Full Steam Ahead, Felix

8. All Change

Come the new year, Felix the railway cat was back to work with a vengeance. On New Year’s Day 2017, she trotted along the platforms with an easy stride, knowing the station and its rhythms like the back of her paw. Here came the passenger services roaring into the station, making not a few hungover patrons clutch their heads and wince with pain. Here came the tum-tee-tum trundling noise of suitcases, as festive revellers retraced their steps and found themselves homeward bound after their Christmas holidays visiting far-flung family. Here came the customer-information point, with the lost-property office just across the way, where Felix was expecting to put in a shared shift with Angela Dunn.

But here Felix came unstuck. Although it was mid-morning, time enough for both serving hatches to be open, instead there was a blue blind pulled down across the customer-information point, while the stable door of the lost-property office was firmly shut. Deterred, Felix sat back on her haunches, her furrowed fluffy eyebrows indicating that she was pretty perplexed.

Unbeknownst to Felix, a wave of modernisation had swept across Huddersfield station that new year, just as the wintry weather was sweeping through the Yorkshire countryside beyond, and these familiar landmarks, some of Felix’s favourites, had been caught up in a raft of changes. Recently, it had been decided that a fully automated announcing system would be used at the station from 1 January 2017, so the announcer’s office – which had been attached to the customer-information point – was now closed. With no one working in the room beyond the window any more, the serving hatch immediately became redundant too because there was no one there to staff it. In time, the white sign that had once guided passengers into the lobby was taken down to avoid confusing people. Instead, a simple sign declaring ‘Bicycle Park’ pointed to the silver racks that at least, from Felix’s perspective, had not changed at all.

In lost property, too, the old system was discarded, and Angela went to work in the booking office. Physically, the lost items were now kept in the Hub, the array of offices above the station concourse, which meant they were behind a security-coded door and up two flights of stairs. For Felix and Angela, it was the end of an era.

That new year, Angela Dunn trudged into work with a very heavy heart. She had loved working full-time in the lost-property office, reuniting worried passengers with their treasured possessions. It was a shock to the system to be returning to shift work in the booking office and she was apprehensive about it.

Nor had it been a particularly happy festive season in the Dunn household. Back in 2015, Angela and her husband of thirty-one years had decided to call it a day, and Angela was still figuring out the brave and sometimes blighted world of being single and divorced in her fifties, after more than three decades as part of a pair. Though it had been a reasonably amicable split – she and her husband had not even argued once – it was nevertheless tough getting used to being on her own, especially at Christmas. This year, she hadn’t even bothered putting up any decorations. And whereas once upon a time she had catered for twelve for Christmas dinner, year in and year out, this year she’d served herself beans on toast. There just didn’t seem any point in it all, not when you were on your own.

The first week of 2017 – the first week of her new routine – was really hard-going for Angela, and for Felix too. But they found they helped each other through the changes. Almost as if Felix knew that Angela needed her, she would hang out on the platform or by the bike racks – even, sometimes, in the car park itself – waiting for her beloved colleague to arrive for work. It meant that Felix was the first colleague Angela saw every morning and it made her day. Felix would come over to say hello the moment she appeared, purring softly with pleasure. And then the two of them would walk together into the back office, where Angela would put her things in the ladies’ locker room, now ready to face a day of serving customers. Despite the hardness of her life changing, and the sometimes awful feeling of having to get up at 4 a.m. for her new shifts, she found she felt much brighter about it all than she’d ever hoped she might – and it was all due to Felix’s considerate attentions.

It certainly was all change at the station that January. As well as the modifications to the announcer’s office and lost property, Felix found that Sara from the booking office was now out working on the platforms with her best friend Karl.

Sara was a long-time friend of Felix, having worked at the station since December 2014. In fact, they were almost relatives, as Sara’s uncle was Chris Briscoe, whose cats Lexi and Gizmo were Felix’s parents. The railway was something of a family business, as Sara’s mum, stepdad, aunt and uncle all worked in the industry. Following a couple of years after school of working for a printing company, Sara had followed her family into the business too. Now twenty-three, she found she loved it, for every day was different.

Of course, having regular cuddles with Felix was an additional perk. Sara found that if she took a seat on the single chair in the ladies’ locker room for five minutes before her shift started, Felix would often come and sit up on her knee. When she was in the mood, Felix could have a right good cuddle. Sara really liked that; she really liked Felix. The diva’s temperament wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but Sara admired her independent spirit.

Now, as Sara took up her new role out on the platforms, she found that she and Karl grew even closer, as they were paired up on shifts most of the time. Karl was a really funny bloke, which made their shifts together fly by. He could tell instantly if ever she was sad and would cheer her up straight away with a big brotherly hug, teasing her affectionately about being a ‘unicorn princess’. He had a southern accent, whereas Sara had a thick Barnsley burr, and they would tease each other mercilessly about the difference between their voices. Karl had a lovely girlfriend he was head over heels in love with, and Sara loved to hear him talk about her. She was currently single, but hoped one day to find the right man; Karl was always on the lookout for a bloke who was good enough for his best friend.

While they waited for him to appear, Karl and Sara and lots of the other ‘young ’uns’ at the station regularly enjoyed nights out together. With the railway feeling like a family, it was only natural that many of the younger staff socialised. They all got on really well and it was easy as anything for one of them to suggest a drink after work … then before they knew it one drink had turned into five and they’d ended up at Maverick’s in town, dancing to cheesy eighties music until 4 a.m.

Among the ‘young ’uns’ on these nights out was Chris Bamford, a black-bearded lad, who was another Felix favourite. He had become particularly close to the cat in the past year as he’d helped Felix adjust to her rise to fame, often volunteering to assist with her media appearances. She used to follow him around the station, sometimes even into the car park for an inspection, and as she did so she upped the entertainment value of the outing by swatting playfully at the laces on his steel-capped boots. Brazen as anything, she would bat constantly at them with her paw as they bounced along in time with Chris’s strong and steady footsteps.

‘Felix, be careful!’ he would admonish her, fearful that he might just step on the station cat by accident as she dangerously darted in between his feet, her eyes fixed firmly on the teasing spectacle of those bouncing laces.

She would merely look up at him happily, her tail wagging back and forth like an eager puppy’s.

Another ‘young ’un’ was Dan, who’d started at the station just before Christmas as a new team leader. He was a good-humoured guy, aged twenty-seven, with a reddish-brown beard and dark eyes. Like many of the team at Huddersfield, he’d always wanted to work on the railway and had achieved his dream when he’d moved from a high-pressured job managing car parks at Manchester Airport to the team leader role at the station.

As a team leader, one of Dan’s first priorities was meeting Felix, whose role at Huddersfield he had learned all about while doing research before his interview. He was a cat person himself and thought the idea of working at a place that had its own cat was pretty darn cool. But while he was excited about the idea of working with Felix, he worried whether the feeling would be mutual …

To Dan’s relief, very quickly it became apparent that it was. From the moment he started working there, it was noticeable that Felix was not at all shy around the person who was now sat in the team leaders’ chair. She came and lay in the way of Dan’s work just as she did with all the others, and would harangue him for love and attention (and food) as she did with everyone else. It wasn’t long before Dan became a favourite of Felix. He was more than happy to give her some love and this affectionate attitude towards her soon had Felix following him around and running head over paws to greet him. Sara, arriving for work one day, witnessed Felix darting in the direction of Dan with unbelievable keenness as soon as she heard him coming.

‘That’s right, your boyfriend’s here now,’ Sara teased the cat – not missing the irony that Felix seemed to be doing better in love than she was. Sigh.

Felix was not the only team member with whom Dan instantly hit it off. The Manchester-based man had been quite apprehensive about starting work at Huddersfield – especially in a management role when he’d never worked on the railway before – but he found that Karl in particular was an immediate friend who made him feel welcome. He soon made friends with Sara too; the two of them found they had a huge amount in common and an identical sense of humour. Soon, Dan found that there wasn’t a day that went by when he wasn’t sharing a good laugh with her. The three of them – Dan, Sara and Karl – made a close-knit trio who brought a new, youthful energy to the team.

As for Felix, she found that the new year brought yet more fans to her Facebook page – and on 8 January 2017 she reached a very special milestone. Felix the Huddersfield station cat now had 100,000 followers.

It was fitting, for Felix’s fame and fortune were about to get bigger than ever before. For the past year, she had dominated the ‘new’ medium of social media. Yet Felix was about to prove that she was no flash-in-the-pan new-media star. Felix was on the cusp of bringing that same six-figure success to the oldest media of them all.

For Felix was about to become a literary superstar. Are you sitting comfortably? Then she’ll begin …