by Holly Webb
Gran sighed and put down her mug of tea. “I’m just a bit worried about Lucy. I’m not sure she’s settling all that well with the other girls at school. She had a bit of an argument with one of them this afternoon, just as I was picking her up. She didn’t want to talk about it very much, but it seems as though she’d told this girl – Sara, her name is – that we had a kitten.”
Dad stared at her. “But why on earth would she say that?”
Gran shrugged. “To fit in? To make herself a bit more exciting? We’re asking a lot of them, you know, starting at a new school.”
Dad’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose so. But I thought it was the best thing to do…”
“I still think it is.” Gran reached over and patted his hand. “But I’m wondering if a pet would help Lucy settle.”
“You don’t like pets!”
“Whatever gave you that idea? I wouldn’t want a dog, I couldn’t manage the walking, but I love cats!” Gran smiled at him, a little sadly. “Actually, I suppose we didn’t have any pets when you were younger, did we? I haven’t had a cat of my own for a long time. Not since Catkin died. He was twenty, you know, and I’d had him since I was a little girl. I didn’t want another cat for a while after that and somehow then it just never seemed to be the right time. But I wouldn’t mind a cat now. Especially with Lucy and Wiliam to help look after it.”
“Well, it would be wonderful for Lucy,” Dad agreed. “I always said no before, because we were out of the house all the time.” He got up and took his plate over to the dishwasher. “I’ll go and check on her. I know she’ll probably be asleep, but I just want to see that she’s all right…”
Catkin woke up as the morning light shone into Lucy’s room. She didn’t have any blinds yet and the morning was bright and sunny. The kitten stretched blissfully, padding her paws into a patch of sun just outside the wardrobe. Then she hunched up the other way, arching her back like a spitting witch’s cat and stepped delicately out into Lucy’s bedroom.
Lucy was still fast asleep, huddled up under her duvet, so Catkin jumped up on to the bed to sniff at her. She smelled interesting, like breakfast and warm sunshine. But she didn’t wake up when Catkin dabbed a chilly nose against her ear – only muttered and turned over, which made the duvet shift alarmingly. Catkin sprang down before she slid off and sat on the rug.
When she’d washed her ears thoroughly, both sides, she stalked off across the room. Something was different and she hadn’t quite worked out what it was. There was something in the air, something fresh and new.
The door was open!
Lucy had shut it carefully, of course, when she came upstairs to bed. But then her dad had come up to check on her. Catkin and Lucy had both been fast asleep and neither of them had seen that he had left the door ajar. Just wide enough for a small, determined paw to hook it open.
Catkin nosed her way out and started to hop carefully – front feet, then back feet – down the stairs. It felt unfamiliar. Then she trotted along the landing, sniffing curiously at the different doors. She padded into William’s room, but a wobbly pile of books slid over when she nudged it, so she darted out again and set off down the next flight of stairs to the bottom. She sniffed her way carefully down the hallway and into the kitchen.
Most of the food was shut away in cupboards, but Dad had left a loaf of bread out on the counter and Catkin could smell it. She sat on the floor, staring up and thinking…
Lucy woke up when the sunny patch from the window moved round on to her bed. She blinked sleepily, wondering why it was that she felt so happy and scared all at the same time. Then she sat up straight, remembering.
Catkin!
Today they had to find a way to tell Gran and Dad what had happened, and make them see that Catkin needed to stay with them.
The kitten wasn’t sitting on the windowsill the way she had been the day before, so Lucy kneeled up in bed and leaned over to peer into the wardrobe. “Catkin,” she called. “Puss, puss, puss…”
But no little kitten face appeared and Lucy’s heart began to beat faster. “Where did you go?” she murmured. She hopped out of bed and crouched down to check underneath, but there was nothing there except dust. No Catkin hiding in the cardboard boxes, or behind the little bookshelf by the door.
The open door.
Lucy gasped. “I shut it!” she whispered to herself. “I know I did. Oh no.” She hurried down the stairs, going as fast as she could on tiptoe, so as not to wake Dad or Gran. She dashed into William’s room.
“Wake up! William, wake up! Have you seen Catkin? I don’t know where she is.”
William stared at her sleepily, blinking like an owl, and then he squeaked and jumped out of bed.
“Where would she go?”
“Shh! I don’t know, maybe the kitchen?”
William nodded. “Definitely the kitchen.”
They hurried down the stairs, freezing to a stop every time one of them creaked. The house was old and they hadn’t had time to learn which stairs to step over.
“Dad’ll hear us,” Lucy whispered miserably. “Hurry up, we have to find her and get her back into my room.” She kneeled down on the kitchen floor, looking around. She hadn’t noticed how many tiny, kitten-sized hiding places there were in here before. On the chairs, under the table. Down the side of the oven. “Oh! What if she’s climbed into the washing machine?” Lucy gasped. “I read about a cat who did that once.”
But the washing machine was empty and so were all the other spots they could think of. Lucy sat down on the floor, looking helpless. “I can’t think of anywhere else,” she murmured. “All the windows are closed, aren’t they?”
William nodded. “It was cold last night. Unless – Gran always sleeps with her bedroom window open.”
A large tear spilled down the side of Lucy’s nose. “Maybe she went out that way, then. She didn’t want to stay. Catkin’s gone!”
“Whatever’s the matter with you two? Why are you up at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning?” Gran demanded. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, wrapped in her dressing gown. “Lucy, you’re crying! What’s wrong?” She put her arms around Lucy, pulling her up from the floor.
“We’ve lost her!” Lucy sobbed into Gran’s shoulder. She didn’t care about keeping Catkin a secret any more. It was too late now.
“Lost who?” Gran stared at Lucy in puzzlement and so did Dad, who’d come in behind her, looking sleepy.
“Catkin,” William explained, coming to lean against Dad’s dressing gown. “Our kitten. Lucy found her in the garden. She was in Lucy’s wardrobe, but when we woke up she’d gone.”
“You had a kitten shut in your wardrobe?” Dad said slowly.
“Not shut in,” Lucy shook her head, gulping back tears. “Just her bed was in there and her litter tray. She could go anywhere in my room. We couldn’t leave her in the greenhouse – the glass is full of holes and it was pouring with rain on Thursday night.”
Dad and Gran looked shocked. “But what were you feeding her?” Gran asked, frowning.
“Sandwiches, mostly. She loves chicken.” Lucy sniffed. “Just like me. We saved bits of our lunches for her and she was getting tame. We thought she was going to stay with us, but now she’s run away. She must have gone through your window, Gran. It’s the only one that was open.” Lucy slumped down on one of the kitchen chairs.
Gran moved slowly over to the counter to put the kettle on, tidying away the breadcrumbs and pushing shut a half-open drawer on the way. “I need a cup of tea,” she murmured. “A kitten in your wardrobe…”
“Where did she come from in the first place? That’s what I want to know,” Dad said, sitting down opposite Lucy with William on his knee.
“The alley down by the baker’s,” Lucy explained tiredly. “There were three of them – the two tabbies got adopted, but nobody cared about the little black-and-white kitten. And then she just turned up in our garden.”
“And you named her Catkin? Like my Catkin
?” Gran asked, getting mugs out of the cupboard.
“You said your kitten was black and white, too,” Lucy explained. “And it’s a sweet name. It was just right.”
“Oh dear,” Gran sighed. “Perhaps she was just too wild to be a pet, Lucy. If she’s never really known people…”
“But she wasn’t wild,” Lucy tried to explain. She could feel herself starting to cry again. “She was shy, but she purred at us. And she loved our food, even if she didn’t really love us yet.”
“Well, perhaps we could go back to the alley by the shops and look for her,” Gran said thoughtfully, leaning over to get a clean tea towel out of the drawer.
“You mean – if we found her we could bring her back home again?” Lucy gasped. “We can keep her?” She jumped up. “Can we go round there now?”
William wriggled off Dad’s knee. “Right now?”
But Gran was standing staring into the tea-towel drawer. “I don’t think we need to… Look.”
Lucy leaned over and clapped her hand across her mouth. Curled up in among Gran’s neatly ironed tea towels was a black-and-white kitten, half-asleep and blinking up at them in confusion.
“I shut the drawer…” Gran murmured. “When I went to make the tea. It was open, just a little. You know how that drawer sticks sometimes…”
“Just enough for a skinny kitten to climb in, but not enough for us to see her!” Lucy said, her eyes wide.
Sleepily, Catkin stared up at Lucy and Gran and let out a little purr. Perhaps there was going to be food. The bread seemed a long while ago and it had been a lot of effort to get up on to the counter and steal a slice. She was hungry again.
“What a sweetheart,” Gran said, laughing as Catkin stepped carefully out of her nest in the drawer. She rubbed her furry face against Gran’s hand and purred even louder. “Just like my Catkin,” Gran said, petting her ears. “You’re staying now, are you?”
Catkin jumped down to the floor and wove her way round Gran’s ankles and then Lucy’s, still purring.
“That means yes,” Lucy whispered. “I know it does.”
“You actually had her hidden in your wardrobe?” Sara asked Lucy again, as they followed Gran home from school on Monday afternoon. “You had a secret kitten?”
“Yes. And I really wanted you to see her, but I couldn’t let Gran find out. Or I thought I couldn’t. It turns out we probably should have just told her to start with.”
“That wouldn’t have been as exciting,” Sara said, shaking her head.
“No.” Lucy smiled at her. “It was lovely, Catkin being our secret. But now we can play with her without worrying about Dad and Gran. And she still likes my bedroom best in all of the house.”
“Shall we pop in and buy a cake for after tea, girls?” Gran suggested, stopping as they reached the baker’s. “Oh, William, come back!”
Lucy and Sara giggled as William raced ahead, flinging open the door of the baker’s. When they caught up with him, he was already telling Emma behind the counter that he wanted a marshmallow ice cream.
“You know the black-and-white kitten, the one that was living in your yard?” Lucy said shyly to Emma, after they’d chosen their cakes. “She came into our garden and we’re going to keep her!”
Emma smiled delightedly. “Oh, that’s such good news! I looked for her, after you two told me she was there, but I never saw her. I did wonder if you’d imagined her.”
“No, she’s just a bit shy.” Lucy smiled to herself, remembering Catkin chasing madly round the kitchen after a ping-pong ball that morning and then collapsing in her lap, exhausted, with her paws in the air. She wasn’t shy with them, not any more.
“I’ve got news for you, too,” Emma went on, as she put their chocolate doughnuts into a bag. “I called the cat shelter about the kittens’ mum, to ask them what the best thing was to do. They’re going to catch her and spay her so she doesn’t have more kittens. They said she probably won’t ever be tame enough to be a house cat, but if she’s not trying to feed kittens all the time she’ll be a lot less thin and worried, poor thing. So they’ll bring her back and she can live in the yard. We’ll put scraps out for her.”
“Thank you!” Lucy forgot to be shy and gave Emma a hug. “You’re amazing. I never even thought of doing that!”
“Maybe Catkin can come back and visit her,” William suggested, reaching into his bag and picking the hundreds and thousands off his marshmallow ice cream.
“Maybe.” Lucy smiled, imagining the two cats nose to nose, sniffing hello. All of a sudden she couldn’t wait to get home and see Catkin and show her off to Sara, too.
Her own kitten, not-so-secret any more…
Other titles by Holly Webb
The Snow Bear
The Reindeer Girl
The Winter Wolf
Animal Stories:
Lost in the Snow
Alfie all Alone
Lost in the Storm
Sam the Stolen Puppy
Max the Missing Puppy
Sky the Unwanted Kitten
Timmy in Trouble
Ginger the Stray Kitten
Harry the Homeless Puppy
Buttons the Runaway Puppy
Alone in the Night
Ellie the Homesick Puppy
Jess the Lonely Puppy
Misty the Abandoned Kitten
Oscar’s Lonely Christmas
Lucy the Poorly Puppy
Smudge the Stolen Kitten
The Rescued Puppy
The Kitten Nobody Wanted
The Lost Puppy
The Frightened Kitten
The Secret Puppy
The Abandoned Puppy
The Missing Kitten
The Puppy who was Left Behind
The Kidnapped Kitten
The Scruffy Puppy
The Brave Kitten
The Forgotten Puppy
My Naughty Little Puppy:
A Home for Rascal
New Tricks for Rascal
Playtime for Rascal
Rascal’s Sleepover Fun
Rascal’s Seaside Adventure
Rascal’s Festive Fun
Rascal the Star
Rascal and the Wedding
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of Little Tiger Press
1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
Text copyright © Holly Webb, 2015
Illustrations copyright © Sophy Williams, 2015
Author photograph copyright © Nigel Bird
My Naughty Little Puppy illustration copyright
© Kate Pankhurst
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2015.
eISBN: 978–1–84715–636–5
The right of Holly Webb and Sophy Williams to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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