Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘Cleo, how could you be so stupid?’ Mephisto spat out.

  ‘Cleo, you’ve got to tell us the name of this witch – and where she lives!’ Cosmo mewed.

  ‘But I can’t! I promised I—’ Cleo broke off abruptly, backing away from the other cats. ‘Her name is Selina Slaughter,’ he mumbled. ‘But I’m sure she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why, she makes such delicious tuna sandwiches!’

  ‘Selina Slaughter lives at Sticky-End Cottage and she’s the same witch who stole Spike’s toenails,’ Cosmo told them. ‘Bunty’s been trying to find her too. She’s a friend of Sybil’s!’

  Mephisto’s tail bushed up and he growled deep in his throat. ‘Any friend of Sybil’s is an enemy of ours! We must go after Mia at once!’

  11

  ‘I think a few of us need to sneak into this cottage and rescue Mia quietly before Selina finds out we’re on to her,’ Tani said. ‘We don’t want her flying into a panic. A bad witch in a panic is always a dangerous thing.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Mephisto said. ‘As the most senior witch-cat here, I will head up the rescue party. Cosmo – you must come too and show us the way.’

  ‘I’m coming as well,’ Felina said firmly. ‘I know I’m not a witch-cat, but Mia is my kitten.’

  And so it was decided that Mephisto, Tani, Cosmo and Felina would all fly to Sticky-End Cottage on Goody’s broomstick. Felina had never ridden a broomstick before and she was a little nervous at the prospect, but Cosmo quickly reassured her. ‘Don’t worry – you can sit in the basket. Mia always sits in the basket whenever I take her flying and she says it’s very comfortable. She says—’ He broke off as it suddenly hit him that unless they found Mia soon, she wouldn’t be going broomstick-riding with him ever again.

  The rescue party (with Tani’s two kittens in tow) quickly set off for Cosmo’s house. As Cosmo went to find a suitably large basket to hook over the end of the broom, Matty and Hagnus were told by their mother to stay there with India, who was upstairs having a rest.

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t be part of the rescue party too,’ Hagnus protested in his whiniest miaow. ‘It’s not fair that you’re letting Cosmo go and not us!’

  ‘Cosmo is the only one who knows the way to the witch’s cottage,’ Tani told him firmly.

  ‘Cleo knows it too!’ Hagnus pointed out stubbornly.

  ‘Cleo Cattrap is not to be trusted!’ Mephisto growled, so fiercely that Hagnus decided to drop his argument and do as he was told instead.

  With Mephisto in control of their broom speed, it didn’t take them long to reach at which point they slowed down and took care not to draw attention to themselves as they approached Selina’s cottage.

  ‘Bunty said that the Broom sisters used to live here, and I know they had a cat,’ Mephisto said, ‘which means there’s bound to be a cat flap in the back door.’

  They landed the broomstick behind a large bush, so that they wouldn’t be spotted if Selina was looking out of the window. Then they crept towards the back door where the old cat flap was still in position.

  ‘Follow me,’ Mephisto whispered.

  It was very quiet inside the kitchen and it seemed as if nobody was at home. A large cauldron was sitting in the fireplace, but there was nothing brewing inside it. ‘She was definitely making a spell last night,’ Cosmo said, ‘because Scarlett and I saw the smoke.’

  ‘Let’s split up and search the rest of the house,’ Mephisto suggested. ‘Cosmo, you come with me.’

  Cosmo and his father soon found themselves in the living room, which was a perfectly ordinary-looking room at the opposite end of the cottage to the kitchen, with a big fireplace in the middle of one wall. Something about the room was bothering Cosmo, though, and after a minute or two he realized what it was. ‘There’s only one chimney on the roof of this cottage and it’s at the other end of the house,’ he told his father. ‘So this can’t be a real fireplace, can it?’

  Mephisto immediately went over to inspect the fireplace more closely. He stood up on his hind legs to have a sniff inside the chimney and hissed as he bumped his head.

  ‘There’s no upwards chimney,’ he told Cosmo. ‘This is a reverse fireplace. The old witch I lived with when I was a kitten had one of these. There must be a downwards chimney instead.’ He started to nudge at various bits of the fireplace with his nose, until he uncovered a loose piece of coal that was sparkling rather conspicuously, as if it contained magic. Mephisto prodded it with his paw and mewed at Cosmo to stand back.

  Just in time Cosmo moved out of the way as the fireplace started to make a loud grinding noise.

  Felina and Tani heard the noise and came to see what was happening. ‘The rest of the house seems empty,’ Tani said, ‘apart from some white mice locked in a cage in one of the upstairs rooms. We offered to let them loose, but they shrieked at us to go away.’ She let out a surprised mew as the fireplace started to swing upwards and outwards.

  They all stared at it in amazement until it stopped moving, then Mephisto gingerly stepped forward to peer down into the hole that had been uncovered.

  Almost immediately they heard a faint miaow coming from below.

  ‘That’s Mia!’ Felina exclaimed.

  ‘Come on,’ Mephisto said. ‘It won’t be a big drop. Follow me.’

  So they all jumped down into the chimney, which was obviously what Selina did herself when she wanted to descend, because a large soft cushion had been placed at the bottom on which to land.

  They found themselves in a large underground cellar that was lit with green fluorescent lamps. There seemed to be a lot of bats hanging from the ceiling, though it was hard to tell if they were real, stuffed, or the artificial kind that many witches used to decorate their houses. There was a big table in the centre of the room and in one corner was a large cage. Inside the cage sat Mia, Albert-of-the-street and – to everyone’s surprise – Scarlett!

  Cosmo rushed over and poked his nose between the bars to touch his two friends, and Felina went with him, clearly relieved to be reunited with her kitten again.

  ‘I’m so glad you found us!’ Scarlett gasped. ‘Selina must have followed me home this morning. When I got back into the kitchen with the cat-carrier to take India to the vet, Selina was there waiting for me.’

  Cosmo instantly remembered the signs of a struggle that he had seen in the kitchen earlier that day. It all made sense now.

  Felina was licking Mia through the bars of the cage as Mia assured her mother that she hadn’t been harmed – yet. ‘But we have to get out of here before Selina gets back!’ she mewed.

  ‘Stand back and I’ll do a magic sneeze on the padlock,’ Mephisto told them.

  ‘I’ve already tried that,’ Albert-of-the-street said gruffly. ‘I’m a witch-cat too. She must have put some sort of anti-sneeze magic on the lock, because it doesn’t work.’

  ‘She said . . . she said if one of us hasn’t brought up a hairball by the time she gets back, she’ll take us to see Sybil at the flea clinic – and that Sybil will cut us open and help herself,’ Mia told them in a frightened voice.

  Felina growled fiercely and Scarlett said quickly, ‘I think Selina will be back very soon. She’s left a load of important spell ingredients on that table. She wouldn’t tell me what spell she’s making, but it definitely involves witch-babies’ toenails.’

  Cosmo, Mephisto and Tani all jumped up on to the table to look.

  Cosmo gasped as he saw that all the hairballs Cleo had collected had been laid out in orderly rows. They looked like they were covered in little green spikes and, on closer inspection, it was clear that every hairball had ten green curly toenails wedged into it – each of which was glowing. The hairballs had been laid out in ten rows of ten (apart from the last row which only contained nine). They therefore totalled ninety-nine, with one extra set of toenails sitting on the table on its own.

  Cosmo also spotted a piece of black paper with green spiky writing on it, which looked important. He lifted it up between his t
eeth and jumped down from the table to take it to Scarlett.

  ‘This is a spell recipe,’ Scarlett gasped as soon as she saw it, and she started to read it out loud to them.

  ANTI-TAGGING SPELL

  This spell will allow you to remove stolen goods from shops because all electronic tags attached to the items will be deactivated. For each tag you will need the following:

  1 cat hairball (any type of cat fur will do)

  1 full set of newborn witch-baby toenail clippings (curled and glowing)

  1 mouthful of witch saliva (one good spit should be ample)

  VERY IMPORTANT: No fleas (dead or alive) must be left in the hairballs or this spell will not work!

  Instructions: Simply press the toenail clippings into the hairball and then spit on it. The hairball can then be placed on to (or into) the item you wish to steal. Any electronic tag that is attached to the item will immediately cease to function.

  Copyright © Murdina & Belinda Broom

  When Scarlett had finished reading the spell, she said, ‘Selina must be planning some really huge robbery! I wonder what it is that she’s going to steal.’

  ‘This must be the spell that the Broom sisters used to steal all those things from shops – the one that got them sent to prison,’ Tani miaowed. ‘Nobody ever knew exactly what they put in it along with the toenails, because the recipe itself was never found.’

  ‘Murdina Broom is in prison with Sybil, isn’t she?’ Mephisto said. ‘What if Murdina, Sybil and Selina are all planning another robbery together?’

  ‘Selina has been visiting Sybil every week,’ Cosmo told them. ‘So they’ve definitely been plotting something.’ He stopped to think some more, because a robbery just didn’t seem the most likely thing somehow. After all, what pleasure could Sybil and Murdina get from stealing things like televisions that they couldn’t actually use because they were locked up in prison? Unless . . .

  ‘This spell works on electronic tags of all kinds, doesn’t it?’ Cosmo suddenly said.

  The other cats looked at him, not sure what he was getting at.

  ‘Sybil and all the other prisoners are tagged when they go outside the prison to do their community service, aren’t they?’ he continued slowly. ‘So what if they’re going to use this spell to de-tag themselves?’

  ‘Of course!’ Mephisto exclaimed, hissing with excitement at his kitten.

  ‘That’s it, Cosmo!’ Tani gasped. ‘Each witch will simply have to spit on a hairball with the toenails already inside, and she’ll be de-tagged. Then she’ll be able to escape – without being turned into a frog!’

  ‘It’s actually quite a brilliant idea,’ Albert-of-the-street grunted.

  ‘What day do the witches get let out of prison to do their community service?’ Felina asked.

  ‘Today!’ Cosmo replied. ‘When Bunty and I were at the prison this morning, they were getting ready to go out this afternoon.’

  ‘Then they’ve got to be stopped!’ Mephisto gave a loud growl as he switched into action-cat mode. ‘Tani, you and Cosmo had better go and raise the alarm. Felina and I will wait here in case Selina comes back.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Scarlett wanted to know, because she hadn’t understood any of their excited mewing. Mia and Albert-of-the-street tried to make her understand by miaowing it all again very loudly, but she still couldn’t follow what they were saying.

  Tani and Cosmo hurried over to the chimney, meaning to climb back up into the main house again, but they soon found that the chimney wall was far too steep for them.

  Mephisto went over to the chimney too, looking a bit sheepish all of a sudden. ‘I’ve just recalled that when I lived with my first witch, she always had to carry me up the chimney in her arms,’ he said. ‘She had special boots with suckers on the front that helped her climb up. She was going to get me some suckers for my paws, but she never got round to it.’

  ‘Well, this is a fine time to tell us!’ Felina burst out. ‘Honestly, Mephisto, if you male cats would stop and think sometimes, before you went charging about all over the place!’

  ‘It’s not Mephisto’s fault,’ Tani said quickly. ‘We were all in a rush to get to Mia when we heard her mew.’

  Mephisto had already started to try and claw his way up the chimney himself, but even though he managed to get a little further than Tani and Cosmo, in the end his claws slipped and he slid down to the bottom.

  Felina sighed. ‘I suppose we’ll just have to wait for Selina to come back, and pounce on her when she lands on the cushion,’ she said. ‘Maybe if we all bite and scratch her at once, we’ll be able to make her do what we want.’

  ‘I’ve got another idea,’ Cosmo said, thinking about how he had unwittingly removed the fleas from sixteen hairballs the previous evening. ‘Why don’t we use our own fleas to stop the de-tagging spell from working?’

  The adult cats looked at him in surprise.

  ‘You know, this kid’s pretty smart,’ Albert-of-the-street said from inside the cage.

  ‘Sometimes I think you are even smarter than Mother, Cosmo,’ Mia gushed, gazing at her friend in total admiration.

  ‘That’s very clever thinking indeed, Cosmo,’ his father agreed, giving his kitten a fond nip on the scruff of his neck. ‘You’re right! The more fleas we can find to put into these hairballs, the more witches we can stop escaping. The only problem is how are we going to do it?’ It was notoriously difficult to remove a flea from your own fur just by scratching, and even though a lucky lick might remove one if you had a particularly flea-infested coat, licking was also far from efficient as a de-fleaing method.

  The cats all turned to look at Scarlett. They were going to need her help to extract enough fleas – but since she didn’t understand cat language, how could they tell her that?

  12

  Felina carefully put her paw through the cage and tapped the recipe, which Scarlett still held in her hand. Felina kept tapping until Scarlett said, ‘What? You want it back?’ and pushed it out of the cage on to the floor.

  Felina arranged the recipe on the ground in front of her and studied it carefully. Felina could read human writing, but only very slowly. She was looking for the word ‘flea’. She knew it was a short word that began with the human letter ‘f ’ and after she had paused briefly at the words ‘fur’ and ‘full’, she finally found the word ‘fleas’ and placed her paw under it. Then she looked at Scarlett and miaowed urgently at her.

  Scarlett looked at the spot where Felina had placed her paw. ‘No fleas . . .’ she read out, but she still didn’t seem to get the message.

  ‘Start scratching, everybody,’ Felina urged the others. ‘That ought to make her understand.’

  So they all sat down and started to scratch themselves as energetically as they could.

  ‘I have got a flea-comb in my pocket,’ Scarlett said slowly as it dawned on her what the cats were asking her to do. ‘Aunt Bunty asked me to use it on Mephisto this morning, after I’d taken India to the vet. So are you saying that if we put some fleas into the hairballs it might stop this anti-tagging spell from working?’

  ‘Yes!’ the cats miaowed together.

  ‘I can’t imagine why Bunty thought I might have fleas,’ Mephisto murmured, ‘but it’s just as well you brought a flea-comb with you under the circumstances, I suppose. Now . . . who wants to go first?’

  ‘I’m sure I can donate quite a few,’ Albert-of-the-street miaowed cheerfully, as he climbed on to Scarlett’s lap to let her begin.

  ‘I’ll need to put the fleas straight into the hairballs after I catch them,’ Scarlett said. ‘Otherwise they’ll jump away and we’ll lose them.’

  So the cats began to transport the hairballs from the table to Scarlett, who was able to reach out through the bars of the cage and pick them up. Mia then made a hole in each one with her claw, ready for Scarlett to drop in a flea.

  By the time Scarlett had finished combing Albert-of-the-street, they had placed fleas inside a total of twenty-e
ight hairballs. All the cats thanked him very enthusiastically, since none of them could imagine being able to donate even half that number themselves.

  It was Mia’s turn next, and Felina was surprised when Scarlett found eight fleas on her.

  ‘I expect it’s because you’ve been mixing a lot with certain other cats lately,’ Mia’s mother mewed, glancing rather pointedly in Mephisto’s direction.

  Cosmo offered to go next, standing up against the bars of the cage so that Scarlett could put her hand through and comb him. Cosmo had fourteen fleas, which was more than he’d expected, and he felt quite proud of his contribution.

  Tani volunteered to go next, but Scarlett couldn’t find a single flea on her. ‘It’s my Siamese fur,’ Tani explained apologetically. ‘Fleas don’t seem to like it very much. I think it’s too soft and fine for them.’

  ‘I don’t believe fleas like my coat very much either,’ Felina said, moving forward to be combed. She was therefore extremely surprised when Scarlett found nine fleas on her.

  ‘You probably caught them from me, Mother,’ Mia said quickly.

  ‘And you probably caught yours from me,’ Cosmo told his friend.

  Felina blinked her large amber eyes at Mephisto. ‘And I think we can guess who you caught yours from, Cosmo.’

  Scarlett had been counting up the total number of fleas as she went along. ‘We’ve found fifty-nine so far. That means we need another forty-one.’

  ‘We only need forty really, because there’s one hairball missing,’ Cosmo pointed out.

  Mephisto was the last to come under Scarlett’s flea-comb, and all the cats watched as Scarlett ran the comb through his thick black coat and found that it was coming back with several fleas stuck between its prongs each time.

  She collected the forty they needed quite easily. ‘When we get out of here, I’ll remove the rest,’ she promised him.

  Mephisto, who was feeling a lot less itchy all of a sudden, mewed to the others, ‘I have obviously been mixing a great deal too much with that Cleo Cattrap.’