The Curious Kitten Page 4

  Cleo squealed in fright. This was nothing like the play fights she’d had with her brothers and sisters back at the shelter, and she didn’t know what to do. She made a desperate leap, scrabbling on to the windowsill.

  Pirate sat below, staring up at Cleo, still making those horrible hissing sounds – but he couldn’t easily jump to that height any more.

  Cleo didn’t know that, though. The window was only open a crack, but she just managed to shoot through the gap before George could grab her.

  “Come back!” George wailed. His bedroom was at the side of the house, and the window looked out on to the two garages – theirs and next door’s. The kitten was teetering on the narrow windowsill.

  “Come on, here, puss,” George called. He was trying to sound calm and coaxing, but his voice was trembling. The kitten hissed at him and jumped down on to the steeply sloping garage roof. She clung to the tiles, her fur all fluffed up and her eyes round with fear.

  George raced out of his bedroom and almost crashed into his mum on the landing.

  “George? What’s going on? What was all that noise? Are you teasing Pirate?”

  “No! I’ll explain in a minute.” He dodged past his mum, tore down the stairs and out of the front door.

  “Please come down,” George whispered, gazing up at the kitten. “I really don’t want you to fall.”

  His mum appeared at the door, looking really cross. “George! What is going on? Get back in here!”

  “I can’t, Mum. Look…” He pointed up at the kitten, and his mum came over to see.

  “Oh!” Mum cried. “Whose kitten is that?”

  “I don’t know. But she’s stuck on the roof.” George felt bad not explaining how the kitten had got on to the roof in the first place, but he hadn’t exactly told his mum a lie…

  “How on earth are we going to get it down?” Mum said. “Poor little thing – it looks terrified!”

  “Kitty!” Toby clambered down the front step and pointed up at the kitten.

  Mum caught his hand quickly. “Yes, it is. But the kitty’s stuck, Toby. Shh, now, don’t scare it.”

  “Mum, what are we going to do?” George whispered.

  “Pirate!” His mum gasped, pointing up at George’s window. “How did he get up there?”

  George craned his neck to look up at the window. He could just see Pirate’s black-and-white face, pressed up against the opening. But Pirate was too big to squeeze through the way the kitten had. He just stood there, yowling.

  Cleo could see him, too. The older cat looked enormous, and she was sure it was about to leap out of the window after her. She backed away, hissing, but her claws slipped on the tiles, and she slid even further down the steep roof with a terrified mew.

  Mum turned to George. “We need a ladder. There’s one in the shed – at least, I think there is… Stay here with Toby and try to calm the kitten down. First I’m going to get Pirate off there before he hurts himself or frightens the little one even more.” She pushed Toby’s hand into George’s and disappeared inside.

  George looked up at the kitten clinging desperately on to the roof and felt so guilty. He should never have brought her into the house.

  “Just hold on,” he called softly. “It’s going to be OK. We’ll get you down. And then I promise we’ll try and find who you really belong to.”

  “Are you all right?” said a man’s voice from behind George.

  George whirled round. It was Luke from next door. George hadn’t even heard his van drive up. “Hi!” he said breathlessly. “Do you have a ladder in your van? Mum’s gone to look for one, but she’s not sure where it is.”

  “What do you need a ladder... Oh, I see.” Luke peered up at the kitten clinging to the garage roof. “Hold on a sec.” He hurried back to his van.

  George went back to murmuring nonsense to the kitten and trying to stop Toby from climbing up the drainpipe to get to her. He glanced up at his bedroom. Mum must have grabbed Pirate and put him somewhere safe, because now his window was wide open. Maybe Mum thought the kitten could jump back in. But George was pretty sure such a little cat couldn’t jump up there from the steep roof, not without sliding back down again.

  “I’ve shut Pirate in the kitchen,” said his mum, rushing out. “But I can’t find the ladder, I think it must be in the garage.”

  “It’s OK.” George pointed to Luke, who was coming up the path with a stepladder. “Luke’s got one.”

  His mum gave a huge sigh of relief. “Hi, Luke. You turned up just at the right time. I’ve got a bag of cat treats. I was thinking we could try and coax the kitten back up to the window with them, but it’ll definitely be easier this way.”

  Luke unfolded the ladder and slowly moved it towards the garage. “I don’t want to scare it away,” he said. “Pass me some of those treats.”

  Mum emptied a few into his hand and he climbed up the ladder, holding out the treats towards the kitten. “Come on, puss. Here, look. Don’t you want them?”

  Cleo hissed feebly at the strange man. She was so frightened she didn’t know what to do – she could only cling on.

  George watched, his heart thumping. What if Luke couldn’t reach? Or the kitten tried to dodge him and fell?

  “Hold the ladder, can you?” Luke called down quietly to George’s mum. “I need both hands… Aha! Got you.” The kitten wriggled in his arms as he climbed back down the ladder one-handed. “There we are. You’re safe now. Yes, you eat those.”

  He laughed as Cleo sniffed out the cat treats at last, leaning over to nuzzle eagerly at the bag in George’s mum’s hand. “Well, it doesn’t look like she’s come to any harm, does it?” He peered at Cleo’s black and white and ginger coat, frowning. “I wonder… But it’s too far, surely. Here, can you hold her a minute?” Luke passed the kitten to George and dug in his pocket. “Would you say she looks like that?” He held out a slip of paper, with a little photo of a kitten on it.

  “Yes,” George’s mum said, looking at the leaflet. “I think so…”

  “I don’t believe it.” Luke shook his head. “Well, that girl who lives opposite the house I’m working on is going to be pleased, if this really is her. Are you Cleo, hey?”

  “Cleo!” George gasped. He stared at the kitten. “Amber’s Cleo?”

  Luke looked thoughtful. “I think her mum did say she was called Amber. She’s got red hair?”

  “That’s her! This is Amber’s cat? She’s in my class. So that’s why she’s been looking so upset.” He looked down at Cleo, his cheeks reddening. He’d wanted to steal Amber’s kitten! “But how did she get all the way over here?” he asked suddenly. “Amber told me she lives on the other side of town, by the adventure playground.”

  Luke made a face and nodded towards the van. “Well, guess where that’s been parked. Right outside her house.”

  “Amber did say her kitten was really nosy,” George said. “She was worried about her getting run over, because she’d started going out on to the street.”

  “You think she got into your van?” George’s mum said in surprise, shaking out a few more cat treats and feeding them to Cleo.

  “She must have done. I’d better take her home,” Luke sighed. “And apologize for catnapping her.”

  “You didn’t mean to!” George’s mum laughed. “I’m sure they’ll just be delighted to have her back. Do you want to borrow Pirate’s cat carrier? The poor kitten probably won’t like it much, it’ll smell of Pirate, but you’ll need to put her in something.”

  “Before she eats all the cat treats and makes a getaway!” Luke agreed.

  “Can I come with you?” George asked shyly. “I won’t get in the way or anything. I’d just like to help take her home.”

  “If it’s OK with your mum. You can sit in the front with me and hold the carrier. I don’t want it wobbling about.”

  “Of course you can,” Mum said. “Hold on a minute and I’ll get it out of the garage.”

  George smiled. He could imagine how pl
eased Amber was going to be. If he’d lost Pirate, he’d have been in a real state.

  “Amber, can you get the door?” Mum called. “I’ve got crumble mix all over my hands.”

  Amber put down the jingly ball she’d found under the shoe rack, blinking away her tears. She kept wanting to cry – everything in the house seemed to remind her of Cleo.

  “If it’s those window people again, just say no thank you,” her mum added.

  Amber’s mum really didn’t like people trying to sell her double-glazing, and they always turned up when she was cooking the dinner. Amber opened the front door, rehearsing a polite go-away smile.

  “Oh!” It was the builder from across the road. Amber bit at her bottom lip. What if he was coming to tell Mum on her, after all? But he was smiling.

  “I’ve brought you a present. Me and my friend here.” He stepped back so that Amber could see the boy beside him, who was holding a plastic cat carrier.

  “George?” Amber stared at her classmate for a moment – then she looked down at the cat carrier, and her eyes went wide with hope. “Have you… Have you—?”

  “Is it her?” George asked anxiously. “We thought it must be.”

  Cleo scrabbled madly at the sides of the carrier, mewing and mewing. Amber was there! The boy had brought her back to Amber. Why wouldn’t they let her out?

  “Amber, what is it?” Amber’s mum came up the hallway, drying her hands on a tea towel. “Luke, hello. Is there a problem over the road?”

  “Mum, they’ve found Cleo! Thank you so much!” Amber pulled open the latch and reached in to stroke the kitten. “I thought you’d never come home…” she murmured, lifting her out and snuggling Cleo against her shoulder. “Where was she?” she asked.

  “I found her in my garden,” George explained. “But I didn’t know she was yours. I, um, fed her my leftovers,” he admitted. “And then she got stuck on our garage roof, and Luke helped to get her down.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell Amber that he’d lured her kitten into his house and got her into a fight with Pirate.

  But Amber beamed at him. “Thank you for feeding her. I was so worried she was going to be starving!”

  “I reckon she went for a ride in the back of my van,” Luke put in. “I can’t see how else she turned up in our neighbourhood. It’s a good couple of miles away.”

  “Goodness,” Amber’s mum said. “She stowed away! I’ll have to ring Sara and Dad and tell them. You don’t know how relieved they’ll be. We were imagining the worst things…”

  “I’m glad I found her,” George said to Amber.

  “Not as glad as I am,” Amber said, giggling as Cleo licked her chin. “You couldn’t be.”

  “You know a lot about cats,” Amber said admiringly, watching George tickle Cleo on just the right spot behind her ear. She’d invited George round to tea to say thank you – and to let him see how Cleo was. He’d asked Amber about her at school a few times, and she thought George must have really liked the kitten.

  “Our cat’s called Pirate, because he looks like he has an eye patch. He’s my mum’s actually. She got him before I was born.”

  “So he’s pretty old then?”

  “Uh-huh. He’s a bit slow now – he doesn’t race around like this one does. But he’s still special,” George added firmly.

  It was true. Pirate might be slow and not that good at chasing toys, but he almost always slept on George’s feet at night. Mum had told him the other night that Pirate had done that since George was a baby. She and Dad had tried to keep him away because they were worried that Pirate might hurt him by accident. But Pirate wouldn’t be shooed away – and he was the best one for stopping baby George crying. “In the end we gave up,” his mum had said, smiling down at Pirate, who was sitting between them. “He’d obviously decided you were his, you see.”

  George watched Cleo clamber up into Amber’s lap and flop down, purring. He stroked her ears, and nodded to himself. Amber was Cleo’s, and he belonged to Pirate – and that was exactly the way it should be.

  “Are you going on holiday?” Max asked, whacking at a clump of nettles with a stick as they walked home from school along the lane. “We’re going to Spain on Saturday.”

  “Yes, we are, but not until September, just before we go back to school,” Jessie said. “We’re going to Scotland for a week, to stay with my gran.”

  “We can’t,” Laura said, a little sadly. Almost everybody in her class seemed to be going somewhere amazing, but she was staying at home all summer. She gave a tiny sigh and peered over the bramble bushes to catch a glimpse of the sea. It was really blue, and the sun was making the ripples glitter. Laura knew they were lucky to live in such a beautiful place, but it would have been nice to go on holiday somewhere different!

  “Mum’s working,” Laura went on. “It’s the busiest time of year for her, the summer. All the cottages are booked up for the whole seven weeks. She says she’s going to be run off her feet.”

  Jessie nodded. “Never mind. I’ll be around until the end of August. We can go to the beach. Mum’s booked me some bodyboarding lessons for the first couple of weeks. I want to get lots of practice in.”

  Max snorted. “Yeah, you need the practice.”

  Jessie blew a cloud of dandelion seeds at him, so they caught in his blond hair, coating it in white fluff. It made him look about sixty years older all of a sudden.

  “Oi, get them off me! Uurrgh.” Max flailed at his hair crossly. “They’re all itchy.”

  “Serves you right,” Laura pointed out. “Just because you’ve been surfing since you could stand up, doesn’t mean you have to be horrible to Jessie. She’s only lived here a year!” She smiled gratefully at Jessie – she was really glad that someone was going to be around for most of the summer.

  Lots of their friends lived quite a long way from Tremarren and travelled in by the school bus, so it wasn’t that simple to meet up with them in the holidays. Mum had promised Laura that they’d try to fit in some fun treats and go to the beach together, but Laura knew how busy she would be. Laura didn’t like seeing her so tired. Managing the cottages meant that Mum was on duty twenty-four hours a day, really, in case any of the guests had a problem.

  Laura helped out as much as she could, although mostly she sat and did her homework while Mum was cleaning the cottages. But this holiday, now Laura was nearly ten, they’d agreed that she was old enough to stay at home while Mum was out. The holiday cottages and the little cottage where she and Mum lived had all been converted from the old farm buildings, so Mum would never be that far away. Since the beginning of term, she’d let Laura walk to and from school with Max and Jessie. Laura was even allowed to go to the beach for a little bit by herself or with friends. She wasn’t allowed to swim on her own, though. Mum had made her promise.

  The best thing was that over the last few weeks, Mum had let her go to the village by herself to do some of the shopping. Laura had been begging for ages – after all, everyone in the shops knew her, she’d told Mum. It made a big difference, Mum not having to do all the shopping as well as everything else. Laura loved seeing her come home and look in the fridge, and say how nice it was to have everything done.

  They were coming into the village now, and Jessie and Max waved goodbye as they headed down their road. Laura had to go on a little bit – Tremarren Farm, where she lived, was just on the other side of the village.

  Laura sped up as she saw Mrs Eccles out for a walk with her Jack Russell, Toby. Mrs Eccles had been Laura’s Reception teacher. She’d retired a couple of years ago and got Toby to keep her company.

  “Hello, Laura! It’s the last day of school, isn’t it?” Mrs Eccles called. “Are you excited about the holidays?”

  Laura crouched down to stroke Toby’s ears. He was such a sweet dog, even though Mrs Eccles said he was really naughty and a terrible thief.

  “Don’t fuss over that little horror too much,” she said to Laura. “He ate my breakfast this morning. A whole piece of to
ast! I don’t think he even chewed it – it just went straight down his throat. Little monster, aren’t you?” she told Toby lovingly, and he sat there beating his tail hard against the pavement. He loved being petted, and Laura was one of his favourite people.

  “Oh, you bad dog,” Laura murmured, scratching under his chin. “You’ll get fat!”

  “Luckily he goes three times as far as I do whenever we’re out for a walk, what with all the dashing around, sniffing and chasing butterflies,” Mrs Eccles said. “We’re going all the way to the lighthouse this afternoon. He can work off that toast! See you soon, Laura. Have a brilliant first day of the holidays!”

  Laura waved as Mrs Eccles and Toby turned down the side street that led to the cliff path. A lovely long walk all the way to the lighthouse with gorgeous Toby… She watched enviously as they disappeared round the corner. Walks were so much more fun with a dog. She’d seen Toby chasing sticks and Frisbees, jumping in and out of the sea and barking at the waves. Maybe Mrs Eccles would let her come along with them at some point over the holidays? Laura nodded to herself. She’d ask Mrs Eccles, the next time she saw them.

  Henry padded uncertainly through the house, sniffing at the furniture. He didn’t understand what was happening. He felt dizzy and a bit sick from being in the car for so long. And when they’d got out they weren’t back home. They were somewhere else.

  But at least Annie was here. She was rushing around with the others, up and down the stairs, throwing doors open. They kept shouting. One of the boys had tripped over Henry and then trodden on his tail – so now the puppy was keeping out of the way. Perhaps this was his new home, he thought worriedly, sitting down under the kitchen table in a forest of chair legs.

  “Hey, Henry!” Annie crouched down to pat him. “Are you all right? Did you find your basket? Here, look.”

  Henry followed her over to the corner of the kitchen and sniffed obediently at his basket. Fortunately that was the same. Annie put down a bowl of water, which he drank eagerly. But when he looked up she’d disappeared again, and his ears drooped. He climbed into the basket, slumped down with his muzzle sticking out over the dipped edge, and waited.