The Cat That Held Up A Freight Train

My fireman, Jim Brandt and I were on the station platform as
train #37, ‘The Pony Express’, pulled in from Kansas City,
Missouri. The engineer and fireman got off and as they left, stated
that everything was O. K. Upon the signal from the switchman on my
side, I eased the 820 back enough for him to ‘pull the
pin’. He had already uncoupled the train line steam and on his
signal I pulled the engine ahead for at least 15 feet, the required
safety distance, when an engine is uncoupled from its train, that
is, a passenger train. Since the other crew had another 800 class
4-8-4 engine all ready to couple onto the train, we immediately
pulled up out of the way and the dispatcher set us over on another
track out of the way of everything. We then climbed down off the
engine to inspect it or check it over before the 4 mile trip back
to the roundhouse.

As we were looking the engine over, my fireman Jim said he
thought he heard a faint sound underneath, like a kitten. Upon
closer examination we saw what appeared to be a chunk of ice on a
brake beam, between two sets of drivers. Sure enough, it was a
small kitten, covered in ice. I had the brakes on, the engine in
neutral, but I took two skates or chocks and placed them under one
of the drivers. With a coal chisel we crawled under the engine to
where this black chunk of ice was. Here was a kitten with its feet
clamped over the brake beam, entirely covered with ice except its
nose and mouth! By careful chiselling we finally got this little
kitten and chunk of ice out from under the engine.

After we got through the interchange, I proceeded to bring the
engine back up toward the roundhouse while Jim tried to thaw out
this kitten and get the ice off it. He rubbed it, worked with it,
next to the boiler head of the engine, and by the time we reached
the roundhouse he had its four feet free of ice. We immediately
took it into the warm locker room inside the roundhouse, next to
the engine dispatcher’s office. Jim continued to work on the
ice and kept brushing the water off its back with a warm towel.
That poor little kitten’s body was actually cold all over. It
appeared lifeless but Jim continued to rub and massage it and, with
the heat of the radiator and warm towel, the little rascal began to
move. Believe it or not, it started to get some warmth in its body.
Jim placed it in a warm ball of waste where he made a nest and left
it next to a radiator while we carried on our job of moving and
servicing the steam engines that we were getting ready to go out on
the road.

Along toward morning, since we doubled over, this little kitten
started to move around in its little, warm nest and when we got
ready to leave we turned it over to the day crew. They said they
would take good care of it. Already we had given the kitten some
warm milk and it had tasted it just a little with its tongue. We
knew the day crew would take good care of it. When we came back to
work that evening at 5 o’clock that little rascal was on its
feet and its little tummy was full of warm milk. It seemed that
every single engine crew that came in took a liking to it and it
wasn’t very long until it was eating and drinking milk like it
should.

The day dispatcher, Wallace ‘Hooch’ F. Houchins put a
notice up on his desk and a note on a dish which read, ‘This is
the kitty for the kitty’. We all started putting our change in
that dish for cat food and milk. Would you believe, it was only a
matter of days before we had nearly $40.00 in that kitten’s
kitty! As time went on we had all decided to call this kitten
‘Boomer’, and it soon had the run of the roundhouse and you
can bet it was queen of the roundhouse because everyone out there
looked out for it and looked after it.

As it continued to grow, it started catching mice, to the
enjoyment of us all. Eventually it was a full-grown mature cat,
black as ink, without a white hair on it. One of the men one night
saw it catch a large rat by the nap of the neck and kill it without
getting bit, and we all thought that was really some feat, and it
was. It seemed every time any of the engine crews or roundhouse men
came to work the first thing they did was look for Boomer and check
her milk dish, for milk and food.

As time went on and about a year or so later Jim and I took the
5020 engine, a 2-10-2, across the turntable and into a stall in the
roundhouse. It was about 11 o’clock at night. Suddenly another
engineer came tearing over to our engine as I was calling on the
whistle for the water men to couple up our water and steam line.
This man, ‘Cotton’ Hokansen appeared very excited. He said
he and his fireman had just come in to get the 5013 out of the
second stall from our engine and found that Boomer had made a nest
out of the big ball of waste which was on the engineers’ seat,
and there she laid, perfectly at ease, with 5 baby kittens. Cotton
said, ‘I can’t move Boomer and her babies and I won’t
do it either!’ He said, ‘We will have to use your
5020’. I told him we would get the roundhouse foreman, Art
Finder, and see if we could trade motive power for the Laramie or
D.P. After surveying the situation, Art asked me to call the night
roundhouse crew over to the 5020 with the whistle. Everyone jumped
on the engine to do his job of inspecting, lubricating, checking,
looking and going over the engine as his job required. We got the
engine back out of the roundhouse about an hour later. After
coaling, watering, and sanding the engine, the delay was not much
more than an hour, and the ‘powers that be’ never ever knew
the difference. Believe me, that ‘s what I call team work!

I don’t mind telling you I sure enjoyed working with that
fine group of men, since we could work together so nicely. We all
got a kick out of Cotton, a big Swede about 6 feet 4 inches tall
and weighing about 265 pounds, a tough and rugged engineer but with
a heart of gold!

The next evening at 5 o’clock we all went over to the 5013
which was still sitting in her stall. Cotton very carefully picked
up the big ball of warm waste, handed it down out of the engine and
we took it over and placed it in a safe corner of the tool room in
the roundhouse, and Boomer and her five babies rode over in their
nest.

As time went on we began to see kittens and eventually cats all
over the roundhouse, and every single worker saw to it that those
cats didn’t get run over, trampled on or mashed with heavy
tools. As these cats grew to adult age and became full grown, it is
needless to say the mice and the rats all disappeared from the
roundhouse.

Every man out there, including our kind hearted engine
dispatcher, ‘Hooch’ enjoyed seeing those cats roaming
around through the roundhouse and I don’t have to tell you that
they had plenty to eat and as we might say, ‘They lived off of
the fat of the land.’

As many years have passed, I often think of that fine group of
Union Pacific men that I had the privilege and enjoyment of working
with.