shot.

No one at the station knew it, but life would never be the same again.