Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

by Gwyneth Rees

  Cleo had therefore been furious when Mephisto and Felina had both chosen the Persian as one of their final ten, and he had found himself outvoted. He had been so angry that he had refused to go home with Mephisto and Cosmo after the auditions, and he had stayed on at the school instead, saying he would sleep there for the night.

  Needless to say, Mephisto hadn’t minded losing his house-guest one bit, and he was looking quite smug as he gazed down on Cosmo with half-closed eyes from the seat of his favourite armchair.

  ‘If I win that toy mouse,’ Cosmo was telling him excitedly, ‘I’m going to share it with Mia, and if she wins she’s going to share it with me.’

  ‘You’ll soon have nine younger kittens to share your toys with,’ India pointed out as she heaved herself up on to the sofa. ‘I hope you’re going to play gently with them, Cosmo. They’ll be a lot smaller than you to start with.’

  Cosmo tried to imagine what it would be like to have nine little brothers and sisters. ‘Nine is quite a lot, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Mephisto had clearly been thinking that too. ‘Is it possible Felina might have got it wrong?’ he asked India as he eyed her tummy.

  Just then they heard the cat flap opening and the professor-cat calling out to them from the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely, do you?’ India murmured, looking amused as she added, ‘But you can ask her if you want.’

  Mephisto licked his paw and didn’t reply.

  ‘Is it all right if Mia and I come in and eat some of your Crunchies munchies?’ Felina asked as she came into the living room. ‘All Amy’s given us is that anti-hairball cat food again.’

  Mia still hadn’t produced a hairball – and she was under strict instructions from Cleo to deliver one by tomorrow or she’d be disqualified from the competition.

  ‘Eat as much as you want,’ India told her.

  As it happened, Cosmo’s household had plenty of food. Not only had the Two-Shoes family left them a whole pile of dried stuff, but Mephisto had also brought them some fresh fish he had smelt in a kitchen on his way home. (Humans often left their back doors and kitchen windows open when they’d been cooking fish, which Mephisto always took as an invitation to help himself.) Mephisto, India and Cosmo had therefore eaten well that evening, and there had even been a small piece of fish left over which India had suggested they save in case one of them got peckish during the night.

  Cosmo was worried that Mia wouldn’t produce a hairball by the next day, despite changing her diet, and now he had a very good idea.

  He didn’t tell the others what he was thinking because Mia was there and he didn’t want to get her hopes up. But while the other cats were talking he went to find the leftover fish that his mother had put away behind the dustbin, and picked it up carefully between his jaws. It smelt very tasty and Cosmo couldn’t imagine how Cleo could resist it.

  Cosmo slipped out through the cat flap without the others noticing, and when he got to the school he jumped in through the toilet window and found Cleo standing in front of two piles of hairballs, holding something long and black between his teeth.

  Cosmo’s tail immediately bushed up and he dropped the fish.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ he mewed in alarm. The thing Cleo was holding was a witch’s wand.

  Cleo, who wasn’t a witch-cat and had therefore never seen a witch’s wand before, dropped it on to the floor to reply. ‘This is the flea detector I told you about. I’ve just used it to test these hairballs – and far too many of them have got fleas inside!’ He let out a very angry yowl.

  ‘But that’s a witch’s wand,’ Cosmo told him quickly, coming over to join him. ‘It looks like it’s been programmed with a spell. Who gave it to you?’

  Cleo stopped yowling and rubbed his nose with his paw. ‘That witch I went to see, of course. I’m not allowed to tell you her name. She needs me to give her a hundred hairballs, but she won’t accept them unless they’re flea-less, which is why she gave me this flea detector to test them with. She said all I had to do was wave it over each hairball in turn and it would beep if there was a flea inside. She said any hairball with a flea had to be thrown away. And since sixteen of these hairballs have fleas inside, that means I’m nowhere near my target number.’

  Cosmo was sniffing the wand now. ‘It must have been programmed with a flea-detecting spell,’ he told Cleo. ‘But why does this witch of yours want a hundred hairballs? What’s she going to do with them?’ Cosmo knew that cat hairballs could be used as ingredients in witches’ spells, but he also knew that they weren’t rare enough or powerful enough to be very valuable.

  ‘How should I know?’ Cleo replied, looking cross. ‘I don’t care about that! What matters to me is what she’s promised me in return!’

  ‘What has she promised you?’ Cosmo asked curiously.

  Cleo shook his head as if he couldn’t possibly tell, then he started to recount the hairballs, which he had just divided into two piles – the ones that didn’t have fleas in them, and the ones that did.

  ‘Cleo, please tell me,’ Cosmo urged. ‘Maybe I can help you!’

  ‘How could a little kitten like you help me?’ Cleo scoffed.

  ‘Because I’m a witch-cat, and witch-cats aren’t like ordinary cats! We have magic sneezes that are quite powerful.’

  ‘Powerful enough to remove fleas from hairballs?’ Cleo looked more interested now.

  ‘Maybe,’ Cosmo said. ‘But first you’ve got to tell me why you need these hairballs so much.’

  Cleo lowered his head and avoided meeting Cosmo’s eyes. Then he seemed to come to a decision and he looked up again. ‘If I tell you, you mustn’t tell anyone else,’ he said. ‘This has to be our secret, you understand?’

  ‘Of course,’ Cosmo agreed.

  So Cleo jumped up on to the nearest sink, where he stood and stared at himself in the mirror for a few moments. Then he looked down at Cosmo and began to tell him the story of his life – about how he had never felt good enough compared to other Persian cats because his nose wasn’t as short as it should be. ‘This witch has offered to perform a spell on my nose that will make it as short as any other Persian’s,’ Cleo finished. ‘She’ll do it for me in exchange for a hundred hairballs. But now I haven’t got a hundred to give her!’ He started to yowl again, only this time it was a true yowl of despair.

  Cosmo felt so sorry for Cleo that he went to fetch the piece of fish he had brought with him and dropped it on the floor in front of the older cat, hoping it might cheer him up. It did, but only for the twenty seconds it took Cleo to eat it. Then he started to yowl unhappily again.

  ‘Cleo, I think your face is nice just how it is,’ Cosmo tried to reassure him. ‘So does Mother. I think cats with flat faces look silly, even if they are pedigree Persians.’

  ‘Mephisto and Felina don’t think that though, do they?’ Cleo said. ‘They’ve just picked a pure-bred Persian to be in my Catwalk final! Oh, I should never have let your mother convince me to share the judging. My career will be ruined now – and it’s the only thing I have!’ And he started to yowl again quite hysterically.

  ‘Cleo, please stop making that noise,’ Cosmo begged him. ‘I think I know how to get rid of these fleas.’ Cosmo was remembering something he had seen his father do once, when Goody had been making a spell and had accidently emptied a whole jar of human dandruff into her cauldron, instead of the sprinkling of it that the spell required.

  Cleo stopped in mid-yowl, and stared at Cosmo. ‘You do?’

  ‘I think so.’ Cosmo quickly selected one of the sixteen hairballs that had a flea in it and nudged it across the floor so that it was apart from the others. Then he started to search the surrounding area for something that would make him sneeze.

  It was quite dusty in one corner so he stuck his nose into the dust and breathed in. Soon his nose felt very ticklish inside.

  ‘Right,’ he told Cleo. ‘I’m ready.’ He knew that he had to produce exactly the same sort of sneeze he had s
een his father do on the day Goody had had her dandruff problem.

  As Cleo watched anxiously, Cosmo turned his back on the hairball, then twisted his head round to sneeze backwards over his left shoulder. And as he sneezed, he thought as hard as he could about fleas. As the sneeze droplets showered down over the hairball, it began to glow, almost as if it had been lit up from the inside.

  ‘I’ve just done a removing spell on it,’ Cosmo explained to Cleo. ‘It’s meant to remove the thing you’re thinking about when you sneeze. But it’s the first time I’ve ever done one, so I hope it’s worked.’

  ‘Let’s use the flea detector and see.’ Cleo anxiously picked up the wand between his teeth and held the tip of it over the hairball. This time it didn’t beep! Cleo dropped the wand and started to race around the room in a way he hadn’t done since he was a young kitten. ‘We’ve done it!’ he miaowed loudly. ‘Another fifteen sneezes and I’ll have all the hairballs I need!’

  ‘One sneeze will easily cover several hairballs,’ Cosmo said hastily. ‘Let’s divide them up into batches of five, shall we? Then I’ll only have to do three more sneezes.’

  And so, three magic sneezes later, all the hairballs were flea-free.

  Cleo had managed to collect ninety-nine hairballs that day, including the particularly large (and thankfully flea-less) specimen he had contributed himself, so now all he needed was a final one to make up his total.

  ‘Remember the eleven cats I let into my auditions without their entry fees?’ he said to Cosmo. ‘Well, not one of them gave me a hairball afterwards like they promised. And since only one adult and one kitten among them have been picked as finalists, they’re the only two I can expect to get hairballs from now. The kitten is your friend Mia, of course.’

  ‘I was going to ask you about Mia,’ Cosmo said, suddenly remembering why he had come to see Cleo in the first place. ‘I was wondering if that fish I gave you could be her entry-fee instead of a hairball?’

  ‘But I need her hairball,’ Cleo said. ‘I’m depending on her. What if that other cat doesn’t give me one?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s having trouble bringing one up . . . it’s not her fault . . . she’s really trying . . . and since I’ve just done you this special favour . . .’

  ‘Which I’m very grateful for, Cosmo,’ Cleo put in quickly. ‘But we can’t have the other contestants thinking I’m showing favouritism towards Mia because her mother is one of the judges, can we? You know how cross cats can get if they think they’re being cheated out of anything.’

  ‘Well couldn’t you just say that Mia’s given you a hairball?’ Cosmo suggested, a little uncertainly now.

  ‘You want me to lie?’ Cleo looked horrified. ‘Can you imagine what would happen if it ever leaked out that I had been dishonest, Cosmo? No cat would take Cleo Cattrap’s Amazing Catwalk Extravaganza seriously ever again! Besides, don’t you see? All our hard work tonight . . . all your hard work . . . won’t count for anything if I don’t get my last hairball. And Mia and that other cat are my only chance.’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t know if Mia is going to be able to bring up a hairball in time—’ Cosmo began in a small voice.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Cleo swiftly reassured him. ‘I will give Mia all day tomorrow to produce her hairball – and she can chew all the grass in the school grounds if she likes, to help her. Now . . . hadn’t you better be going home?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Cosmo said.

  Cleo purred loudly. ‘Sleep well tonight, my little hero. I will – thanks to you!’ And he gave Cosmo an appreciative lick on top of his head, before starting to make himself comfortable on top of his collection of hairballs, which he judged would make a nice soft surface on which to curl up.

  ‘I wouldn’t lie there if I were you,’ Cosmo warned him as he jumped up to exit through the window.

  ‘Why not?’ Cleo stood up in alarm. ‘Is there some magic left in them that might harm me?’

  ‘No, but you don’t want to give them more fleas, do you?’

  And before Cleo could tell him off for being cheeky – and point out that the great Cleo Cattrap had never had a flea in his life – Cosmo had disappeared outside.

  9

  Cosmo got back to find that Felina and Mia had gone home, but that Scarlett and Bunty had just arrived, having come to check on the cats and to refill their food and water bowls. Bunty had also come to look for a spell recipe which she had previously lent to Goody.

  ‘It’s a recipe for a special potion that stops bad spells coming down your chimney,’ Bunty explained. ‘Since there are so many chimneys in the Witch Hospital I think it’s worth putting a spell-block on them while the babies are so vulnerable.’

  ‘How are the babies?’ India wanted to know. (India found that she had become particularly concerned about babies of all species since she had become pregnant – to her amazement she even felt quite benignly towards puppies.)

  ‘They’re all fine, thank goodness,’ Bunty told her. ‘None of them seem any the worse for having their toenails clipped.’

  ‘But they aren’t allowed to leave the hospital until their toenails have grown back a bit,’ Scarlett added. ‘Dad’s going to stay there with Spike and Mum until then, just in case that fake midwife turns up again.’

  ‘India, you seem to have put on an awful lot of weight recently,’ Bunty said suddenly, as India started to make her way towards the newly replenished water bowl. Her large belly was almost touching the floor as she walked.

  India gave a polite, non-committal mew. She didn’t want any two-legged interference when she delivered her kittens, and she was therefore keeping as quiet as possible about her condition.

  Fortunately Bunty’s attention was immediately caught by Mephisto, who was scratching himself very vigorously behind one ear. ‘I hope you haven’t got fleas, Mephisto,’ she said, frowning.

  As Scarlett went upstairs to collect some things from her bedroom, Cosmo bounded after her. As she reached the upstairs landing, Scarlett saw something odd fly past the window. It was an empty broomstick.

  ‘Broomsticks don’t usually fly about on their own, do they?’ Scarlett said, going over to the window to look out.

  ‘Not unless someone’s put a spell on them,’ Cosmo mewed.

  Scarlett hurried back downstairs and out through the front door where her own broomstick was lying beside Bunty’s on the front lawn. From the garden she could still make out the empty broomstick in the sky, glowing at the back end where it had been powered up by magic.

  Cosmo, who had followed her downstairs, noticed that their garage door was open and quickly went to look inside. Sybil’s broomstick, which had been kept in a corner of the garage until now, was missing. As Scarlett joined him, she spotted that too.

  ‘Come on, Cosmo!’ she called, running back out into the garden again. ‘Someone’s put a spell on Sybil’s broom! Let’s follow it and see where it goes!’

  It wasn’t yet completely dark, but it would be soon. Sybil’s broomstick was a long way ahead of theirs, still glowing at the end, and they had to fly very fast to catch up with it. It led them over endless rooftops – human ones with ordinary chimneys and witch ones with pink chimneys – and over the park and the railway line before it stopped abruptly and began to descend.

  They finally saw it fly down the chimney of a witch’s cottage that was situated at the end of a long twisty road. The cottage was set back from the road, well away from all the other houses in the street, which, judging from their chimneys, all belonged to humans. As Scarlett and Cosmo flew closer to the house they saw a green plaque on its front gate that said Sticky-End Cottage.

  ‘I hope it’s not called that because anyone who visits here comes to a sticky end,’ Cosmo mewed nervously.

  ‘I wonder who lives here,’ Scarlett murmured as she flew her own broomstick twice around the cottage, which had a pink chimney that was billowing out green smoke – a sure sign that the witch who lived there was home and that her caul
dron was busy. But as all the curtains in the house were closed, it was impossible to see inside.

  ‘This has got to be the perfect location for a bad witch’s house,’ Scarlett said. ‘No close neighbours to get in your way when you’re making evil spells, and only local humans to fool rather than other witches. We’d better get back and tell Aunt Bunty.’ She noted the name of the street – Rattlesnake Road – before heading home.

  Back at the house, Bunty was in the kitchen brewing up her chimney-blocking spell in the family cauldron, and Mephisto was out in the garden looking for Cosmo. As Scarlett’s broomstick landed on the grass, Mephisto called out crossly for his kitten to come inside at once. This particular spell of Bunty’s needed two magic sneezes from two different witch-cats, so Mephisto and Cosmo were both required to help.

  Scarlett and her aunt stood back to watch as the two witch-cats climbed up the cat steps on either side of the cauldron, and sneezed into it at exactly the same time. ‘AA-A-TISHOO!’ Their sneeze droplets immediately reacted with the other spell ingredients, and the liquid inside the cauldron began to bubble ferociously. Soon red and white stars began to shoot out of it.

  ‘When it’s settled down a bit, I’ll bottle some up and take it to the hospital,’ Bunty told them.

  Scarlett started to tell her aunt about Sybil’s broomstick flying off on its own, and how she and Cosmo had followed it.

  Bunty frowned. ‘You should have come to tell me before you flew off all by yourself like that, Scarlett! A witch-child and a witch-kitten are no match for a truly bad adult witch. You know that very well!’

  ‘Sorry, Aunt Bunty,’ Scarlett said quickly, ‘but don’t you want to know where we ended up?’

  After Scarlett had told her everything, Bunty said, ‘The Broom sisters used to live at the end cottage in Rattlesnake Road. It was put up for sale when they were both sent to prison. I don’t know who bought it after that.’