The Case of the Missing Cat

by Laura Pearson

  Then there was a small sound.

  “What is that?” said Rani, as softly as she could.

  “It sounds like scratching,” said Zoe.

  Zoe was right; it was scratching. It was coming from the back of the attic, and it was getting louder.

  “On the count of three,” whispered Ava, “we’ll all run to the ladder at once. Rani goes down first.”

  “One… Two…”

  “You’ve definitely left us the scariest bit of the school to investigate,” Isabel told Lottie as soon as the others had gone upstairs. The two of them and Mrs Peabody were dragging Pip along the edge of the playground. They had agreed to start their search outside.

  “Here, Lady Lovelypaws,” called Lottie. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty…”

  “Stop saying that!” cried Isabel. “Say anything but that!”

  “Meooowww,” called Mrs Peabody into the dark woods that surrounded the playground. She sounded so much like a real cat that Pip went over to sniff her. When he was sure that she was a human, he lay down at her feet.

  Then there was a noise in the woods.

  “W-w-what w-w-was that?” Isabel said, trembling. They all stood listening. Even Pip’s ears were standing to attention. He got to his feet rather quickly and looked into the darkness.

  “Twit-twoo,” hooted an owl.

  “Just an owl, nothing to be afraid of, girls,” Mrs Peabody said. She looked terribly nervous.

  “Woof!” barked Pip suddenly. Lottie was really scared then, for she had never heard Pip bark before. She held his lead tightly.

  A pair of glowing eyes peered out at them from the darkness of the bushes.

  “Meeeooowww?” said Mrs Peabody desperately, as Lottie and Isabel grabbed hold of each other. “Lady Lovelypaws?”

  They all gasped in fright as a fox dashed out of the woods, jumped over the slide and disappeared round the side of the school.

  “Woof, woof, woof!” barked Pip excitedly.

  “Just a fox, then,” said Mrs Peabody, when she’d found her voice again. The headmistress got down from the top of the climbing frame, where she had leapt in fear. “That’s enough searching the playground, don’t you think, girls? Let’s go indoors. Quickly. ASAP. I need a cup of tea.”

  Lottie and Isabel didn’t argue. There was no way that Lady Lovelypaws would be out in the playground with scary foxes about.

  The humans turned to go inside, but Pip had other ideas. The excitement had made a new dog out of him. He was sniffing along the side of the school in a frenzy.

  “Come on, Pip,” said Lottie crossly. “There’s nothing there. We’re going to look inside.” Pip howled, another sound that Lottie had never heard him make before. Finally the dog detective allowed himself to be dragged inside.

  Mrs Peabody had not recovered from the playground’s wildlife. “I must have a cup of tea, girls,” she told Lottie and Isabel. “Do you want one?”

  “We’re seven,” Lottie said. “We don’t drink tea.”

  “I’m eight,” corrected Isabel. “But I don’t drink tea either.”

  “Sorry, girls,” said Mrs Peabody. “Where is my head? Perhaps a hot chocolate?” Mrs Peabody was always giving the Crabtree girls hot chocolates. Mrs Peabody’s hot chocolates were yummy. They had pink marshmallows in them. But tonight Isabel and Lottie had a job to do.

  “Mrs Peabody,” said Lottie. “Don’t you want to find Lady Lovelypaws? What about Mrs Snoop? We can’t waste any more time!”

  “I know!” exclaimed the headmistress, who still had knocking knees and trembling hands. “But I really, really, really need a cup of tea. It is a tea emergency.” She opened the door and they all trooped back into the school building.

  “Carry on without me,” she told Lottie, Isabel and Pip. “I will catch you up as soon as I’ve had my cuppa.” The headmistress dashed into her office.

  “Oh, Miss Moody, you frightened me!” Lottie and Isabel heard Mrs Peabody cry. “Why are you hiding under my desk? Shove over, make room for me! I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Without their grown-up, Lottie, Isabel and Pip went to search the assembly room. The stage was quiet; the chairs for the audience eerily empty. Pip sniffed at some pieces of yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz whilst Isabel shone her torch around the folds in the heavy velvet curtain.

  “Is that her?” she exclaimed, as she caught sight of a white fluffy thing curled up under a dressing table backstage.

  Lottie and Pip raced to investigate, but all they found was a puff of white fur on the top of a Santa Claus hat that someone had worn for last year’s Christmas play.

  “Shame,” said Isabel sadly. “I really thought that was her!”

  Lottie put the Santa hat on Pip’s head, and the downstairs detectives moved on. They searched the Rainbow Room (which had nothing scary about it at all, even late at night), the music room and the kitchen. Then Pip sniffed his way through the lower school classrooms. Everything was dark, quiet and cat-free.

  They even looked in the Crabtree School Staffroom, which was the special teachers-only room that no students were allowed in, ever. It was filled with old sofas, old paintings and old cups of half-drunk tea.

  “Wow!” cried Isabel as they peered through the door.

  “What is it? Do you see her?” Lottie pushed in behind Isabel, shining her torch around frantically.

  “No, but look! They have bowls of mints in here! And a television!”

  “We’ve looked EVERYWHERE,” said Isabel sadly when they’d closed the door on the staffroom. “I don’t think Lady Lovelypaws is going to come out, even if it is night-time!”

  “There is one place we haven’t looked,” said Lottie, when she’d finished writing down about the mints and the TV in her notebook.

  “Where?” asked Isabel.

  “We haven’t looked in the toilets,” Lottie told her. “She could be in there.”

  “Why would a cat be in the toilets?”

  “We’ve got to check EVERYWHERE,” Lottie said firmly.

  “Fine, then,” replied Isabel. “You and Pip go look in the toilets. I’ll wait here.”

  “Pip is a boy,” Lottie argued. “He can’t go in the girls’ toilets. You go and Pip and I will stay here.”

  “Pip is a dog,” said Isabel. “He won’t mind if the toilets are for girls. But I’ll hold him if you like, whilst you go in.”

  Isabel and Lottie shone their torches on each other’s faces. They were best friends, and they had a lot in common. For one thing, they both loved reading. Just that very week they had both finished reading the same very famous book. In this famous book, something properly scary had happened in the girls’ toilets. Something that neither Isabel nor Lottie could forget.

  “Go on,” said Isabel. “You’re the detective.”

  “No way,” said Lottie. “Not on my own.”

  They both stared at the door to the toilets.

  “I am sure,” Lottie told Isabel in her most confident voice, “that there are no ghosts or monsters or trolls or anything like that in there. That doesn’t happen in real life, only in books.”

  “Then you go in.”

  “We’ll both go,” Lottie decided. “Besides, in Harry Potter it was the FIRST floor girls’ toilets, and this is the GROUND floor girls’ toilets. So it’s perfectly safe.”

  Holding hands once again, they went in. The lights were off, of course, but the white sinks and walls glowed in the moonlight that shone in through the window.

  A sudden movement to their right made them both jump, but it was only their own reflections in the mirror. It was dead silent except for the click click of Pip’s nails on the tile floor.

  “See?” said Lottie. “Nothing to be afraid of. Do you need the loo?”

  “No way,” said Isabel. Neither did Lottie. Both girls were secretly hoping they wouldn’t need the toilet again until tomorrow morning.

  They were back out in the hallway when they heard the scream: “Heeeeellllppp!”

&nb
sp; “That sounded like Zoe!” shouted Lottie, as she and Isabel ran towards the sound. “It’s coming from upstairs!”

  They raced to the front hall. Pip led the way, still wearing the Father Christmas hat. He was sliding all over the slippery marble floor.

  “It sounded like it came from above the first floor!” said Isabel as they ran. “Could they be on the roof?”

  “Quick,” shouted Lottie. “Follow me!” She stopped suddenly in front of a huge painting in the stairwell. Isabel ran into the back of her.

  Lottie pushed against the painting. There was a creak, and then it swung open like a door. Before Isabel could blink, Lottie was disappearing down a narrow hallway towards a steep set of stairs, Pip galloping alongside her. Isabel followed, too curious to hesitate. The painting slammed shut behind her.

  “A secret passage!” cried Isabel as they climbed the stairs. “But were does it lead?”

  “To the top of the school!” whispered Lottie. After a short climb they came to a small wooden door. It was locked. Lottie pushed against it. “We can’t go any further,” she said at last. “I’ve tried before. I thought for sure the others had found the secret passage.” Pip scratched at the door like a wild animal. He was sure too.

  “What’s that sound?” asked Isabel nervously. “I hear voices. It has to be ghosts! The others couldn’t have got in, could they?”

  Isabel did not know that there were two ways into the attic. In fact, until that moment she hadn’t even known that Crabtree School had an attic.

  Lottie had hidden in the secret passage many times. She knew there must be something behind that door at the top, but she had never been able to get inside.

  “Shhhh,” hissed Lottie, putting her ear to the door. “Listen, it sounds like counting!”

  “A counting ghost?” said Isabel. She leaned against the door too.

  Inside the attic, Ava was counting. On the count of three, Ava and Rani and Zoe were going to run away from the terrible scratching they heard.

  Outside, the weight of a seven-year-old, an eight-year-old and a very persistent dog proved too much for the old wooden door to withstand. Suddenly the downstairs detectives found themselves crashing into the attic.

  After the crash came the loudest screaming ever to be heard under the Crabtree School roof. Then Lottie heard the sounds of frantic scrambling and of things being dropped. The room was filled with strange shadows as torches rolled about on the floor.

  “Look!” shouted Isabel. “In the corner! Ghosts!”

  Caught in a flash of light were three dusty figures. One was glowing with strange spots. Another was wearing a scary olden-days hat. The third was truly terrifying in a long ghostly dress.

  The spooky figures began to run about madly, and so did Isabel. The commotion brought up smoky clouds of dust, which only increased the panic in the attic.

  Amid the commotion, Pip merely stood wagging his tail at them all. The ghost-hunting dog detective was not afraid. Neither was his mistress.

  “Stop!” said Lottie calmly, picking up a fallen torch. “Ava, Rani, Zoe, it’s just us! It’s Lottie and Isabel!”

  Lottie knew that there was no such thing as ghosts. And anyway, she would recognize Ava’s fairy nightdress and Zoe’s crazy glow-in-the-dark pyjamas anywhere. Rani’s unicorn top was clearly visible in the torchlight.

  “It’s you,” gasped Ava. She looked disappointed not to have seen a real live ghost.

  Just then, Mrs Peabody poked her head up from the space in the floor where Zoe, Rani and Ava had climbed up.

  “Girls,” she said. “You are very brave to look up here, but I think it best if you come down at once. Lady Lovelypaws would never come to the attic. There could be rats and bats and spiders up here.” Mrs Peabody trembled at the thought. The cup of tea in her hand wobbled as she went back down the ladder.

  The girls hurried down behind her, and, to Lottie’s relief, the secret passage remained mostly a secret.

  Back on the ground floor, Lottie sat updating the map of Crabtree School in her notebook. She needed to add the first floor cupboard and the attic.

  “What should we do now?” asked Isabel, picking up a rumpled sleepover schedule.

  Lottie turned to a page in her notebook. It was labelled PLAN B: DO THIS IF WE DONT FIND LADY LOVELYPAWS WHEN WE SEARCH. Lottie had a plan for everything.

  “Now,” said Lottie confidently, “we need to make it really dark. No torches or anything. Then we climb into the tent and wait for Lady Lovelypaws to come to us.” Lottie opened up a tin of cat food and set out the toy mice.

  “That doesn’t sound very fun,” said Rani. “What about the midnight feast? Eww, that cat food stinks.”

  “We’ll have the midnight feast later,” Lottie told her. “After we find Lady Lovelypaws.”

  Isabel yawned. “What if we fall asleep first?”

  “Oh, fine!” said Lottie. Her eyes were beginning to feel as heavy as Pip’s looked. They all went off to the kitchen to have a look and wake themselves up a bit.

  “There’s nothing here,” said Rani sadly. It was true; the Crabtree cupboards were bare. All the food from last week had been eaten up, and the food for next week’s school lunches hadn’t arrived yet.

  “Do you have anything in your suitcase, Lottie?” asked Ava hopefully. But it turned out that food was the one thing Lottie hadn’t brought.

  “How about some green sweeties?” offered Miss Moody kindly. “I’ve been saving them for the last day of term because they are my favourite, but you can have them.”

  At least one mystery had been solved. Lottie updated SUBJECT: MISS MOODY in her notebook, and put a big tick in the CASE SOLVED? box.

  But a few green sweeties would make a sorry midnight feast. Rani smiled weakly at the Year Three teacher. Miss Moody meant well but—

  “What’s going on in here? Who’s in my kitchen?” Mrs Crunch appeared in the doorway. Colonel Crunch was behind her, holding a lantern. They had come all the way from their cottage.

  “Mrs Crunch, do you have anything we could eat for our midnight feast?” asked Rani. “Something delicious?”

  They all looked at the dinner lady with pleading eyes.

  “Pretty please?” asked Isabel.

  “I have just the thing,” replied Mrs Crunch, reaching for a package of marshmallows hidden on a high shelf. “But Colonel Crunch will have to build us a fire.”

  The whole Crabtree sleepover crowd stood round a crackling campfire on the edge of the playground. Colonel Crunch toasted a marshmallow on a stick. When it was warm and gooey and just a little bit burnt, Mrs Crunch smooshed it between two chocolate digestives.

  “It’s called a s’more,” Colonel Crunch explained, handing it to Isabel. “Because you always want some more.”

  “It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” said Isabel, as Lottie began a notebook entry titled HOW TO MAKE A S’MORE.

  “I can’t wait to tell my brothers,” smiled Rani. They took turns roasting marshmallows and licking their sticky fingers. They told the grown-ups all about their adventure in the attic, and how they had mistaken each other for ghosts.

  “I’m sorry to have missed it, girls,” said Mrs Peabody. She and Miss Moody were a bit embarrassed about what fraidy-cats they had been.

  “Don’t worry,” said Rani. “I took lots of photos. Only I hope I didn’t break your camera, Lottie. I dropped it on the floor when I thought ghosts were chasing us! But I can’t get the photos I took to show up now.”

  “It’s an olden-days camera,” Lottie explained. “It has film that you have to take to get printed into photos. My mum will do it for us.”

  As she was finishing her third s’more, Lottie noticed the headmistress gazing sadly into the fire.

  “We’ll find her, Mrs Peabody,” said Lottie bravely. She gave Mrs Peabody a hug. “We’ll stay up all night if we have to.”

  As they gazed into the fire, neither the headmistress nor Lottie noticed the statue-like face that was peering ov
er the playground fence. For Lottie was not the only one who was determined to solve The Case of the Missing Cat.

  “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,” called Mrs Snoop softly as she crept round the side of the school.

  Mrs Snoop was not giving up, either.

  It is actually quite difficult to stay up all night. After they’d sent the grown-ups off to bed, the girls zipped themselves into their sleeping bags to begin the wait for Lady Lovelypaws. They flipped over Isabel’s sign so that it read: DETECTIVES SLEEPING, just in case Lady Lovelypaws could read. Then they used Zoe’s watches, which glowed in the dark like her pyjamas, to keep track of the time.

  Isabel was the first to fall asleep. By half past ten, she was snoozing peacefully on her back. Her robe and bunny slippers were bundled neatly beside her.

  By eleven o’clock, Ava was off to dreamland. At her feet, the five dolls slept too, in their little tent.

  Rani wasn’t far behind Ava. Her mouth was still smeared with chocolate from their midnight feast, and she was chewing in her sleep. Lottie thought she was probably dreaming of more s’mores.

  Just after eleven-thirty p.m., Zoe’s eyes closed and her head dropped on to her hands. After that, Lottie couldn’t see her watches anymore.

  Finally, some time before dawn, Lottie went to sleep too. Her notebook was tucked under her pillow and Pip lay curled up beside her.

  Lottie dreamt she was on a bouncy castle. She was jumping and falling and getting pushed all around. She woke up and realized that someone had actually been shaking her, trying to wake her up.

  “She’s shrunk!” hissed Rani. “Someone has shrunk Lady Lovelypaws!” Lottie put on her glasses to find Rani holding a tiny ball of white fur. It was a cat. This cat looked just like Lady Lovelypaws. Only it was a LOT smaller. “I found her in my trainer!” said Rani.

  “How? What?” Lottie wriggled out of her sleeping bag. She looked down at Pip, who was still asleep. All that investigating had worn him out. Snuggled in between his paws was another miniature Lady Lovelypaws.