Lulu and the Cat in the Bag

by Hilary McKay

  “Out you come!” she ordered when the marigold cat began a daisy collection under Lulu’s bed.

  Nan divided the marigold cat’s flower collection between the vases and the compost heap, depending on how healthy the flowers looked.

  “What kind of cat are you?” she said to the cat. “Terrifying the dogs! Scaring the bird! Gathering flowers! What kind of a cat is that? If you are a cat!”

  It was Mellie who noticed that when they went shopping Nan bought a packet of salmon-flavored cat treats and hid them in her bag.

  “Nan,” said Lulu hopefully, “the dogs don’t like the marigold cat. But I think you do.”

  “Is that what you think?” asked Nan.

  “Yes, I do,” said Lulu, “and so does Mellie. And we have been wondering if when you go home the marigold cat could go too, to live with you.”

  “Is that what you’ve been wondering?”

  “Yes,” said Lulu.

  “Yes,” said Mellie.

  “Just because you like something doesn’t mean you want it to come and live with you,” protested Nan. “For instance, I like your friend Charlie, but I wouldn’t want him to come and live with me…”

  “Charlie is different,” said Lulu.

  “He’s bonkers,” said Mellie.

  “It’s not fair to compare the marigold cat to Charlie,” said Lulu. “They’re not at all alike.”

  The marigold cat, who had been listening to the conversation, blinked in agreement.

  “Well then, not Charlie,” said Nan. “Someone else! The Queen of England! I like her too, but I also wouldn’t want her to come and live with me. (Although I wouldn’t mind a short visit.)”

  “How short?” interrupted Mellie.

  “Three or four days. But as for that enormous marigold cat, it is just not my problem! You should not have let it out of the bag.”

  “Nan!” said Lulu reproachfully.

  “I am not a cat person. I am a garden person.”

  “The marigold cat is a garden cat,” said Mellie, and as if to prove it, the marigold cat went out and found a new flower for Nan from the front garden.

  “Hmmm,” said Nan. “Chickweed. Flowers from the garden of every house on the street. Weeds from here.”

  “We tried planting flowers,” said Lulu. “But the dogs dug them up as fast as we planted them. They’re no good at gardening. They don’t understand. But I’m sure the marigold cat would be different.”

  “I’m sure the marigold cat would be the same,” said Nan.

  Lulu did not argue anymore. She went to the shed and fetched a garden spade. Mellie went with her and collected a garden fork.

  “What about those silly dogs?” asked Nan.

  The marigold cat sat down by the flower bed and cleaned its biffing paw.

  That day, in between zookeeping and dog walking and cat food shopping, Lulu and Mellie dug the flower bed.

  The next morning they went with Nan to the market for plants. In the middle of the flower bed they planted a little green bush. All around the edge, a circle of pansies—bright colors like the beads Nan wove into necklaces.

  Rocko and Sam could hardly stand it. They longed to garden as well. They longed to scoop out dog-shaped hollows and roll in the dust. They longed to dig for interesting bones. They longed to scrabble large holes, like rabbit traps. They longed to scratch up the pansies and gnaw the roots of the little green bush. That was the dogs’ sort of gardening.

  It was not the cat’s sort of gardening, and it would not allow it.

  It sat on guard under the little green bush, and when any dogs came by it got its biffing paw ready. It biffed Sam when he arrived with his smelly old bone, looking for somewhere to plant a smelly-old-bone tree. When Rocko sneaked past and grabbed a pansy, the marigold cat chased him all across the yard.

  “Perhaps you are a garden cat,” said Nan, getting out her cat treats.

  The dogs gave up trying to garden and went to sulk in their baskets instead. They glared at the marigold cat from between their paws, as if they were thinking of vanishing magic.

  Perhaps they were thinking of vanishing magic.

  The very day after the flower bed was planted, the marigold cat disappeared.

  Chapter Four

  The Cat and the Flowers

  One day the marigold cat was there, eating enormous meals three times a day, organizing the dogs, bringing in flowers, curling up in dark places from which it was chased.

  The next it was gone.

  It was nowhere in the house. The dogs proved that. They came joyfully out of their baskets and began making up for lost time, grabbing things off the table, sleeping in doorways, chewing up the mail as it came through the mailbox.

  Nan called the police. The Humane Society. The wildlife park people. All her friends. Everyone she could think of who might know how to find a cat.

  No one was any use.

  Then Lulu and Mellie and Nan were very sad. They imagined all the terrible things that might have happened to the marigold cat.

  Starving.

  Run over.

  Kidnapped.

  Back in a bag (poor thing).

  To cheer them up, Nan’s friends came to visit to say how sorry they were to hear that the wonderful animal, about whom Nan had told them so many good things, had suddenly vanished. They were all very kind and they all brought presents for Lulu and Mellie. The presents (half a bottle of lavender perfume, a woolly hat, a CD of Christmas carols played on a trumpet, and a book about jungles without any pictures) were so surprising that Lulu and Mellie had to be reminded to say thank you almost every time. Instead of what they usually said, which was, “What! Is that for me? Oh my!”

  “It is good manners,” Nan reminded them, “to say thank you when someone gives you a present.”

  “Yes, Nan,” said Lulu and Mellie.

  Each time one of Nan’s friends visited, Nan told the story of the marigold cat again. How she had at last found a perfect pet. A flower-loving, dog-controlling, perfect pet. Each time the story got a little bit sadder.

  The dogs were not sorry the marigold cat was gone. They were very glad. You could tell by the way they swaggered through the house, their eyes gleaming, their tails like flags of victory.

  “You don’t need to be so pleased,” said Lulu huffily. “Because I am going to find that marigold cat! And you,” she added, suddenly inspired, “are going to help!”

  The dogs nearly fell over laughing with their tongues hanging out.

  “Never, never, never!” they seemed to say.

  “Oh yes, you are,” said Lulu and clipped on their leashes.

  “How, Lulu?” demanded Mellie. “How could they possibly help?”

  “The police use dogs for tracking,” said Nan, looking almost a little hopeful.

  “Brainy dogs, though,” said Mellie, and Nan stopped looking hopeful. Rocko’s leash was already tangled around his unbrainy legs. Sam had forgotten he was wearing one and was trying to walk under the fence.

  “They’re not very brainy,” admitted Lulu, untangling Rocko and hauling back Sam, “but I think they might be brainy enough.”

  They started in the yard. They had searched it before, but not with the dogs. Lulu watched them closely as she led them around. By the edge of the fence. In and out of the guinea pig shed. Nowhere near the garden. (The dogs no longer cared for gardening. The biffing monster had seen to that.) All along the rabbit hutches, though, and under the bushes.

  The dogs remained as cheerful as ever.

  “They wouldn’t look like that if the marigold cat was hiding in the yard,” said Lulu. “We’d better try the street.”

  Nan waited at the gate while she and Mellie set off together.

  “Down to the end one way,” said Lulu, “and then back and past the gate and do
wn to the other end. And then we’ll cross over. Come on!”

  It was a sunny, friendly evening. Lots of neighbors were out in their gardens. “Do you mind,” asked Lulu and Mellie, “if we come and look for a cat?”

  No one minded, and so Lulu and Mellie and the happy-tailed dogs looked at gardens with poppies, love-in-a-mist, and daisies. Gardens with roses and long tickling grasses. Gardens with weeds and gardens with vegetables.

  They went all the way to the end of the street and back to Nan at the gate without a hint of the marigold cat.

  “Now we’ll try the other way,” said Lulu.

  The dogs looked less cheerful. Rocko had been hoping that now they would go to the park. Sam thought it was high time they went home and did some more annoying of Nan.

  “The other way,” insisted Lulu, tugging their leads.

  The other way was not so interesting. They raced past Charlie’s house and the one next door to it that was as neat as a painted picture. They went right to the corner where Henry lived. “That’s far enough!” called Nan from the gate, so they turned again, the dogs now very bouncy because their noses were pointing toward home, Lulu and Mellie walking slowly, inspecting the flowers in every garden.

  “Marigolds in Charlie’s,” said Lulu. “I didn’t notice before.”

  They paused to look. Charlie’s house seemed half asleep with no family home and no Suzy on the windowsill.

  The dogs did not want to stop at Charlie’s house. They tried to pull Lulu and Mellie past. Their eyes were no longer gleams of mischief. Their tails no longer waved like flags.

  “Aha!” said Lulu and opened the garden gate.

  The dogs sat down and looked mutinous.

  “Let’s go around the back,” said Lulu. “No one would mind. They’d know we’re not burglars. Come on, Mellie! Come on, dogs!”

  Very, very grumpily the dogs slouched after Lulu and Mellie.

  Along the little path.

  Around past the picnic table.

  Into the back garden.

  It was extremely quiet.

  No Charlie. No Charlie’s family. No Suzy. No birds on the empty bird feeder. No sign of life…

  Except…

  One wilted marigold caught in the cat flap.

  Down on her stomach went Lulu, peering through the cat flap.

  The dogs moaned in despair, and they pulled on their leashes to pull Lulu away.

  But Lulu saw.

  The marigold cat had found a peaceful place for its flower collection at last. A trail of flowers led across the kitchen floor. There was a whole heap in the corner by Charlie’s rain boots. And on top of the heap, like an indoor bonfire, curled up and snoring (or maybe purring) slept the marigold cat.

  “Nan! Nan! Nan!” screamed Mellie, dashing back into the street with the dogs behind her. “We found it! We found it, on a heap of flowers in Charlie’s kitchen! Lulu’s there now, watching through the cat flap!”

  “Good gracious heavens!” cried Nan. “What a wonderful thing!”

  “Come and help us break down the door!”

  But it was not necessary to break down the door. Because ever since Charlie had buried his mother’s bag for buried treasure and the family had returned from vacation to find themselves locked out, a spare key had been left at Lulu’s house just in case. And while Lulu watched through the cat flap and Rocko and Sam moaned in despair, Mellie and Nan hunted out that key and opened the door.

  And then they stared and stared and stared and stared.

  And the marigold cat opened her eyes and purred and purred and purred and purred.

  “I have to sit down,” said Nan, and she did, at Charlie’s mom’s kitchen table, with her head in her hands.

  The marigold cat looked at Nan from among its orange cloud of fur, blinking its lime-green eyes, swishing its feather-duster tail. Then, very slowly, on beanbag paws, it padded across to Nan.

  The marigold cat was carrying something yellow, which she laid at Nan’s feet.

  A marigold kitten.

  And while Nan was saying, “Oh! What! Oh! Oh my goodness!” the cat fetched another.

  Two marigold kittens.

  Nan swallowed and mopped her eyes and her mouth opened and closed, but she did not say a word.

  “Nan,” said Lulu, while Mellie exploded in a heap of giggles, “if someone gives you a present, it’s nice to say thank you!”

  When Nan went back to her own house the cats went too, and the first thing she did when she got there was invite all her friends to admire them.

  At Lulu’s house, Rocko and Sam crawled out of their baskets and sighed with relief.

  “We named them Dandelion and Daisy,” Lulu told Charlie when he returned from vacation. “Dandy and Daisy. Perfect names. And perfect pets for Nan. They can help in the garden and look after the dogs when I take them to visit, and whenever she snores she can say it’s the cats.”

  “Does she snore?” asked Charlie.

  “She says not,” replied Lulu.

  “And is she still mad that you and Mellie opened that bag?”

  “Not at all,” said Lulu. “She’s very happy! She said thank you! That’s what she said. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ And she said, over and over, ‘I knew there was more than one cat in that bag.’”

  About the Author

  Hilary McKay is the eldest of four girls and grew up in a household of readers. After studying zoology and botany in college, Hilary went on to work as a biochemist. She became a full-time mother and writer after the birth of her two children. Hilary says one of the best things about being a writer is receiving letters from children. Hilary now lives in a small village in England with her family. When not writing, she loves walking, reading, and having friends over to visit.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Hilary McKay

  Illustrations © 2011 by Priscilla Lamont

  Published by Albert Whitman & Company

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  Distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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