by Anna Wilson
‘Ah, Roberta and Jasmeena,’ he said.
Jazz let out a loud sigh.
I frowned at her and said, ‘Yeah. Well, Bertie and Jazz actually.’
‘And—?’ he asked, nodding at Fergus.
I introduced him and was about to launch into an explanation of why we’d come round when Mr Bruce cut in abruptly. ‘Very well, very well— Heeeeeeel!’ he barked, yanking his dogs’ leads fiercely.
The spaniels were straining harder than ever on their leads, practically choking themselves in their effort to get closer to me. I tried to take a good look at them, but they were panting and jumping and pulling so much all I really took in was two long pink tongues and a lot of gross slobbery stuff coming out of the corners of their mouths.
Jazz had started muttering about having a lot to do and turned to leave, but Fergus restrained her and nodded at me encouragingly.
‘Er, how old are your dogs?’ I asked.
‘Only two,’ Mr Bruce said. ‘Bouncy brutes, aren’t they?’ He seemed very pleased with this comment, and gave a wheezy laugh.
‘Right. We ll, the reason I’m here is that we’re organizing a pet show, but . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Erm, I’m not sure that you’d be interested actually,’ I said hastily, suddenly making up my mind that this was not a good idea, and backing away from the two slavering beasts. But Mr Bruce had caught sight of one of the posters that Fergus was carrying and he started reading it, peering through his glasses awkwardly while still pulling hard on the dog leads.
‘Oh, my two boys will love this!’ he cried, when he’d finished reading.
‘I didn’t know you had children,’ I said, puzzled.
Mr Bruce squinted at me and then let out another creaky chuckle. ‘I meant these boys!’ he said, gesturing to the dogs. ‘It’s just the thing they need actually – bit of an incentive to work harder on the training. Could do a little agility display for you, eh?’
I grabbed the poster from Fergus and mumbled something about leaving him time to think about it. Then quickly making our excuses, we ran off. Fergus and I were barely able to wait until we’d reached the corner before a fit of hiccuppy giggles overtook us.
‘Oh, my two little fellas are simply spiffing!’ Fergus squawked, in an exaggerated impression of Mr Bruce.
‘Yes, yes, all tip-top and shipshape!’ I howled.
‘What is he like?’ Fergus cried, clutching his stomach and whooping as he tried to get his breath back.
Jazz was seriously unamused. ‘When you two have finished behaving like a couple of nursery school kids, perhaps we could get on with finding some more suitable entrants for this competition?’ she said scathingly, wobbling her head at us.
That shut me up. I gulped, realizing the truth of what Jazz had just said. Mr Bruce was a loser, Mr Smythe was a nutcase . . . How had I ever believed this was going to work? I was silent all the way home, wondering what mayhem I had unleashed.
18
Kitten’s Got Talent!
The show came round far too quickly. A crippling sensation of unease seized me whenever I thought about it. The way things had been going for me recently, I was convinced the whole thing had ‘MASSIVE DISASTER AREA’ written all over it in ten-foot-high capital letters. Even Fergus’s repeated assurances that it would all be ‘all right on the night’ were doing nothing to steady my nerves.
‘Thing is,’ I told him the day before the show, ‘if it all goes wrong, it’s going to be my fault.’
He shook his head at me affectionately, his russet fringe flopping over his face. ‘Don’t be so down on yourself, Bertie. It’s going to be brilliant. Mum will make sure it runs like clockwork, Jazz will keep Simon and Danni happy just by being there and loving everything they say and do, and you and I – ’ he glanced away, running his hand through his hair and grinning – ‘we’ll keep the animals under control. We’re a great team,’ he added bashfully.
That night, Jaffa jumped up on to my bed and curled into the crook of my arm. She fell into a deep sleep immediately, whereas I could not settle at all. No matter what Fergus said, my stomach was churning and my mind was torturing me with images of Mr Bruce’s dogs trying to eat Huckleberry, or the hamsters, or Jaffa – or all three.
At least we’d got a few more entrants together. Dad had proudly told me ‘Bex’ had come up with a list of twenty other customers who she thought would bring their pets along, so altogether it looked as though we had twenty-five entrants to tell Fiona about, including Sparky and Jaffa. At least something good had come out of Dad batting his eyelashes at that woman, I thought with a sigh.
I hoped Fiona had been able to get more entrants through her contacts. She hadn’t been very communicative. And I wasn’t sure that in reality Simon Cow and Danni Minnow were going to be the slightest bit interested either. Who was I kidding? They were coming to our town for the WGT? auditions, not some schoolgirl’s pet show.
I tossed and turned while my kitten snuffled softly on my duvet.
‘Jaffa?’ I whispered. ‘Can I talk to you?’
The tiny kitten snuffled in her sleep and put her paw over her face. My chest tightened at the sight of her. Whatever else happened, at least I had my Jaffa. She hadn’t run off at all since we’d started planning the pet show. She seemed completely at home with me. And she had totally stolen my heart.
‘Jaffsie?’ I tried again.
‘Mmmm?’ she purred, opening one eye cautiously, and then stretched and yawned. ‘Me sleeping,’ she said grumpily.
‘I know,’ I said, stroking her downy fur, ‘but I can’t sleep at all tonight.’
‘Well, me is very sorry. But me can sleep and me going right back to sleep, right now!’ Jaffa said, closing her eyes firmly.
‘Hey! Just a minute!’ I said, picking her up and putting her on my chest so that her face was close to mine. ‘I just want to ask you something about tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow is tomorrow. Mum said,’ Jaffa said huffily. ‘And today is today. And right now me is sleepy. Me told Bertie this!’
‘OK!’ I said impatiently. ‘Just one minute of your time – that’s all I’m asking.’
Jaffa sighed noisily, opened one eye and said, ‘One minute.’
I tickled her gently behind one ear. ‘Thank you. So, I wanted to say, are you nervous about the pet show?’
Jaffa blinked slowly. ‘Nervous? Why should me be nervous?’
‘Well, it’s a sort of competition, the pet show. Sometimes people get nervous before competitions. And there’ll be other animals there that maybe you’ve never seen before. I just wondered if you’d thought about it.’
‘Everyone always loves Jaffsie,’ she said. I’m sure she smiled as she said this. Cheeky little monkey! I thought. I wish I had her confidence. ‘So me is not worried about nothin’. And,’ she said, opening her eyes wide and fixing me with that innocent gaze of hers, ‘if my Bertie there to look after Jaffsie, there be nothin’ to worry about anyway.’
My heart lurched. ‘That’s right, little Jaffa,’ I whispered. ‘That’s right.’
It turned out that both Fergus and my little kitten were completely one hundred per cent right: there was nothing to worry about. I had not taken Fergus at his word when he’d said his mum would run everything like clockwork – it was more like a military parade, if you asked me. That woman was as efficient as a whole army of ants. Fiona had sorted the venue (the Pinkington Theatre which Dad and Pinkella had helped to renovate, and where the Who’s Got Talent? auditions were also to be held). She had also organized all the other contestants and of course the TV crews and make-up people and the catering people who were needed to provide refreshments and snacks.
The only thing Fiona couldn’t control was Jazz. If I’d thought my best mate had been hyper during the planning of this thing, her behaviour on the morning of the show was mega-ultra-super-hyper! She was like a jitter-bug with a sugar rush. She could not keep still, patting her hair, rearranging her bangles on her arm, pulling at her T-shirt, and squ
ealing every time she caught sight of a TV camera or a microphone.
‘You need to chill out, Jazz,’ Fergus told her. ‘Just be yourself. Danni and Simon are going to love you. Mum’s told them so much about you.’
‘Oh yeah, like what a freak I am and how I’m only eleven and—’ her face darkened as she realized she’d given away her real age.
Fergus raised an eyebrow at me and smiled knowingly.
‘Fergus is right, Jazz,’ I said, grabbing my funny friend and hugging her tight. ‘They’ll love you – just like we do.’
Of course they did! And weirdly, they seemed to love me too, which I was pretty surprised about. They weren’t nearly as diva-like as I’d thought they would be. Even Simon was brilliant at chatting to us, joking and laughing and putting us completely at our ease. Danni even let us look around their mega black limo, which had a DVD player and a fridge stacked with chocolate and drinks. I could certainly see why the celebrity life appealed to Jazz.
‘Can’t go anywhere without my candy bars!’ Danni drawled, offering us each a snack from the fridge. ‘Take a note of that, chick.’ She winked at Jazz, who practically swooned on the spot.
Danni needn’t have worried about Jazz taking notes: she was taking notes on every single time Danni breathed. I grinned, bracing myself for many Danni-wannabe moments to come from my star-struck best friend.
A couple of weeks ago, when we weren’t speaking, Jazz would have given every pair of trainers she possessed (even the ones with rainbow-coloured laces) to be here without me, scurrying around after celebrities, and she wouldn’t have missed me one bit. But that day I knew she was pleased to have me with her. ‘This is all down to you and your kitten,’ she whispered, squeezing my arm, once we’d left the limo.
In fact, the only thing that threatened to be a problem was Jaffa. She was in danger of blowing all the good vibes out of the window when I told her she had to sit in a cat box for a while.
‘Me not like this!’ she whined at me through the door. ‘Me hate bein’ shut in – Bertie know that. Ber-tiiiiiiie!’
‘Wow! Jaffa’s making a racket,’ Dad said, peering in through the metal grille. ‘It’s all right, little Jaffsie. We’ll let you out for a cuddle in a minute.’
‘Me not want cuddles,’ Jaffa mewled. ‘Me want go hoooooome.’
‘We’ll go home the minute this is all finished, I promise,’ I told her. ‘You just have to sit tight and look beautiful and it’ll all be worth it. Can’t have you missing your moment of fame, can we?’
‘OK,’ Jaffa agreed, growling slightly.
Dad looked at me funnily.
‘What?’ I said, eyes wide and innocent.
‘You and cats – I don’t know. Anyone would think you two understood each other.’ He smiled and patted my shoulder. ‘Come to think of it . . .’ he hesitated. ‘It was like that with Fenella’s cat as well—’
‘I just think humans shouldn’t talk down to animals,’ I said hastily. ‘They have feelings too.’
Dad shook his head, smiling wryly. ‘Bertie Fletcher, you are a mystery to me.’ He gave me a squeeze. ‘I’m proud of you, helping set this up. If your mum could see you now . . .’ He tailed off, a cloud passing over his face. I gave him a quick hug back and he pulled himself together. ‘You’d better get on,’ he said quietly, and pushed me gently in Fiona’s direction.
The woman was a legend! She had managed to rustle up hordes of animals.There were more dogs than anything else, but I spotted a lizard and a tortoise among the crowds and something that looked like a fat squirrel, but which Fergus told me was a chinchilla. No snakes, I was pleased to see.
Fiona had arranged for all the dogs to have a separate part of the theatre to themselves. I had a sneaking suspicion Fergus had had a part in this, since seeing how worried I’d been about those spaniels.
‘We don’t want the bigger animals frightening the smaller ones,’ Fiona told me. ‘Especially not the gorgeous little puss-cats,’ she said, bending down to talk to Jaffa.
So Mr Bruce’s spaniels were kept as far away from Jaffa as possible, thankfully. I spotted him out of the corner of my eye, chatting to ‘Bex’. Dad was hovering in the background, a bit like an over-eager puppy himself. I was glad I had enough to think about without worrying about my dad’s love life. (Eeeeeuuuuuwwww!)
Fiona had organized for a semicircle of tables to be laid out for the smaller animals’ cages and boxes. I was just finishing off my tour of duty, making sure there was water and snacks for the pets, when I saw Mr Smythe arrive with Houdini and Mr Nibbles in what he called their ‘travelling cage’. I went to greet him.
He immediately started chattering nervously at top speed with much nose- and moustache-twitching and polishing of glasses. ‘I couldn’t bring the full-size cage as it was too unwieldy. But Houdini has more than enough room in here to perform his prize-winning act,’ he assured me. ‘And Mr Nibbles needs no more than a little tub of sunflower seeds to show off his particular talent.’
I smiled, thinking he sounded more nervous than I was.
‘I hadn’t realized rodents were capable of performing,’ Fiona said with a shudder, when I introduced her.
‘Oh yes,’ Mr Smythe had said chirpily, oblivious to Fiona’s distaste. ‘I think you will be surprised to see what a hamster can do with a peanut.’
‘I’m sure,’ Fiona had said, grimacing.
Ty arrived looking thoroughly awestruck and clutching a ruffled, squeaky Huckleberry.
I went over to him and gave him a hug. ‘Hey, Ty! Have you got a cage for Huckleberry?’
He nodded dumbly, gazing around at the mayhem, his eyes wide.
I chuckled. ‘I’ve never seen you lost for words before!’ I teased. ‘Don’t worry – it’s going to be fun. And Huckleberry’s bound to win a prize for squeakiest pet, if nothing else.’ Ty grinned gratefully and put Huckleberry back in the box his mum had brought for him.
The cameras had started rolling as soon as the crowds of spectators and contestants began arriving. Fiona had said she wanted it all on film. ‘I want to get a real flavour of the whole event,’ she gushed. ‘We want to see the public mingling with the celebs.’ She pronounced it ‘slebs’. ‘We need a sense of the excitement building.’
She’d arranged for a telephone voting system to be put in place so that viewers at home could vote for their favourite pet, and the proceeds from the cost of the votes were definitely going to the Cats and Dogs Home.
‘I didn’t think your mum was serious about that,’ I told Fergus, grinning like a loon.
‘Oh yeah, like I said, she’s crazy about cats,’ he assured me. But I couldn’t help thinking that he’d made sure Fiona had stuck to that part of the deal.
Once all the contestants had arrived, filming of the individual pets and their particular talents started in earnest. Jazz was there in every shot, walking behind Simon and Danni, carrying clipboards, pens, glasses of water – anything they wanted. She would have found them a flying pig if they’d asked for it. She was in her element, her chocolate-drop eyes shining and her face split into a permanent, extra-wide cherry lipgloss flavoured grin. It made my face ache with happiness just to look at her.
And then my own personal moment of glory came when the cameras came to me and Jaffa.
Danni and Simon walked over. My hands were shaking and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find my voice.
‘So who’s this little cutie?’ Danni cooed, leaning in and beaming at Jaffa.
‘Wow! I’m impressed,’ said Simon, in that deadpan way of his. ‘I didn’t expect to be, but – I am.’
Jaffa sat up on her haunches, looked directly at the camera and the two celebrity judges, and let out a long, high-pitched mew.
‘This my best side!’ she said, preening herself and blinking at the film crew.
I giggled and felt my shoulders relax. My kitten was fluttering her eyelashes! She was flirting with the camera!
Simon and Danni bent down to get a closer look.
‘This pretty lady say all the right things to Jaffsie!’ she crooned.
My eyes felt hot. I bit down hard on my lip. I was not going to lose it in front of the cameras, like those nutters in the auditions for WGT?
Jazz was leaping up and down behind me, grinning from ear to pierced ear, her beads jangling in her hair. ‘That’s my mate!’ she was whooping. ‘MY BEST MATE!’
Simon had actually gone gooey-eyed. ‘I am not usually a cat person, Danni, as you know. But I have to say, you’re right. This little beauty has buckets of personality! It’s a ‘yes’ from me.’
The crowd clapped and cheered and Fergus gave me a double thumbs-up sign. If Jaffa could have bowed, I’m sure she would have. As for me, I was the proudest pet-owner on the planet.
Epilogue
Kitten Smitten
Later that night, Jazz, Dad, Jaffa and I went over to the Meerleys to wait for the votes to be counted. Fiona had laid on drinks in posh, tall glasses, and there were huge bowls of yummy crisps and dips and plates piled high with mini cupcakes. Dad was soon jabbering away to Fiona about his writing while Mr Meerley ran in and out of the kitchen, topping up people’s drinks and handing round snacks. Fergus, Jazz and I were huddled on one of the pristine white sofas with Jaffa curled up next to us. We were glued to the TV screen where Simon and Danni were reading out the results of the talent show and commenting on the voting.
