Ginger The Stray Kitten

Chapter Four

“Don’t cry, Rosie,” Mum said gently as they walked back to the car.

Rosie was trying not to cry, but there were just a few tears that she couldn’t seem to stop. She was thinking about what could’ve happened at the farm when the cats were caught.

Why hadn’t Ginger been with them?

Probably he’d found a sneaky way out of the barn and slipped away. But why? Perhaps he’d just been frightened of the rescue centre people, but it was also possible that he had stayed behind at the farm to wait for her. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to go with the other cats because of her, because she’d been feeding him and playing with him.

She had read about feral cats on the internet and knew that they were good hunters, but Ginger was too young to hunt properly for himself. His mother would still have been catching food for her kittens, and showing them how to chase the mice in the barns. Without her to feed him, he might starve. Rosie nodded firmly to herself. She had to go back to the farm. She just had to find him, however long it took.

Rosie was determined to stop and look for the kitten the next day, but she and Gran got a shock when they reached the farm. Gran had come another way to collect Rosie from school, because she needed to go to the shops, and they both stopped in surprise as they came close.

“Goodness, that’s gone up quickly!” Gran exclaimed.

A huge wire fence was now surrounding the farmyard, covered in big notices about wearing hard hats, and no children playing on the building site. It was a building site already!

Rosie pressed her face up against the wire fence. The farmyard was deserted, with no sign of life at all.

“Can’t we go in and look for him?” she asked Gran.

“No, Rosie, look – it says no one can go in.” Gran sighed. “We’ll just have to keep coming by and hope we spot him – or perhaps we could ask the builders to keep an eye out. There’s no one here now, but I’m sure there will be soon, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to put the fence up, would they?”

Gran was right. The next day, a couple of men in yellow hard hats were wandering round the building site with a little machine that beeped, which Rosie and Gran guessed was some sort of clever measuring gadget. It took them ages to catch the men’s attention, but at last one of them came over.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Have you seen a kitten?” Rosie said nervously. “There were some cats here, and they were taken to a rescue centre, but we think one of the kittens ran away and…” She trailed off. “We just wondered if you’d seen him? A ginger kitten?”

“No, sorry.” The builder turned away. Rosie didn’t dare call him back, even though she wanted to.

“Could you keep an eye out for him, please!” Gran called, and Rosie squeezed her hand gratefully. She’d wanted to ask that, too.

They carried on walking, Rosie looking back sadly every so often. They seemed to be able to see that fence for ages.

“Don’t give up hope, Rosie,” Gran told her. “You never know.”

But Rosie couldn’t help feeling that her chances of finding Ginger were getting smaller and smaller. What if he had escaped before the fence went up. Maybe he wasn’t there at all!

Ginger was hiding between two hay bales in the barn, peering out occasionally, and trembling as the men’s heavy boots thumped past the door. Who were they? And why were they stamping and crashing round his home? He wished his mother and his brother and sisters would come back, but he was almost sure now that they were gone for ever. If his mother had still been here, she would have come to find him by now, wouldn’t she?

He had hidden in the barn when the men came to put the fence up, and he’d dashed back there again this morning when they returned. He didn’t dare do more than poke his nose out occasionally to see if they’d gone. He was starving, and it was getting harder to find anything to eat in the bin bags by the farmhouse.

There were voices outside now. Were more people coming? He shivered. He wanted the farm to go back to being quiet and safe like it was before. He listened miserably, but then his ears pricked up. He knew that voice. It was the girl! She was there! Maybe she’d known he was hungry and had brought him some more sandwiches? He edged nervously round the barn door, the fur on his back ruffling up.

The men were still there, and the girl was talking to one of them. If only they would go, he could run over to her. Perhaps she didn’t know he was here. He mewed a tiny mew, hoping she would hear. But he didn’t dare call more loudly in case the men saw him.

No! The girl was turning away. She was going!

Rosie walked sadly away down the lane with Gran, leaving the kitten staring desperately after her.

The girl had gone, and Ginger didn’t know if she would come back. He felt so small and scared, and very, very alone…