The Missing Kitten

by Holly Webb

  But it was closed.

  It had been wet play, and no one had wanted the rain blowing in. All the doors were closed, every single one – as the soaked, mouse-brown-striped kitten found when he ran frantically all the way round the building.

  Remembering the window he had climbed out of at home, Bootle looked up to see if there were any he could get through. There was a bench up against the wall, with a window right above it, and he jumped for the seat, scrabbling desperately until he could heave himself up. Then it was a little hop on to the arm, and then again on to the windowsill. But the window was shut, and everyone was gathered together at the other end of the classroom, looking at something and talking excitedly. They didn’t hear him scratching hopefully at the window, and at last he jumped down.

  Bootle sat under the bench and mewed miserably, calling for someone to come and let him in. He didn’t care if they took him back to the cottage again, as long as he was out of the rain. He would stay at home, and never try to follow anyone, if only he was dry.

  No one came. No one heard him over the hammering and splashing of the rain, and the bench was dripping all over him. Bootle crawled out, looking around for another place to shelter. There were trees, over on the edge of the path to the field. Perhaps it would be drier there. He ran through the wet grass, shivering as the stems rubbed along his soaked fur, and shaking water drops off his whiskers. He was so cold. Sitting still under the bench had made him shiver, and now he couldn’t stop.

  Then something made his ears flick up a little. There was another building. Just a little one, a shed, and he could see that the door was open!

  Bootle made one last effort, forcing his shaky paws to race to the shed, and struggle over the step and into the dusty dryness. He was so relieved to be out of the rain that he hardly noticed the sports equipment piled up all over the place – just the heap of old, rather tattered mats that he could curl up on for a rest.

  It was while Bootle was fast asleep that the caretaker remembered he hadn’t locked up the shed when he’d got out the spare chairs, and came grumpily back through the rain with his keys.

  “Bootle!” Scarlett called happily, as she opened the front door to let herself and Izzy and Jackson inside. “Bootle, come and see Izzy!”

  Dad hurried out of the kitchen, a worried expression on his face. “You didn’t see him in the lane then?”

  Scarlett stared at him, not understanding. “What?” she asked, with a frown.

  “Bootle! He’s not out there? I wondered if he’d slipped out somehow. He must have done, I can’t find him anywhere.” Dad glanced distractedly up and down the hallway, as though he thought Bootle might pop out from behind the wellies.

  “You can’t find him?” Scarlett stammered. “You mean – he’s lost?”

  “I’m sorry, Scarlett.” Dad ran his fingers through his hair till it stood up on end. “I had a long phone meeting all morning, it finished about an hour ago. Then I went to find Bootle and check that he was all right, but he’d disappeared. I just don’t understand how he can have got out!”

  “Maybe he didn’t?” Izzy suggested shyly. “He could be shut in somewhere. Olly’s always doing that. He climbed into a drawer once and went to sleep, and my mum didn’t see him and she shut the drawer. Then she got a real shock because her wardrobe was meowing.”

  “Maybe…” Dad murmured. But he looked doubtful. “Let’s check again.”

  Scarlett grabbed Izzy’s hand and pulled her up the stairs, while Jackson hurried into the living room.

  “Bathroom,” Scarlett muttered. “Not in here. The airing cupboard, maybe?” She pulled the door open, but no indignant kitten darted out. “Jackson’s room…” She peered in, and called, “Bootle! Bootle! He isn’t here, Izzy. I’m sure he’d come if he heard me calling. Or he’d meow to tell me where he was.”

  “He could be asleep. Try the other rooms, just in case.”

  Scarlett peered into her mum and dad’s room, opening the wardrobe, and all the drawers, but there weren’t even any gingery hairs. “This is my room,” she told Izzy, pushing the last door open. “Bootle!” Scarlett caught her breath. She’d been hoping to find him asleep on her bed, but he wasn’t there.

  “Your window’s open…” Izzy said slowly.

  “Oh, but he couldn’t get out through that.” Scarlett shook her head. “It’s really high.”

  Izzy frowned. “It depends how much he wanted to.”

  The girls climbed on to the bed so they could look out of the window.

  “You see? He could jump on there.” Izzy pointed out the low bit of the roof. “And there’s all that ivy stuff. That’s like a cat ladder.”

  Scarlett stared at her. “You think he really could have climbed down that?”

  Izzy looked down at the grass, which was an awfully long way away. “He might have done.”

  Dad came in, with Jackson behind. “He isn’t in the house,” he said grimly. “Was that window open, Scarlett?”

  “Yes!” Scarlett nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m really sorry, Dad, I didn’t think Bootle would try to climb out of it! He can hardly get up the stairs, and the windowsill’s really high.”

  “It isn’t your fault.” Dad put an arm round her. “I should have checked on him earlier. None of us realized he would be able to climb out of the window.” He leaned over to look out. “I think he did, though. Some of that creeper’s been torn away.”

  “Can we go and look for him?” Scarlett asked. “He might have tried to get to school again, and got lost… Oh, Dad, what if he’s gone on the road?”

  Dad hugged her tighter. “Don’t panic, Scarlett. I don’t think he would, he’s scared of the car noises. Remember how he meowed when we got him out of the car at the vet’s? Even though he was safe in his basket he didn’t like it when the cars went past. And why would he get mixed up about the way to school, when he made it yesterday?” He let go of Scarlett, and made for the door. “I’m just going to call the school and see if he’s turned up there.”

  Scarlett sank down on her bed, staring up at Izzy. “I can’t believe it. Everyone’s been telling me today how lucky I am, and how gorgeous Bootle is, and now he’s gone. I’ve only had him a couple of weeks, Izzy! How can I have lost him?”

  It was starting to get dark. Bootle scratched at the door with his claws again, but they were starting to hurt. He’d hoped that he could make that little thin strip of light and fresh air bigger, maybe even big enough to squeeze out. But all he’d managed to do was scratch off some of the paint. Miserably, he sank down, mewing faintly. No one seemed to hear him, and it had been quite a while since he’d last heard anyone outside.

  Maybe he would have to stay here all night, he thought anxiously. Scarlett wouldn’t know where he was. Perhaps she was looking for him? He stood up again quickly, even though his paws felt sore, and meowed as loud as he could. Scarlett would look for him, he was sure of it.

  But even though he called and called and called to her, she didn’t come, and at last he had to give up. He was worn out with scratching and meowing, and he dragged his sore paws back to the pile of mats. Then he curled up into a tight little ball, and lay there in the gathering darkness, wondering how long it would be before anyone found him.

  “We can make some ‘lost’ posters,” Izzy suggested the next morning. “If we ask Mrs Mason nicely, I bet she’ll let us use the ICT suite. We could put them up all round the village on the way home.”

  Scarlett nodded. She should have thought of that the night before. After Izzy had gone home, she and Jackson had searched the house all over again, and then Scarlett had gone to bed, and cried herself to sleep, knowing that her little kitten wasn’t curled up in his basket in the kitchen – he was out there in the dark, and she had no idea where.

  “We could go round the houses between here and school, and ask if anyone’s seen him,” she suggested, shivering at the thought of poor Bootle wandering around lost somewhere.

  “Ooh, yes,�
� Izzy agreed. “We could get people to check their garages. Don’t worry, Scarlett, I can help with that. I know almost everybody in the village, and it’s scary if you don’t know people.”

  “That would be great,” Scarlett said. She’d do anything if it meant finding Bootle, even if she had to talk to hundreds of grumpy people.

  A couple of the Year Six girls came past Scarlett and Izzy on their way in. “Hey, Scarlett! Did you get into trouble with Miss Wilson yesterday?” one of them asked.

  Scarlett stared at her in bewilderment. “W-what?” she murmured, suddenly shy.

  “When your kitten came back! I thought your brother said Miss Wilson had told your dad off? That he had to keep your kitten at home?”

  Scarlett forgot all about being shy. “You mean you saw Bootle? Are you sure it was yesterday?” she asked the older girl eagerly.

  “Yeah, definitely…” The older girl – Scarlett was pretty sure she was called Eleanor – frowned. “I saw him looking in the classroom window, but then he ran off. Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Bootle’s lost,” Scarlett explained. “Dad had him shut in, but he climbed out of an upstairs window. We think he must have tried to follow us. We weren’t sure he had made it to school, but if you saw him, then he was definitely here!”

  “You’re not mixing up the days?” Izzy asked Eleanor doubtfully.

  Eleanor shook her head. “Nope. I’m certain. It was yesterday when it was raining. And your kitten was soaked, Scarlett. His fur was actually dripping. I saw him out of the window; he was in the playground. Before break, I think.”

  “He must have got out of the window really soon after we left,” Scarlett murmured. “Thank you, Eleanor! I have to go and look for him!”

  There was sunlight coming in from somewhere else, Bootle noticed, as the shed grew slowly lighter that morning. It wasn’t just the space around the door. Where there was light, perhaps there was some sort of hole, or another window that might be open, so he could climb through it.

  It was up at the top, near the ceiling, he thought. Very high up. Much higher than Scarlett’s window. But then, there were a lot more things to climb in here. Piles of chairs, some benches and more of those mats. He’d just have to find a way to reach it.

  Bootle was sure that Scarlett was looking for him – almost sure, anyway. But the shed was all the way across the field from the school, he’d realized, as he lay curled up on the mats. What if Scarlett didn’t know about it? He couldn’t wait for someone to let him out. He would have to do it for himself.

  He stretched out his paws, which felt a little better this morning, though they still ached from all that scrabbling and scratching. Then he padded across the pile of mats, and made a wobbly jump on to an old wooden bench. That was the first step…

  “Where do we start?” Izzy asked, as they hurried across the playground.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should find Jackson and tell him that those girls saw Bootle,” Scarlett suggested, but she couldn’t see her brother anywhere, and she wanted to get started searching. “My dad rang up yesterday, remember? And he spoke to Mrs Lucy in the office, and she went and asked in the staff room. No one had seen Bootle. So he wasn’t just hanging around school looking for us.”

  Izzy frowned. “I know I keep going on about him being shut in somewhere, but…”

  Scarlett shook her head. “No, I think you’re right! It’s the only thing that makes sense. But where?”

  Izzy shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe the classroom cupboards? Do you think if we asked Mrs Lucy we could go and look? Oh no! There’s the bell.”

  Scarlett looked anxiously round as everyone began to collect their stuff and head into school. “I can’t go into school now! I can’t! Bootle’s here somewhere, I know he is!”

  Izzy patted her shoulder. “It’s OK. Look, we’ll tell Mrs Mason that Bootle might be here. We have to go in, Scarlett. We’ll get in trouble otherwise.”

  Scarlett almost didn’t care, but she supposed Izzy was right. Maybe they could ask the head teacher what to do? She’d said her dog used to follow her to school. She’d understand.

  But Miss Wilson was talking to one of the other teachers, and she just waved the girls past when Scarlett tried to hover in the doorway and talk to her.

  Mrs Mason was late coming into their class, and when she finally arrived she had her arms full of different coloured PE bibs, and she didn’t look as though she wanted to hear about kittens, even though Izzy tried her best.

  “Oh dear… Well, I’m sure you can have a look at break,” she said distractedly, when the girls tried to explain. “Sit down, please, you two.”

  Sit down! Scarlett opened her mouth to argue, but Mrs Mason wasn’t even looking at her any more.

  “Once we’ve done the register, everyone, I’ve got some exciting news – we’re going to start practising for Sports Day. We’ve scheduled in a couple of extra PE sessions, and the first one is this morning. So let’s just mark everyone in…” She moved names around on the whiteboard. “Where’s Keisha? Is she still not well? OK.”

  “I don’t want to do PE,” Scarlett whispered frantically. “I have to go and look for Bootle!”

  “PE!” Izzy nudged her. “I’ve just thought! Shut up in a shed, Scarlett, we said he might be!”

  “What are you talking about?” Scarlett was biting back tears.

  “There’s a little shed at the end of the field, where Mr Larkin, the caretaker, keeps stuff that doesn’t get used all that much. He was definitely carrying chairs in and out yesterday; I heard him complaining about how wet he’d got.”

  “So the shed was open?” Scarlett breathed, her eyes widening.

  Izzy nodded. “It must have been.”

  “Now go and get changed, please, everyone,” Mrs Mason called. “Then we’ll go up to the hall, as it’s still a bit too wet on the field.”

  “I’m not getting changed,” Scarlett said, glaring at Izzy as though she thought her friend might tell her off. “I’m going to find Bootle.”

  Izzy shrugged. “Uh-huh, and I’m coming with you. Come on.”

  They hurried out of the classroom, ahead of everyone else, and Izzy grabbed Scarlett’s hand. “It’s this way. There’s a side door, come on.” She pulled Scarlett down the corridor, and pushed open a door Scarlett hadn’t even known about. “Quick way out to the field.”

  “Hey, Izzy!” someone called. “We’re in the hall, not the field! And you aren’t changed!”

  But Izzy and Scarlett were already running across the damp grass.

  Bootle wobbled on the old chair. He was almost there – he could see the narrow wooden windowsill and the dirty pane of glass. The wind was shaking it, as though it was loose. If he could only get to it, maybe he could push his way out, somehow?

  He balanced himself again, teetering on the edge of the chair. He’d scrambled his way up the whole pile, and it had taken so long. If he misjudged his jump to the window, he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to climb up all over again. He was so hungry, and tired, and his paws hurt.

  His whiskers flicked and shook as he tried to work out how he could make the jump. It was much further than he’d ever jumped before. And the strip of wood along the window was so very small. But if it meant he could get out… Then he would go back home, and wait there for Scarlett. He would see if he could get back in through the cat flap.

  He tensed his muscles to spring, and crouched there, trembling a little, trying to summon up the courage to leap.

  Then his ears twitched. He could hear someone! People, talking!

  “Bootle! Bootle, are you in there? Is the door locked, Izzy?”

  That was Scarlett!

  Bootle let out a shrill desperate meow, and forgot to worry about how narrow the ledge was. He just went for it, scrabbling madly with his paws as he almost made it, and then heaving himself up on to the windowsill.

  Then he batted his paws against the glass, mewing frantically.

  “
I can hear him! He is in there, Izzy, you were right!”

  “It’s locked. I’ll go and get Mr Larkin.”

  Bootle heard feet thudding away, and cried out in panic. They hadn’t heard him! They were going!

  “It’s OK, Bootle. Where are you?”

  There were noises outside and Bootle banged his nose against the grubby window, trying to see what was happening.

  Scarlett pulled herself up on to the little tiny ledge on the outside of the window. “I can see you! It’s really you, Bootle. Oh, I’ve been so worried. I can’t believe you climbed out of a window.” She giggled with relief, and sniffed. “And now you’re trying to climb out of this one, aren’t you, silly kitten.”

  Bootle mewed and scraped, but the window wouldn’t open. How was he going to get to Scarlett?

  “Oh! Mr Larkin! The keys!” Scarlett’s face disappeared from the window, and Bootle wriggled himself round as the door rattled and shook. And then it opened.

  With a joyful yowl, he bounded back to the wobbly chair, and took a flying leap to the mats, and then Scarlett was there, hugging him.

  Bootle purred and purred, and rubbed his face against hers, and purred louder.

  “Izzy! Scarlett! What are you doing out here? Oh! Oh, no, has he been shut in here?” Mrs Mason peered worriedly into the dusty shed.

  “All night,” Scarlett told her, shivering. “Can I call my dad, Mrs Mason, please? Can I take him home?”

  Mrs Mason nodded. “Yes, you’d better take him up to the office again. I hope he doesn’t keep doing this, Scarlett.”

  Scarlett stroked Bootle, who was pressed against her cardigan like he never meant to let go. “Me too.”

  “Well, he got soaking wet and trapped in a shed, so maybe he’ll stay at home now,” Izzy suggested.