The Secret Kitten (7 page)

Chapter Eight

“Whatever’s the matter with you two? Why are you up at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning?” Gran demanded. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, wrapped in her dressing gown. “Lucy, you’re crying! What’s wrong?” She put her arms around Lucy, pulling her up from the floor.

“We’ve lost her!” Lucy sobbed into
Gran’s shoulder. She didn’t care about keeping Catkin a secret any more. It was too late now.

“Lost who?” Gran stared at Lucy in puzzlement and so did Dad, who’d come in behind her, looking sleepy.

“Catkin,” William explained, coming to lean against Dad’s dressing gown. “Our kitten. Lucy found her in the garden. She was in Lucy’s wardrobe, but when we woke up she’d gone.”

“You had a kitten shut in your wardrobe?” Dad said slowly.

“Not shut in,” Lucy shook her head, gulping back tears. “Just her bed was in there and her litter tray. She could go anywhere in my room. We couldn’t leave her in the greenhouse – the glass is full of holes and it was
pouring with rain on Thursday night.”

Dad and Gran looked shocked. “But what were you feeding her?” Gran asked, frowning.

“Sandwiches, mostly. She loves chicken.” Lucy sniffed. “Just like me. We saved bits of our lunches for her and she was getting tame. We thought she was going to stay with us, but now she’s run away. She must have gone through your window, Gran. It’s the only one that was open.” Lucy slumped down on one of the kitchen chairs.

Gran moved slowly over to the counter to put the kettle on, tidying away the breadcrumbs and pushing shut a half-open drawer on the way. “I need a cup of tea,” she murmured. “A kitten in your wardrobe…”

“Where did she come from in the first place? That’s what I want to know,” Dad said, sitting down opposite Lucy with William on his knee.

“The alley down by the baker’s,” Lucy explained tiredly. “There were three of them – the two tabbies got adopted, but nobody cared about the little black-and-white kitten. And then she just turned up in our garden.”

“And you named her Catkin? Like my Catkin?” Gran asked, getting mugs out of the cupboard.

“You said your kitten was black and white, too,” Lucy explained. “And it’s a sweet name. It was just right.”

“Oh dear,” Gran sighed. “Perhaps she was just too wild to be a pet, Lucy. If she’s never really known people…”

“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…