Felix The Railway Cat

2. A ‘Mouse’ in the House

Angie Hunte adjusted her yellow hi-vis jacket and cast her eyes along the commuters bustling through the gateline, stifling a yawn. It was now April, which meant that at last the mornings were lighter and brighter, but getting up at a quarter to five for an early shift was still a struggle, even after all these years. Much as she liked working at the station, some shifts you felt you just plodded your way through.

That morning, though, she felt an unfamiliar fizz of excited anticipation in her stomach as she scanned the faces of the customers coming through the station. She was looking for one face in particular: that of Belinda Graham.

Belinda was a TPE manager who worked at the company headquarters in Manchester, but commuted through Huddersfield every day. It was fortunate she did, for Angie had a very important question to ask her – about a certain station cat. With Andy Croughan, the acting station manager, having at last given the nod to the idea, all the Huddersfield team needed now was for HQ to say yes. But, Angie knew, getting that yes might be easier said than done.

There was no question of skipping this step, though, or of welcoming a cat through the back door. They all wanted it to be above board and proper. Although it had started out as a joke, the Huddersfield team were cat lovers, many of them cat owners themselves, and they took the responsibility of owning a pet seriously. Angie, Gareth, Andy and the others had already decided that, if they got the approval they were hoping for, the cat would be cared for equally by the team. Even Billy had given an – admittedly typically taciturn – acquiescence that he, too, would chip in and help out.

As the cat campaign had gone on, Billy – perhaps worn down by his friend Gareth’s unfailingly upbeat enthusiasm – had come around to the idea. Over time, he’d become quite keen on the concept and would even break into a smile every now and then when Gareth raised the fantasy cat in conversation, and a smile was a rarity with Billy.

‘All right, lad, all right,’ he’d concede, his lips curving unnaturally upwards, as he headed outside for a smoking break, clutching his favourite cigarillos. ‘I agree: a station cat would be grand.’

Billy had cats of his own, including a ginger queen called Jaffa. A railway man to his very bones, he and his wife lived in some old station buildings, and his cats would often hold up the trains as they weaved their way across the rails. Their shared love of cats was another thing that he and Gareth had bonded over, for Gareth was the proud owner of Cosmo, a fluffy black-and-white moggy with a massive tail. But one cat was not enough for Gareth – and, at last, the station cat seemed within his reach.

But first Angie had to work her magic. Angie was a brilliant people person – part of her expertise as a team leader was in managing others, and she always seemed to know exactly who to speak to and more importantly how to speak to them to resolve any issues or to get things done. It was Angie who’d suggested they approach Belinda for permission. Angie knew her of old, and she knew Belinda was a doer: someone who meant business and was willing to roll her sleeves up and make things happen. Nothing was ever too much trouble for Belinda. Angie gave another glance at the commuters, but it was still a little early, and there was no sign of Belinda’s distinctive short blonde hair amidst the trickle of customers coming through the gates.

Angie rehearsed in her head what she was going to say, and couldn’t help the almost guilty smile that twitched at her lips as she did so. For the team had decided they couldn’t leave things to chance, but instead were going to pull out all the stops to bring this cat home. And so the conversation Angie was about to have was in some ways just as creative as the hand-drawn posters that Gareth had been mocking up for the past three years.

Another surge of customers swelled through the concourse, and Angie suddenly recognised the tiny figure of Belinda weaving among them.

‘Belinda!’ she called out urgently, bustling over to her with a practised air, neatly avoiding the steady stream of commuters.

‘All right, Angie?’ The manager greeted her warmly.

‘Have you heard what’s happened here?’ Angie began, lowering her voice discreetly, as though she didn’t want the customers passing by to overhear.

Belinda’s brow creased in concern. ‘No, what?’ she asked, expecting any manner of emergency. Angie was a very experienced team leader – if she needed to call on head office for support, it must be serious.

‘Do you know, we’ve got a mouse in the mess room?’ Angie whispered theatrically, as though aghast, acting her shock and horror at this supposed ‘pest invasion’ perfectly. ‘Sharon, one of the girls in the office, she says she’s seen a mouse.’

Belinda shook her head in sympathy, completely understanding Angie’s worry.

‘Well, we can’t be having that!’ Angie continued, switching from shock to indignation with the smooth ease of an Oscar-winner. ‘We eat in there!’ She took a deep breath and said, more lightly than she felt, ‘Belinda, could we not get a cat?’

Belinda paused for a moment before replying, coolly assessing this formal request from her colleague. Then she bobbed her head decisively. ‘Yes, I dare say we can sort something out,’ she said. ‘We can put the cost under pest control or something like that. I think Windermere have a cat, too, and we pay for its food. Don’t worry: we’ll get it sorted.’

Angie listened in amazement. Though it was well-known on the railway network that the former British Rail had given their station cats joke wage slips, she had never heard of the privatised companies doing it, of covering the costs of a cat’s upkeep. But in fact the station cat at Windermere was not the only one – there were station moggies up and down the country, as lovingly cared for by the railway staff as they had been throughout history. Manchester Oxford Road was at one point rumoured to have as many as thirteen cats, though in recent years, with some of the cats adopted, they were down to four: Jumper, Tom, Jerry and Manx. A white-and-tabby cat, Rabbit, along with her up-and-coming assistant, the black-and-white Quaker, resided at the recently restored Kirkby Stephen East station, Cumbria, in the north-west of England. And even down south, Southend Victoria was home to little Jojo, while Tonbridge in Kent had recently erected sombre memorial plaques in honour of their two felines, Jill and Louis, who had both sadly died in the past few years after many moons of service. It seems having a station cat was not a thing of the past at all – and Huddersfield station was now about to become part of that illustrious tradition.

Angie waved Belinda off through the crowd with a cheery flick of her hand, though she was careful not to appear too excited that Belinda had given her the nod. As the manager from HQ disappeared from view, however, and Angie turned and headed straight for the announcer’s office, her excitement began to build. By the time she had closed the door behind her and turned to face Gareth, who was sitting wriggling on his chair, waiting to hear the verdict, Angie felt ready to burst.

‘Oh my God!’ she whispered, joyously but cautiously, because there was a rush hour going on outside and she didn’t want to alarm the customers with mad screams coming from the office. ‘Oh my gosh! Gareth, we’re gonna have a cat! We’re gonna have a cat!’

Gareth’s mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘Are you being serious?’ he asked.

Angie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Gareth leapt up, delighted. ‘So we’re getting a cat then?!’

‘We’re getting a cat.’

‘We’re getting a cat!’

It was like a tidal wave of euphoria sweeping through the station. After a campaign of almost three long years, it was a genuinely emotional moment. All anybody could talk about was the cat, the cat, the cat.

It had been decades – if ever – since Huddersfield had had a station cat. The last known animal residents had been Bess, Dolly and Tommy: the final shire horses employed by the station, who used to act as shunt ponies pulling train wagons into sidings, either to rest them or to enable new trains to be made up from the various carriages they moved about the tracks. But the horses had been made redundant in 1952, and since then there had been no record of any other formally employed animal residents; the greedy pigeons who populated the metal beams of the corrugated iron roof most definitely didn’t count. Now, nearly sixty years on, the team at Huddersfield – entirely through their own efforts – had overcome all obstacles to get the ‘yes’ they needed. A railway cat would be making its home there, so the team hoped, in the very near future.

But who would that cat be?