Felix The Railway Cat

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.