Winston and the Marmalade Cat

by Megan Rix

  ‘I thought cats weren’t supposed to like water,’ Harry laughed as the kitten started to purr.

  ‘Some cats and kittens do like water,’ Mr Jenner said. ‘Some of them even swim.’

  Harry had never heard of cats doing that before, although he knew that big cats, like tigers, could.

  ‘I bet this one will be a swimmer,’ he said. Or at least he hoped so.

  As more mud came off the kitten Harry was very surprised to find it wasn’t black, or charcoal grey or even tabby-coated. Underneath all that dirt was a kitten with a beautiful marmalade coat.

  Chapter 5

  Mr Jenner chuckled. ‘Bit of a coincidence a marmalade kitten turning up now. Although I think Mr Colville might be after an older cat for Sir Winston.’

  Once all the mud was washed away they could see that the kitten had a white bib and four white paws as well.

  ‘You smell a lot better now too,’ Harry told the kitten, as Mr Jenner handed him a soft towel. Before long the kitten was helping to dry himself by licking at his fur while Harry gently blotted him with the towel.

  Harry smiled as the kitten stopped licking himself and licked Harry’s hand with his tiny raspy tongue instead.

  The words slipped out before Harry could stop them.

  ‘Could I adopt him?’

  He knew that sometimes the people who rescued animals for the RSPCA were the ones that got to keep them.

  ‘Oh,’ Mr Jenner said, surprised. ‘Well, I don’t see why not, if you’re sure. Feral kittens don’t belong to anyone and you are the one who found him. Without you, well, I don’t like to think what might have happened to him.’

  ‘I’d look after him really well,’ Harry said. And love him lots, he told himself.

  ‘I know you would,’ Mr Jenner said. ‘But you’d have to have permission from your mum and dad first. And they should meet him before you take him home and there should really be a home check too.’

  The more Mr Jenner spoke the more a tiny voice inside Harry’s head said that maybe he wouldn’t be allowed to keep the kitten. But he wanted to take him home so badly that he ignored it.

  ‘I’ll let you know first thing tomorrow morning,’ he said.

  The little kitten was more than half asleep as he gave him back to Mr Jenner.

  ‘See you in the morning, kitty,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here early.’

  ‘See you tomorrow, Harry,’ Mr Jenner called after him as Harry pulled on his muddy coat, ran out of the centre, jumped on his bike and raced home as fast as the creaky old thing would go.

  Chapter 6

  Harry’s mother was still at the hospital where she worked as a nurse, but his father was home, as usual. He didn’t work any more and he was sitting in the same armchair he always sat in.

  ‘Dad, Dad!’ Harry cried excitedly, as he ran into the room. ‘Guess what happened.’

  ‘Calm down, Harry. Happened where?’

  ‘At the RSPCA. You’ll never guess.’

  ‘Then why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘I rescued a kitten that was stuck in an old pipe.’

  ‘Did you now?’ his dad said. ‘Well done, son,’

  He was facing the window that looked out on the street although he couldn’t see out. A blast had blinded him during the last year of the Second World War, eight years before Harry was born.

  ‘It was covered in so much mud you’d never have guessed it was a ginger, I mean marmalade, kitten. Mr Jenner said it would have died if it wasn’t for me.’

  Harry’s dad nodded and Harry took a big breath. It was time for the big question.

  ‘Mr Jenner said I could keep the kitten if I wanted to. Only I’d need permission from my mum and dad. Dad, can I keep him? He’s so soft and he’s funny too. He loves the water. If you could only see him …’

  As he said the word ‘see’, his dad’s face wrinkled up and Harry wished he’d used another word, but it was too late now.

  ‘Please, Dad. It wouldn’t cost much to feed him.’

  But his dad was already shaking his head. ‘It’ll cost more than we have and what if it’s sickly? We can’t afford veterinary bills and what if I tread on it by mistake? I could hurt it. No, Harry, I don’t think so. Now isn’t a good time for a pet and certainly not a vulnerable kitten.’

  ‘But …’ Harry’s mouth fell open. He couldn’t believe his dad was really saying no. ‘Please …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry, but that’s my final decision.’

  Harry could tell by his dad’s set face that he meant it.

  Harry wanted to shout, ‘I hate you!’ but he stopped himself. He ran out of the room and up the stairs to his own room. Other children had dads who could see. Other children had dads who would let them have pets. But his dad wouldn’t let him have anything. It wasn’t fair.

  Half an hour later Harry heard his mum come home. Soon after, she called him down for dinner and asked him about his day.

  ‘I rescued a kitten,’ he said, half-hoping she might be able to change his dad’s mind.

  ‘Did you?’ she said. ‘Where is it? I love kittens.’

  ‘He’s still at the RSPCA centre. I wanted to keep it only Dad said …’

  ‘I said he couldn’t,’ Harry’s dad said firmly.

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Harry’s mum said.

  ‘It’s just not practical,’ said Harry’s dad. ‘Not with the way things are.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ said Harry’s mum, but she sounded sad.

  ‘You should have seen him, Mum,’ Harry said. ‘He was so small. But really brave and he loves water.’

  ‘I would have liked to see him,’ Harry’s mum told him. ‘Very much.’

  ‘You could come to the RSPCA …’

  ‘Maybe I will on my day off.’

  ‘Someone might have already adopted him by then,’ Harry said, and then he had to swallow hard, because he’d so wanted to be the one to take care of him.

  ‘Remember the smoky grey cat we used to have at St Dunstan’s? That cat loved you,’ Harry’s mum said to his dad as they ate dinner at the small table in the kitchen.

  Harry’s dad smiled as he shook his head. ‘It just loved my pillow. I was forever finding it asleep on top of it. Not a nice surprise when you’re a newly blind man.’

  ‘The others were always jealous the cat chose your bed.’

  ‘That wasn’t my fault.’

  Harry’s mum nodded.

  ‘Sometimes animals pick us rather than us choosing them,’ she said to Harry.

  Harry stirred his food around on his plate, utterly miserable. All he could think about was the little feral kitten that he’d rescued.

  ‘I need to do my homework,’ he said, and ran up to his room blinking back tears.

  At the RSPCA centre the marmalade kitten woke up on a soft blanket to find himself in a cage with a bowl of water in the corner. Around him he could see other cats in cages. Some of them were asleep, but most were awake. The kitten had never slept by himself before and he missed his mum and his brothers and sisters.

  He stood up, stretched and looked out of his cage, looking for the boy who’d been kind to him. But Harry didn’t come and the kitten was still very tired. He made a soft, sad sound, scratched at the blanket, curled up and went back to his lonely sleep.

  Chapter 7

  Mr Jenner was just having his morning cup of tea when Harry arrived at the centre.

  ‘What did your parents say about keeping the kitten?’ he asked him.

  Harry’s voice caught in his throat and he had to swallow hard so that he could speak normally.

  ‘My dad said no,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ nodded Mr Jenner as he took a last slurp of tea. ‘That’s a shame. But it can’t be helped. We’ll have to do our best to find another nice new home for the kitten. One where he’ll be loved and cherished and given tasty food to eat and played with. Maybe he’ll even become Sir Winston Churchill’s cat and live at Chartwell.’

  ‘Can I see him?
’ Harry asked.

  ‘Of course. I’ll come with you,’ Mr Jenner said, putting his tea cup down. ‘He’s a lot more lively than the last time you saw him. Amazing how animals bounce back with a bit of food and drink and a good rest.’

  The marmalade kitten certainly didn’t look like he had been stuck in a rusty pipe only the day before, and was barely recognizable from when Harry had first found him covered in thick mud. Now his ginger coat shone and his chest and four pure-white paws were as white as could be.

  When Harry stopped next to his cage the kitten came running over, looked up at him, purred and put out his paw.

  ‘I’m sorry you can’t come home with me,’ Harry said, pushing his fingers through the bars for the kitten to sniff and lick at.

  He felt like his heart was breaking and he wished the kitten could be his more than anything in the world.

  ‘You can get him out if you like,’ Mr Jenner said. ‘Kittens and cats need to be regularly stroked if they’re to make good pets. I’ll be back once I’ve seen to the dogs. They haven’t had their breakfast yet and will soon start barking to let me know.’

  Harry pulled back the small bolt that kept the cat cage doors closed and the kitten ran straight into his lap. The tiny cat rubbed his furry marmalade head against Harry’s hand and purred and purred.

  Harry stroked the kitten and then pulled out his shoelace from his shoe and wiggled it in front of the kitten for him to play with.

  The kitten watched the wiggling thing trying to escape along the floor and then he pounced on it.

  ‘Just like a lion chasing a cobra,’ Harry told him.

  When the kitten had had enough of the chasing game he climbed up Harry’s jumper sleeve and nestled in the spot where Harry’s neck joined his shoulder, purring. The kitten’s fur tickled Harry’s neck, but Harry didn’t mind. He liked it.

  ‘Better be getting off to school, hadn’t you, Harry,’ Mr Jenner said, when he came back. ‘You don’t want to be late.’

  Harry looked up at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine!

  ‘I’ll be back after school,’ he called out as he ran off, leaving Mr Jenner to give the kitten his breakfast.

  The bell was ringing as Harry cycled through the school gates. He jumped off his bike and put it next to William’s in the bike rack. He was breathing hard as he ran into class and sat down next to his friend.

  ‘Why’re you so late?’ William asked him.

  ‘Had to visit the kitten I rescued last night,’ Harry said, as the teacher came into the room.

  Today there was a quiz to identify when some of Winston Churchill’s most famous speeches were made.

  ‘What about this one?’ Miss Dunbar asked the class: ‘ “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” ’

  Lots of the class knew the answer and put their hands up, but Harry wasn’t in the mood to answer questions, especially not about Winston Churchill. If there hadn’t been a war then his dad would still be able to see. He’d be the same as other dads. He might have let him keep the kitten because he wouldn’t have been worried about standing on him by mistake.

  ‘Jenny?’

  ‘After Dunkirk.’

  ‘And which year was that?’

  ‘June 1940.’

  ‘Well done. How about this one,’ Miss Dunbar asked: ‘ “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” ’

  ‘Battle of Britain,’ William said.

  They’d learnt about the start of the war in 1939 and how at first it had seemed there was no need to worry about bombs or to evacuate the children to the countryside. Then Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940 and the war really began as far as Britain was concerned. After five more long years and countless battles, the war in Europe ended on VE day on the 8 May 1945. The grenade that blinded Harry’s dad was thrown only a few weeks before.

  Chapter 8

  When Harry ran out of the cattery, the marmalade kitten tried to wriggle out of Mr Jenner’s hands and run after him. But Mr Jenner didn’t let him go.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he said. ‘Harry will be back after school. Now, how about some breakfast?’

  The kitten looked up at Mr Jenner and Mr Jenner stroked his furry head before popping him back in his cage while he went to make up some kitten formula and put a little bit of fish on a separate plate. The kitten looked so young that he wasn’t sure if it could manage solid food yet, but he hoped so.

  First Harry had gone and now the man had left him too. The little kitten pushed at the door to his cage, but it didn’t open. He tried again and gave the bar a bite with his sharp kitten teeth. But he couldn’t get out and even though he gave a little cry, Harry didn’t come back to play with him.

  The marmalade kitten climbed up the bars of his cage until he reached the top where they had wider spaces between them. Spaces that were large enough for a small kitten to squeeze himself through.

  In just a few seconds he was out and he nimbly jumped down from the top of the cage on to the ground and set off out of the cattery as the rest of the cats watched.

  ‘Here we are,’ Mr Jenner said, coming back from the kitchen with the marmalade kitten’s breakfast. But the kitten wasn’t there.

  The kitten sniffed the air. He noticed that the dogs’ kennels smelt different to the cattery as he wandered in to them. The dogs inside immediately became very alert at the sight of him. A yellow Labrador stood up and wagged her tail. She sniffed through the bars of her cage at the kitten and the kitten sniffed back. Other dogs were more wary and didn’t come close. One went to the back of his cage as far away from the kitten as he could get. Another started barking and then other dogs barked too.

  The kitten gave a cry and hid behind a sack of dog biscuits as Mr Jenner came running in.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted to the dogs. ‘Hush now, hush!’

  When the dogs had finally calmed down, Mr Jenner spotted the kitten over by the dog biscuits.

  ‘Well, what on earth are you doing there?’ he said, as he scooped the trembling kitten up. ‘Your breakfast’s waiting for you through here. You can’t eat dog biscuits.’

  The yellow Labrador whined as they left the kennels and the kitten looked back at her and gave a miaow.

  Mr Jenner put the kitten back in its cage and it lapped up the kitten formula and then it ate up the chopped fish as well.

  Once his tummy was full the kitten had a nap on the soft blanket in his cage, while Mr Jenner went off to see to the two budgerigars and one canary they had staying with them.

  An hour later the kitten woke up from his nap and was ready to explore again.

  Mr Jenner had made sure the door to the kitten’s cage was securely locked when he’d put him back in it. But the kitten didn’t even try going out the front way. Instead he climbed up the cage bars as he’d done before and squeezed his way out. This time he went in the opposite direction to the one in which the kennels with the noisy dogs had been.

  In the RSPCA reception room there were lots of interesting smells from the different people and animals that had been there for a kitten to sniff at. A spider on the wall made a tasty, but small, snack. Climbing the bookcase with boxes of files on it was no problem at all for a nimble kitten and Mr Jenner’s woollen scarf made a perfect bed to sleep in when he got tired of playing with it.

  Chapter 9

  As soon as school was over Harry cycled back to the RSPCA centre. But when he got to the kitten’s cage the door was closed, but the kitten wasn’t there.

  ‘Where is he?’ Harry asked, running back to Mr Jenner, who was seeing to the dogs. Surely the kitten hadn’t gone to a new home already?

  ‘Oh, he hasn’t got out again, has he?’ Mr Jenner said. ‘That’s the third time today. I found him by the dog biscuit bag a little while after you’d left
this morning, he does seem to be used to eating solid food which is good but I didn’t want him eating dog biscuits. Then I found him on my desk in the reception area asleep on my scarf. I don’t even know how he managed to get out of his cage. None of the other cats and kittens have done so.’

  ‘He’s like a Little Houdini,’ Harry said.

  ‘That’s a good name for him,’ Mr Jenner laughed.

  Behind him Harry heard a miaow and when he looked round there was the kitten staring up at him. Harry crouched down and picked him up. He was so light and so soft.

  ‘Maybe he was just searching for you,’ Mr Jenner said with a smile.

  ‘Hello, Little Houdini,’ said Harry.

  Little Houdini rubbed his face against Harry’s face and Harry laughed.

  ‘Mr Colville wasn’t in when I called his office,’ Mr Jenner told Harry. ‘But his secretary said as far as she knew he hadn’t found a marmalade cat and would we be able to deliver the kitten ourselves. I said of course we would.’

  Harry’s heart sank.

  ‘When does he have to go?’ he asked.

  ‘Sir Winston Churchill’s birthday is on the 30 November,’ Mr Jenner said.

  ‘Tomorrow!’

  That was no time at all.

  ‘He’ll be eighty-eight years old,’ Mr Jenner added.

  Harry frowned as he stroked Little Houdini. That was far too old to look after a lively kitten like Little Houdini. Plus Harry wasn’t even sure if the ex-prime minister could walk. Sir Winston Churchill had broken his thigh in Monte Carlo in the summer and been flown home in an ambulance. It had been in all the papers and on the television. Harry didn’t know how long it would take for someone’s thigh to heal but he was sure that having a kitten like Little Houdini around wouldn’t help.

  What if Sir Winston lost him? Harry didn’t want Little Houdini to get stuck in another pipe, or maybe even stuck in something worse, not if Harry wasn’t there to rescue him.

  Harry bit his bottom lip as he imagined poor Little Houdini wandering along a snowy road trying to get back to Harry, lost and all alone in the cold. And suddenly Harry knew he couldn’t let Little Houdini go to Sir Winston. He just couldn’t.