Lost In The Storm

Chapter Two

It was mid-February, and it had suddenly got cold again. Ella was extra-glad to have Fluff sleeping on her feet at night. Mum and Dad had said that she was supposed to sleep in her basket, but they pretended not to notice that actually she always curled up with Ella. Mostly she stayed at the end of the bed, but a couple of times Ella had gone to sleep cuddling her, and Fluff slept snuggled under her chin.

Ella woke up early that morning. The duvet was huddled up around her shoulders where she’d wriggled herself down in the cold of the night. Fluff was pacing up and down the window sill, mewing excitedly.

“Fluff!” Ella moaned. “It’s not even properly light yet, what’s the matter?” Then she sat up, confused. It was almost light, but the room looked different somehow. And why was Fluff making such a fuss? Ella wrapped the duvet round her shoulders like a cloak and padded over to the window.

“Oh, wow! It’s snowed again!” she exclaimed as she peered out.

It had snowed very heavily just before Christmas, when Fluff was lost, but the cold snap hadn’t lasted long. January had just been grim and wet.

“Why does it have to be a school day?” Ella sighed. “It’ll be too dark to play outside much after school.”

Ella tried to argue at breakfast that school would probably be closed because of the snow, but Mum said it would have been announced on the radio. She promised faithfully to help Ella build an entire family of snowmen when she got back, and they dug out wellies and scarves and hats for the walk. Ella normally walked on her own to school. It wasn’t very far, and she met up with lots of her friends, but today Mum said she’d go too, at least most of the way, because she was worried Ella might slip over in the snow.

“Don’t go out today, Fluff,” Ella said, as she struggled to pull her wellies on over two pairs of socks. “It’s really cold, and the snow’s very deep. You’d probably sink up to your whiskers. Stay in the house and keep nice and warm.”

Fluff snuggled into her basket and snoozed for a while, but she was itching to go outside. Despite what Ella had said, Fluff really wanted to investigate the snow. She padded over to the cat flap and peered out. The snow was brand new and inviting. She couldn’t see any tracks in it, just a sheet of crunchy, sparkling white. She pushed the cat flap open gently with her nose, and sniffed. The snow smelled so fresh, and she could hear the wind blowing through the trees, the snow falling from the branches with soft whumpf noises. How could she stay inside? She wouldn’t go far…

Fluff eased herself out of the cat flap, shaking her paws daintily as they hit the snow. She knew all about snow, of course. Her long journey from the farm to Ella’s house had nearly ended in disaster when she was caught in a snowstorm. But today she was just going for a quick look around. Nothing could go wrong. She’d explore the snowy garden, and as soon as she felt cold or tired, she could go back inside to warm up, and probably beg some cat treats from Ella’s mum. Ella was just being too careful, Fluff thought. It was nice that Ella wanted to look after her, but really, she could look after herself!

Fluff ’s paws sank deeply into the snow. It must have been snowing for most of the night, as there was a thick layer over everything. The garden looked completely different, covered in strange lumps where the plants had been. Fluff looked down and saw her paw prints in the snow – the only ones. It was very exciting to be the only animal outside. She gave a little jump to make more prints, scattering her tracks around the lawn in a pattern.

It was still snowing a little, the flakes drifting down idly, tickling Fluff ’s whiskers. She sat up on her back legs and tried to catch them with her front paws, but the snowflakes floated on the wind, and it was hard to tell where they were going. One particularly large flake came twirling down past Fluff ’s nose, and she whisked her paws at it. It seemed to dodge, she twirled around to chase it and suddenly she was flat on her tummy in the snow. Fluff stood up quickly, checking that no one had seen her slide. The snowflake had disappeared into the thousands of other snowflakes, and Fluff spat snow out of her mouth crossly. She plunged off across the garden to find something else to do.

Suddenly she noticed that hers weren’t the only tracks any more. A delicate pattern of forked prints was spattered over the snow by the fence. And perched on top of the fence, eyeing her cautiously, was a blackbird!

It whistled shrilly and hopped down into the next-door garden. Fluff trotted along the path of tracks eagerly. She’d got the hang of walking in the snow again now, lifting her paws higher than usual. The tracks led underneath the fence, and Fluff wriggled after them, not even remembering that she’d planned to stay in her own garden. The blackbird was on the bird table now, gobbling breadcrumbs that she’d put out. It must have been that morning, because Fluff could see the prints of Mrs Jones’s wellies in the snow. She gazed hopefully up at the blackbird for a while, but it just squawked and chattered at her angrily. Clearly it didn’t fancy coming down to be chased. She hopped from footprint to footprint instead, and realized that Mrs Jones must have gone down to check on the pond as well. Her prints led right up to the edge. Fluff stood in them and leaned over to look. The pond was frozen! She could see the water-plants poking out in places, snow drifted up around them, but most of the pond was covered with strange, clear, greenish ice. Fluff couldn’t see the fish at all, they must be hiding away at the bottom. Cautiously, she put a paw on the ice, and it skidded. She jumped back quickly. She’d already fallen over once, and the ice was horribly cold.

The pond was close to Mrs Jones’s fence, and there was an inviting gap underneath. The next garden smelled really interesting; somehow the cold was making all the smells so much better! Fluff flattened herself to the ground and squirmed through the gap, her whiskers twitching excitedly. Then she squirmed some more, and then she wriggled. Then she stopped wriggling. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was stuck!