Холли Вебб - The Rescued Kitten

“I know, my mum and dad say the same. We won’t go inside – we’ll just look around.”

“All right,” Layla agreed.

They worked their way round the corner of the big field to a gap in the hedge and then round the next field to the tumbledown buildings. They walked into a yard with old sheds on three sides.

“I think this used to be part of the same farm that our houses were in,” Edie said. “Mum said it was a machine store or something. But it’s really falling down.”

Layla peered carefully at the walls and the open doorways. “We could just put our heads round the doors,” she suggested. “That would be OK.”

The old sheds seemed to have been abandoned for a long time. They were almost completely empty, with just a few bits of dusty equipment here and there. But in the smallest and least falling down of the three buildings, there was a pile of old sacks, and on them was a gingery, furry bundle of kittens.

Edie and Layla forgot completely about being safe and never going inside abandoned buildings. They crept as quietly as they could into the shed, and crouched down by the squirming mass of fur.

“How many?” Edie whispered.

“Um, three, I think? No … four? It’s really hard to tell when they’re all on top of each other. No, it is three, look, that leg belongs to that one.” Layla pressed her hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh out loud and disturb the kittens. “They’re so sweet – oh, they’re waking up! Sorry, kittens…”

The kittens were wriggling even more now, starting to climb on top of each other, so it was even harder to see which paws and tails went where. One of them was ginger like Barbie, but with shorter fur, and the other two were mostly black, but flecked and spotted with ginger.

“These have to be Barbie’s brothers or sisters,” Edie said. “Actually, two sisters and one brother, I think.”

Layla frowned. “You’re making that up!”

“I’m not! You know everyone thinks ginger kittens are boys? And actually, you can have ginger girl cats like Barbie, it’s just rarer? Well, I asked Mum to explain it to me again, and she said it’s super-rare to have a tortoiseshell boy cat. And two of these are tortoiseshell.” She pointed to the two kittens currently squirming on top of the ginger one. “And the ginger one is probably a boy.”

“Oh… OK. Well, whatever they are they’re gorgeous. And the tortoiseshell ones are so pretty. Look! This one’s got a ginger streak down her nose!”

“They don’t look like they’ve been abandoned, do they?” Edie looked around the shed. “This is a nest that their mum’s put them in, and they’re really plump and lively. She must be off hunting for food.” She turned to look out of the door. “I think Mum was right about what happened. Barbie can’t have wandered off from here and ended up caught on that fence, not by herself. Her mum must have had to move the kittens, but Barbie got stuck.” Edie’s voice shook a little. “Her mum had to choose between her and the others. She had to get her kittens somewhere safe.”

“She wouldn’t have been able to get Barbie off that wire either.” Layla sighed. “Wow. I wonder where she had to carry them from? And trying to do the journey four times with four kittens!”

“Every time she put one down to go and get the others, they must have been trying to wriggle away all over the place. She would have hated it. Poor cat, it must have been so horrible for her. Imagine having to leave your baby behind…”

“Layla, look…” Evie whispered, gently turning her friend round. “In the doorway.”

Watching them, frozen at the entrance of the shed, was a tiny black cat. She didn’t look big enough or old enough to have had kittens, Edie thought. She was so skinny and little, but she had the most beautiful golden-green eyes.

“Shuffle back!” Edie told Layla. “I think she’s scared to come in because we’re here.” Her mum had told her how shy feral cats could be. The kittens were too little to be scared but their mum wouldn’t want to come near people.

Slowly, carefully, the two girls wriggled back to the side wall of the shed, as far away from the kittens and the mother cat as they could get. Edie wished they could just leave, but the kittens’ mum was in the doorway. She had her ears laid back flat, and she was pressed against the side of the door as if she was terrified – but she didn’t run away. She was obviously desperate to get to her kittens.

“She’s shaking,” Layla whispered.

“I know… Maybe if we keep still she’ll come in and then we can get out of the door without scaring them.”

The cat watched them suspiciously, glancing back and forth between them and her kittens as if she still wasn’t sure it was safe to move. Then, at last, she darted across the shed to her nest on the old sacks. She huddled herself over her kittens, as if she thought she needed to protect them from the two girls. Then she leaned down and picked up the ginger kitten in her mouth, hauling him out of the nest by the scruff of his neck.

Layla gasped. “She’s hurting him!”

“No,” Edie whispered. “That’s just how they carry their kittens. Look, he’s gone all limp. I don’t think it hurts. But where’s she moving him to?” She looked worriedly at Layla. “I think she’s doing this because of us! We scared her, and now she thinks this place isn’t safe and she has to take them somewhere new.”

The cat didn’t seem to know what to do. She jumped up on to an old wooden crate that was behind the nest, with the kitten dangling from her mouth, but then she hesitated and jumped down again, putting the kitten back with his sisters. She padded around the little pile of sacks, looking over at the girls every so often and then nudging worriedly at her kittens.

“Let’s get out of here,” Edie suggested, breathing into Layla’s ear. “We’ll stay by the wall and try to be really quick. Yes?”

Layla nodded, and they scurried as quickly as they could round the side of the shed and out of the door. Edie looked back as they dashed out and saw the mother cat still staring after them anxiously.

“What if she moves them and they get hurt like Barbie did?” Edie said, as they stood in the long grass outside the shed. “Where’s she even going to take them? She had to go so far last time, all the way across two fields and the road at least. It’s so dangerous!”

“We were trying to help…” Layla said, her voice faltering.

“And I think we’ve just made everything worse.” Edie shook her head. “We shouldn’t have stayed looking at the kittens. But they were so cute, I didn’t think about the mother cat coming back and getting scared. We should have gone away and got some food for her and left them alone.” She bit her bottom lip. “We messed up. Can I borrow your phone to ring my dad? Maybe he’ll know what to do.”

Layla nodded, pulling the phone out of her pocket and handing it to Edie. It had been her birthday present and Edie was definitely planning to ask for a phone for her birthday, too. “Dad?” she gasped, as soon as he picked up. “Dad, we’ve found Barbie’s mum and the other kittens. They’re in the old machine sheds, across the field from where we found Barbie. But I think we scared her, she’s going to move the kittens, and we don’t know what to do…”

“Wow!” her dad murmured. “OK.” He paused and Edie could almost hear him thinking. “Right. I reckon we need to get them all to a shelter. They probably won’t be able to rehome the mum, not if she’s feral, but they could find homes for the kittens once they’re not feeding from her any more. They’re still young enough to get used to people. So … we need to catch the mum and the kittens before she moves them again.”