Kitten Cupid

by Anna Wilson

  But, flicking Jazz an awkward glance, Kezia turned quickly on her heel and scuttled off.

  ‘Ha!’ said Jazz, punching the air in victory. ‘Jazz one, Kezia NIL!’

  ‘You make sure that’s the way it stays, girl,’ said Danni, giving her a squeeze.

  Epilogue

  Kitten Cupid

  And thankfully, that was the way it stayed. Jazz went home that day on a massive high, to find out that not only had she won one over on the bullies, but Cupid was hers for keeps.

  ‘Seems those Morrises can’t come and get me,’ he told me later. ‘Can’t or won’t, more like . . . They’ve moved to the other side of the world, would yer believe it? To a place called “Ors-trail-ya” or summin. And they ’ad the audacity to tell my Jazzie’s mum that my babe was welcome to me, cos as far as they were concerned I was a thug and a bully. Would yer credit it?’

  I bit my lip. ‘Noooo,’ I said with barely concealed sarcasm. ‘How could anyone say that about a cute little heartbreaker like you, Cupid?’

  Life really did calm down immensely once Jazz had got what she wanted.

  ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about now, Jaffsie,’ I told my little kitten once I had filled her in on the day’s excitement. ‘Cupid is so comfy in his new home that there is no way he’ll be coming round here any more.’

  ‘Well, me is relieved ’bout that, me can tell you,’ Jaffsie said, snuggling into my lap.

  Dad was pleased things had all been sorted too. ‘Perhaps we can have a bit of peace and quiet around here now,’ he said that night at supper. ‘What with all your pet-sitting nonsense getting you into trouble, and then adopting Jaffa – only to find she kept running off – and then this breaking-and-entering stuff with Cupid . . . you must admit that life’s been more than a little “catastrophic” – ha ha haa!’ He laughed uproariously at his own pathetic joke.

  ‘Tee-hee!’ Bex joined in. ‘Oh, you are funny, Nigel,’ she cooed, leaning into him for a hug.

  I rolled my eyes, but inside I was actually glowing. My best mate was happy again, my kitten was safe and my dad was beaming like a chimp who’s won the banana lottery on a rollover week.

  If I had any worries at all, it was that once the excitement had faded Jazz might move on to her next crazy project, i.e. begging Fiona to let her do her Cat’s Eye programme. But luckily for all of us, Jazz’s bonkers idea had evaporated into thin air and was not mentioned again.

  ‘Maybe she learned her lesson,’ Fergus said when we were discussing it one day after school. ‘I mean, if she hadn’t got involved in the Pets with Talent thing, she never would have been picked on by Kez.’

  ‘Yeah, that and the fact that she’s so lurrrrrved up with Cupid. She is pretty distracted these days.’ I sniggered.

  Fergus stared at the ground and shuffled his feet. ‘Yeah, everyone seems kind of paired up these days, in a way,’ he said carelessly.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I shot back.

  ‘Well, there’s Jazz and Cupid, your dad and Bex and, er . . . yeah . . .’ He tailed off.

  ‘Hmm,’ I said thoughtfully.

  It was true: Dad and Bex were definitely an item now, there was no denying it. Bex was round at our place more often than not. But somehow it had happened so naturally that I hadn’t really noticed. And now that I had noticed, I realized that I was totally cool with it.

  ‘So, like, d’you want to go to the cinema on Friday?’ Fergus said in a rush, still staring at the floor.

  ‘Er, yes,’ I said, finding the floor rather interesting myself, all of a sudden.

  Well, what d’you know? Life never stops being full of surprises, does it?

  A Message from the Author

  ‘Where do you get your inspiration from?’

  Whenever I tell people I am a writer, this is what they often ask me. Some people seem to think that inspiration is a special kind of magic that comes to writers out of thin air while they are sitting at their desk, staring at a blank screen or a clean sheet of paper. But the answer is actually much more straightforward than that: inspiration comes from watching and noting down what happens around you in your life.

  When I finished Kitten Smitten I wanted to write another story about Bertie and Jaffa. For ideas, I thought back over the various adventures that my cats, Inky and Jet, have been through in the five years they have been living with us. Now, as those of you with pets will know, funny things happen all the time when you are living with animals. And sometimes scary things too . . .

  When Inky and Jet were still quite small, a scary thing happened to them. They were bullied, just like Jaffa is in Kitten Cupid, by a bigger, tougher cat. At the time, we lived near a couple of farms, and some of the cats on those farms were pretty frightening beasts – not at all like my pampered moggies. If you are a farm cat you sometimes have to fend for yourself and, er, get your own dinner, if you know what I mean, and that can make you into a bit of a toughie. The cats in our neighbourhood could be really fierce, and it wasn’t long before one of these menaces found out that he could ‘break and enter’ our house through the cat flap. He was soon tucking into Jet and Inky’s food, using our utility room as if it was a drive-through takeaway restaurant! And did Jet or Inky put up a fight when the intruder appeared? Not a bit of it! They were far too worried about what he would do to them, and always hid whenever the bully appeared.

  In the end I got fed up with putting out food only to find it had been gobbled up by the Bully Cat, so I lay in wait for him one evening. He usually scarpered before I managed to get hold of him, but this time I just sat and waited quietly. I needed to teach that cat a lesson he would not forget . . .

  He normally crashed in around teatime, and sure enough he arrived on the dot, the minute I had put the food out. I waited until he was face down in the cat dish, guzzling and chomping away, then I crept up behind him and –

  SPLASH! I chucked the entire contents of a watering can all over him! My children thought it was very cruel, but he never came back – and anyway, I reckoned he deserved a soaking for being such a meanie to my own cats.

  So that is where I got my inspiration for Bob/Cupid: of course I changed the story to create what I hope is a funnier tale – and one with a kinder and happier ending!

  There is one other element of Kitten Cupid which comes from a true experience: Inky really did force her way through a locked cat flap. We had shut her into the house to stop her from running off, because she had to go to the vet the next morning and she always seems to have a sixth sense about this. She has been known to disappear for the whole day when she’s due to go, and this time we were not taking any chances.

  The next morning, when it was time to put her in the cat box, we opened the utility-room door to find the cat flap hanging from its hinges, the locks broken and clumps of black fur and smears of blood around the edges. We were so worried – we thought the Bully Cat might have come back or that, even worse, a fox or badger might have got in and terrorized Inky. We spent all day looking for her to no avail.

  Finally, at the end of the day, Inky appeared in the garden, cool as an ice pop, with a look on her face as if to say, ‘You didn’t really think you could fool me, did you?’

  “We had the last laugh though – she had to go to the vet right away because she had a small cut on her head from the broken cat flap and she needed antibiotics as well as the injections we had booked her in for in the first place! Daft cat.

  If you would like to know any more stories about my pets, or if you have any questions for me, why not take a look at my website: www.annawilson.co.uk, or my blog: www. annawilsonbarkingmad.blogspot.com, where you can leave me a comment. And if you would like to write to me, you can email me at: annawilson@macmillan.co.uk, or send a letter to:

  Anna Wilson

  c/o Macmillan Children’s Books

  20 New Wharf Road

  London

  N1 9RR

  Love

  Anna

  xxx

  PS Don’t
forget to enclose a stamped addressed envelope if you want me to return any pictures you send me!

  Also by Anna Wilson

  Kitten Kaboodle

  Kitten Smitten

  Puppy Love

  Pup Idol

  Puppy Power

  And chosen by Anna Wilson

  Fairy Stories

  Princess Stories

  First published 2000 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2010 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-53478-9 PDF

  ISBN 978-0-330-53477-2 EPUB

  Text copyright © Anna Wilson 2010

  The right of Anna Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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