Холли Вебб: The Missing Kitten

“It’s so pretty,” she murmured, as they walked along the footpath. “Look at all the flowers. I saw a rabbit last night, Dad, did I tell you?”

“Only about six times! I nearly had a heart attack when you screamed like that. I thought you’d fallen out of the window.”

“Sorry! I was excited! I’ve never seen a rabbit in my garden before!” Scarlett giggled. “Can we go down here? Is it the right way?”

Dad nodded. “Yup, this is the quickest path down to the village, the way you and Jackson will go to school, probably.”

Scarlett swallowed nervously. She was still worrying about the school. It was tiny, which was nice, she supposed. There wouldn’t be that many people to get to know. But they’d probably all been together since playgroup. They might not want a stranger joining their class at all.

Dad nudged her gently with his elbow. “You had a good time on your visit, didn’t you?”

Scarlett looked up at him, surprised.

“It was pretty obvious what you were thinking, sweetheart.”

“I suppose. Yes. Everyone was nice. But that was just one morning. I’ve got to go there every day…”

“It’ll be great. You’ll be fine, I’m sure you will.”

Scarlett nodded. She didn’t really want to think about it. “Look – is that the village? I can see houses.” She ran on ahead. “And there’s the shop, Dad, look.”

“I’d better find the list,” Dad muttered, searching his pockets. “We definitely need bread. Can you be in charge of finding that for me? Now where on earth did I put it?”

But Scarlett wasn’t listening. She had seen something – a noticeboard in the shop window. It was full of advertisements – exercise classes in the church hall, someone offering to make celebration cakes, a nearly new lawnmower for sale…

And a litter of kittens, three black-and-white, one ginger, ready to leave their mother now, free to good homes.

“Dad! Look!” Scarlett was so excited, she couldn’t keep still – she was dancing from foot to foot, pointing madly at the notice.

“What?” Her dad hurried up, peering into the window. “Oh! I can see why you’re so excited. ‘Ready now’, hmmm?” He read the advert through thoughtfully, and then got his phone out.

“Are you going to call them?” Scarlett squeaked excitedly.

“No. I’m going to put the number into my phone, get some bread and milk, and go home and talk it over with your mother. Can you imagine what she’d say if we went out for shopping and came home with a kitten?”

Scarlett sighed. “I suppose you’re right. It would be funny though.” She giggled. “‘Hi, Mum, here’s the milk…’ And we take a kitten out of the bag!”

“It might have been here a while, this notice,” Dad pointed out. “The kittens might all have gone. Don’t get your hopes up, OK?”

Scarlett nodded. But as they paid for the shopping, she took a deep breath and smiled at the lady behind the counter. She hated talking to people she didn’t know, but this was important. “Excuse me, but you see the notice in the window about the kittens? Has it been up for long – I mean, do you know if they still have any left?”

The lady beamed at her. “After a kitten, are you? Julie Mallins will be pleased. She only put the notice up earlier this week, and I know she’s still looking for homes for them all.”

“Really?” Scarlett was dancing around again, she just couldn’t help it. “Oh Dad, can we go home and talk to Mum about it now, please?”

“All right, all right!” Dad grinned, raising his eyebrows at the lady.

Scarlett ran all the way home – in fact, she went twice as far as Dad did, because he wouldn’t run too, so she kept having to turn round and run all the way back to him to tell him to hurry up. When she raced in through the front of the cottage, she was completely out of breath.

“Mum! Mum!” she gasped, running from the living room to the kitchen and back to the bottom of the stairs.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Her mum backed out of the understairs cupboard, where she’d been putting coats and wellies away. “Scarlett, you’re scarlet!” It was an old family joke.

“Ha ha. Mum, there’s someone in the village who’s got a litter of kittens they want to give away!”

“Really?”

“There was a notice up in the village shop.” Dad came in, holding out his phone. “I’ve got the number, what do you think?”

Scarlett bit her lip to stop herself shrieking “please, please, please”. Her mum was very firm about not whining, and she really didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her right now.

“Well, I suppose we could ask to go and look at them…” her mum said, rather doubtfully. “I’m just a bit worried that the house is all upside down right now while we’re still unpacking. Wouldn’t that be stressful for a kitten?”

Scarlett’s face fell. Mum was right. “Maybe we could wait?” she whispered. “Maybe we could just choose a kitten and ask them to keep it for us a bit longer?” She really wanted to have a kitten now, but she didn’t want their new pet to start out scared by all the boxes everywhere.

Dad hugged her. “Well, let’s see what Julie says – that’s the owner,” he explained to Mum. “She might not think it’s a problem. To be honest, we’ve done most of the unpacking in the kitchen already. We could keep it in there for the time being – I think you have to keep new kittens in one room to start off with anyway.”

Mum nodded. “I’d forgotten that. We used to have a cat when I was little,” she told Scarlett, “but it’s ever such a long time ago. We’ll all have to learn how to look after a cat together.”

“What?” Jackson put his head round the kitchen door. “Are we getting one? What’s happening?”

“Scarlett found a notice about a litter of kittens needing homes,” Dad told him. “We should have known – if there were kittens around, Scarlett was bound to find them! Shall I call this lady then?”

Mum nodded, and Scarlett flung her arms around her. She held her breath and listened as Dad made the phone call.

“Hi, is that Julie? We saw your advert about the kittens… Mmm… We wondered if we’d be able to come and see them? Uh-huh. Well, now’s great, if that’s really OK with you. Fantastic. Kendall’s Lane. Oh, off the main road? See you in about ten minutes then.”

Scarlett gasped. Ten minutes! Ten minutes till they saw their kitten!

“Here they are.”

Julie turned out to be a really sweet lady, who’d adopted Goldie, the kittens’ mum, after finding her eating scraps of bread under her bird table, because she was a stray, and so terribly hungry.

“It took weeks to even get her to come inside,” Julie told Scarlett, as she led them through to the kitchen. “But she’s settling down now. I think she knew she needed to let someone look after her, so she could have her kittens somewhere nice and warm.”

“How old are the kittens?” Scarlett’s mum asked as Julie opened the kitchen door.

“Ten weeks – the vet said they should be fine to go to new homes,” Scarlett heard Julie say. But she wasn’t really concentrating. Instead, she was staring at the basket in the corner, where a beautiful brownish tabby cat was curled up, with four kittens mounded around and on top of her.

“Goodness, she looks tired,” Mum murmured.

“Yes, I think she is, poor thing. She’s been a really good mum, but she was so thin to start with, apart from her huge tummy full of kittens. I was worried that she wouldn’t be able to feed them, but she’s done very well. They’re all practically weaned now – they love their food!”

Woken by the voices, one of the kittens popped his head up, his big gingery ears twitching with interest.