Холли Вебб - The Secret Kitten

“But she wasn’t wild,” Lucy tried to explain. She could feel herself starting to cry again. “She was shy, but she purred at us. And she loved our food, even if she didn’t really love us yet.”

“Well, perhaps we could go back to the alley by the shops and look for her,” Gran said thoughtfully, leaning over to get a clean tea towel out of the drawer.

“You mean – if we found her we could bring her back home again?” Lucy gasped. “We can keep her?” She jumped up. “Can we go round there now?”

William wriggled off Dad’s knee. “Right now?”

But Gran was standing staring into the tea-towel drawer. “I don’t think we need to… Look.”

Lucy leaned over and clapped her hand across her mouth. Curled up in among Gran’s neatly ironed tea towels was a black-and-white kitten, half-asleep and blinking up at them in confusion.

“I shut the drawer…” Gran murmured. “When I went to make the tea. It was open, just a little. You know how that drawer sticks sometimes…”

“Just enough for a skinny kitten to climb in, but not enough for us to see her!” Lucy said, her eyes wide.

Sleepily, Catkin stared up at Lucy and Gran and let out a little purr. Perhaps there was going to be food. The bread seemed a long while ago and it had been a lot of effort to get up on to the counter and steal a slice. She was hungry again.

“What a sweetheart,” Gran said, laughing as Catkin stepped carefully out of her nest in the drawer. She rubbed her furry face against Gran’s hand and purred even louder. “Just like my Catkin,” Gran said, petting her ears. “You’re staying now, are you?”

Catkin jumped down to the floor and wove her way round Gran’s ankles and then Lucy’s, still purring.

“That means yes,” Lucy whispered. “I know it does.”

“You actually had her hidden in your wardrobe?” Sara asked Lucy again, as they followed Gran home from school on Monday afternoon. “You had a secret kitten?”

“Yes. And I really wanted you to see her, but I couldn’t let Gran find out. Or I thought I couldn’t. It turns out we probably should have just told her to start with.”

“That wouldn’t have been as exciting,” Sara said, shaking her head.

“No.” Lucy smiled at her. “It was lovely, Catkin being our secret. But now we can play with her without worrying about Dad and Gran. And she still likes my bedroom best in all of the house.”

“Shall we pop in and buy a cake for after tea, girls?” Gran suggested, stopping as they reached the baker’s. “Oh, William, come back!”

Lucy and Sara giggled as William raced ahead, flinging open the door of the baker’s. When they caught up with him, he was already telling Emma behind the counter that he wanted a marshmallow ice cream.

“You know the black-and-white kitten, the one that was living in your yard?” Lucy said shyly to Emma, after they’d chosen their cakes. “She came into our garden and we’re going to keep her!”

Emma smiled delightedly. “Oh, that’s such good news! I looked for her, after you two told me she was there, but I never saw her. I did wonder if you’d imagined her.”

“No, she’s just a bit shy.” Lucy smiled to herself, remembering Catkin chasing madly round the kitchen after a ping-pong ball that morning and then collapsing in her lap, exhausted, with her paws in the air. She wasn’t shy with them, not any more.

“I’ve got news for you, too,” Emma went on, as she put their chocolate doughnuts into a bag. “I called the cat shelter about the kittens’ mum, to ask them what the best thing was to do. They’re going to catch her and spay her so she doesn’t have more kittens. They said she probably won’t ever be tame enough to be a house cat, but if she’s not trying to feed kittens all the time she’ll be a lot less thin and worried, poor thing. So they’ll bring her back and she can live in the yard. We’ll put scraps out for her.”

“Thank you!” Lucy forgot to be shy and gave Emma a hug. “You’re amazing. I never even thought of doing that!”

“Maybe Catkin can come back and visit her,” William suggested, reaching into his bag and picking the hundreds and thousands off his marshmallow ice cream.

“Maybe.” Lucy smiled, imagining the two cats nose to nose, sniffing hello. All of a sudden she couldn’t wait to get home and see Catkin and show her off to Sara, too.

Her own kitten, not-so-secret any more…

Other titles by Holly Webb

The Snow Bear

The Reindeer Girl

The Winter Wolf Animal Stories:

Lost in the Snow

Alfie all Alone

Lost in the Storm

Sam the Stolen Puppy

Max the Missing Puppy

Sky the Unwanted Kitten

Timmy in Trouble

Ginger the Stray Kitten

Harry the Homeless Puppy

Buttons the Runaway Puppy

Alone in the Night

Ellie the Homesick Puppy

Jess the Lonely Puppy

Misty the Abandoned Kitten

Oscar’s Lonely Christmas

Lucy the Poorly Puppy

Smudge the Stolen Kitten

The Rescued Puppy

The Kitten Nobody Wanted

The Lost Puppy

The Frightened Kitten

The Secret Puppy

The Abandoned Puppy

The Missing Kitten

The Puppy who was Left Behind

The Kidnapped Kitten

The Scruffy Puppy

The Brave Kitten

The Forgotten Puppy My Naughty Little Puppy:

A Home for Rascal

New Tricks for Rascal

Playtime for Rascal

Rascal’s Sleepover Fun

Rascal’s Seaside Adventure

Rascal’s Festive Fun

Rascal the Star

Rascal and the Wedding

Copyright

STRIPES PUBLISHING

An imprint of Little Tiger Press

1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,

London SW6 6AW

Text copyright © Holly Webb, 2015

Illustrations copyright © Sophy Williams, 2015

Author photograph copyright © Nigel Bird

My Naughty Little Puppy illustration copyright

© Kate Pankhurst

First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2015.

eISBN: 978–1–84715–636–5

The right of Holly Webb and Sophy Williams to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

www.littletiger.co.uk