Холли Вебб - The Rescued Kitten

“Don’t worry,” Edie whispered. “We just want to look after you.”

Very gently, Edie held the bottle to the kitten’s mouth and the kitten wriggled a little to reach it. She was so light, Edie could hardly feel the weight of her moving. But when the kitten started to suck, she was so determined, so focused on drinking that milk – even if she did still keep gnawing at the bottle and missing it and stomping her little paws on Edie’s leg. The milk was hers and no one was taking it away.

Edie watched her sucking, feeling the rhythm as the kitten pulled on the bottle. It was soothing. Sleepy. She swallowed a yawn and realized that her dad was helping her hold the bottle. “I’m OK,” she muttered, sitting up a bit straighter.

“I know you are. It’s still the middle of the night, though. You’re allowed to be a bit sleepy.”

“I’m not going back to bed!” Edie told him, and then she looked guilty as the kitten stopped feeding and tensed up. “Sorry, baby. Shh.”

“Let’s go and sit on the sofa,” Dad suggested. “Come on.” He scooped the kitten gently off Edie’s lap and Edie followed him into the living room. The kitten reached eagerly for the bottle as soon as Edie held it for her, and Edie leaned against her dad’s shoulder, watching the tiny pink muzzle and the kitten’s contented, half-closed eyes. She ran one finger over the kitten’s head and round her ears, stroking the silky ginger fur.

“Dad, listen…” Edie put her hand on his arm. “Listen, she’s purring.”

The kitten had almost stopped sucking now. She was sleepy, just licking at the bottle as if she was full and couldn’t really be bothered. And there was a definite soft, tiny noise. A little purr.

The kitten felt the bottle move away from her mouth and she stirred, reaching after it, but then she slumped back down on to the soft fabric. She didn’t want the milk that much. She was warm, snuggled on the girl’s lap, and her stomach was nicely full.

Sleepily, as if the thought was far away, she wondered where her mother was and why she hadn’t come back to find her. But she’d been fed, the way her mother fed her, and she was warm and clean and cared for.

The girl rubbed gently at her ears and the kitten began to purr.

“She looks so different.” Layla leaned over the box and giggled as the kitten looked up at her. “I mean, she’s properly awake. And the cut on her neck looks much better now.” Layla eyed the kitten thoughtfully, and she gave a huge yawn, showing tiny white teeth. “Is it stupid to say that she looks fatter? I think she does, though it’s only been a couple of days since we found her. But I think she looks fatter than when I came over yesterday…”

“Mum reckons she might not have been getting a lot to eat. If her mum was a feral cat, and she had lots of kittens, it would have been hard for her to make enough milk. But now she’s getting this special kitten milk and it’s got all these added vitamins. It’s like perfect kitten food.” Edie gave the kitten a proud look. “She does seem fatter.”

“Does your mum…” Layla wrinkled her nose, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to say it. “Is she…”

“Is she still saying the kitten might not make it?” Edie sighed. “Yes. But not as much as before. And even Mum’s impressed by the amount she’s eating.”

“We have to give her a name!” Edie said suddenly. “I can’t keep just calling her ‘she’. I didn’t want to before, with everything Mum and Dad were saying, because it would be worse if we’d given her a name. Just look at her, though… She’s so beautiful and she needs a name.”

“She does,” Layla agreed. “But are you sure she’s a girl kitten? I thought ginger cats were usually boys.”

“That’s true,” Edie said. “I just always thought she looked like a girl kitten. Maybe because of the long fur? And I was right! Mum told me she’s definitely a girl.”

They gazed at the kitten admiringly. She was beautiful. When they’d first found her, she’d been so bedraggled and miserable-looking that Edie had hardly noticed her markings. And she’d only seen the kitten’s long fur as something that had got her caught up on the barbed wire. But now, clean and well fed, the kitten’s coat was fluffy and rich, and her nose was a beautiful bright pink, the same colour as her paw pads. She had long, long white whiskers and a whitish chin, but that was the only white on her. Even her tummy was a pale creamy oat colour.

“You could call her Fluff. She’s the fluffiest thing I’ve ever seen!” Layla said, carefully reaching in a hand and tapping her fingers on the towel for the kitten to track. She wasn’t quite at the pouncing stage yet but she was definitely watching.

“Mmm. Maybe.” Edie frowned. “I’d like something that was a bit more special, sort of different. Like Treasure, or … or Rescue. Because we found her.”

Layla nodded. “I know what you mean. Oh! I know.” She laughed. “You could call her Barbie. Because of the barbed wire!”

Edie looked at the kitten again. “Yes! That’s perfect! She does look like a Barbie. Yes, Barbie, that’s you,” she murmured lovingly to the kitten. Then she sighed. “I wish we knew where she came from.”

Layla glanced at the living-room door – they could hear Edie’s mum and dad chatting in the kitchen.

“Are you going to keep her?” she whispered. “I mean, we’ve just given her a name. What if she has to go and live with someone else?”

Edie smiled. “I think it’s going to be OK. Mum came downstairs on Saturday morning, and me and Dad and the kitten – I mean, Barbie – we were all asleep on the sofa. We’d fallen asleep feeding her! And she was asleep on both of us, half on me and half on Dad. Mum laughed and said something like, Well, she’s obviously not going anywhere, is she? And I reckon that means we’re keeping her.”

She reached out and gave Layla a quick hug. “But you can come and see her whenever, I promise. You rescued her, too.”

Layla sniffed and sighed. “Thanks. Hey, we’d better get to school.” She leaned over to rub Barbie under her chin. “Bye, gorgeous.”

“This is almost where we found her,” Edie murmured, stopping to look around the path, trying to work out exactly where it had been. “Yes – here, look.” They could see where the grass had been squashed down as they crouched to rescue the little kitten.

Edie took a shocked breath at the sight of the rusty, jagged wire. It was hard to think of Barbie being caught up on it, even when she knew that the kitten was safe now. She had just left her at home, with Dad teaching her how to pat her little paws at a piece of string. She was the world’s best looked-after kitten, Edie was making sure of it.

“We should go, we’ll be late,” Layla pointed out.

Edie took one last look around. “I hate thinking of her stuck here,” she said, with a shiver. “Do you think we could stop on the way home? Look for clues? We should try and find out where she came from.”

Layla nodded. “Course. Though I don’t know what we’re looking for.”

Edie sighed. “Me neither. I just feel like we ought to.”

Edie had printed out a photo that her mum had taken of her feeding Barbie, and she spent the whole of break and lunch showing it off to everyone in their class. It was great having everyone oohing and aahing over how cute and fluffy and little she was but Edie felt worried all day. She hadn’t liked leaving Barbie with Dad – even though he was a vet and she knew he could look after a kitten much better than she could. He was even going to take Barbie into work with him later on so she wouldn’t be left on her own. All the same, Edie still felt like she was abandoning her tiny cat. She was practically chasing Layla out of the cloakroom after school.