The Curious Kitten

“Are you all right?” said a man’s voice from behind George.

George whirled round. It was Luke from next door. George hadn’t even heard his van drive up. “Hi!” he said breathlessly. “Do you have a ladder in your van? Mum’s gone to look for one, but she’s not sure where it is.”

“What do you need a ladder... Oh, I see.” Luke peered up at the kitten clinging to the garage roof. “Hold on a sec.” He hurried back to his van.

George went back to murmuring nonsense to the kitten and trying to stop Toby from climbing up the drainpipe to get to her. He glanced up at his bedroom. Mum must have grabbed Pirate and put him somewhere safe, because now his window was wide open. Maybe Mum thought the kitten could jump back in. But George was pretty sure such a little cat couldn’t jump up there from the steep roof, not without sliding back down again.

“I’ve shut Pirate in the kitchen,” said his mum, rushing out. “But I can’t find the ladder, I think it must be in the garage.”

“It’s OK.” George pointed to Luke, who was coming up the path with a stepladder. “Luke’s got one.”

His mum gave a huge sigh of relief. “Hi, Luke. You turned up just at the right time. I’ve got a bag of cat treats. I was thinking we could try and coax the kitten back up to the window with them, but it’ll definitely be easier this way.”

Luke unfolded the ladder and slowly moved it towards the garage. “I don’t want to scare it away,” he said. “Pass me some of those treats.”

Mum emptied a few into his hand and he climbed up the ladder, holding out the treats towards the kitten. “Come on, puss. Here, look. Don’t you want them?”

Cleo hissed feebly at the strange man. She was so frightened she didn’t know what to do – she could only cling on.

George watched, his heart thumping. What if Luke couldn’t reach? Or the kitten tried to dodge him and fell?

“Hold the ladder, can you?” Luke called down quietly to George’s mum. “I need both hands… Aha! Got you.” The kitten wriggled in his arms as he climbed back down the ladder one-handed. “There we are. You’re safe now. Yes, you eat those.”

He laughed as Cleo sniffed out the cat treats at last, leaning over to nuzzle eagerly at the bag in George’s mum’s hand. “Well, it doesn’t look like she’s come to any harm, does it?” He peered at Cleo’s black and white and ginger coat, frowning. “I wonder… But it’s too far, surely. Here, can you hold her a minute?” Luke passed the kitten to George and dug in his pocket. “Would you say she looks like that?” He held out a slip of paper, with a little photo of a kitten on it.

“Yes,” George’s mum said, looking at the leaflet. “I think so…”

“I don’t believe it.” Luke shook his head. “Well, that girl who lives opposite the house I’m working on is going to be pleased, if this really is her. Are you Cleo, hey?”

“Cleo!” George gasped. He stared at the kitten. “Amber’s Cleo?”

Luke looked thoughtful. “I think her mum did say she was called Amber. She’s got red hair?”

“That’s her! This is Amber’s cat? She’s in my class. So that’s why she’s been looking so upset.” He looked down at Cleo, his cheeks reddening. He’d wanted to steal Amber’s kitten! “But how did she get all the way over here?” he asked suddenly. “Amber told me she lives on the other side of town, by the adventure playground.”

Luke made a face and nodded towards the van. “Well, guess where that’s been parked. Right outside her house.”

“Amber did say her kitten was really nosy,” George said. “She was worried about her getting run over, because she’d started going out on to the street.”

“You think she got into your van?” George’s mum said in surprise, shaking out a few more cat treats and feeding them to Cleo.

“She must have done. I’d better take her home,” Luke sighed. “And apologize for catnapping her.”

“You didn’t mean to!” George’s mum laughed. “I’m sure they’ll just be delighted to have her back. Do you want to borrow Pirate’s cat carrier? The poor kitten probably won’t like it much, it’ll smell of Pirate, but you’ll need to put her in something.”

“Before she eats all the cat treats and makes a getaway!” Luke agreed.

“Can I come with you?” George asked shyly. “I won’t get in the way or anything. I’d just like to help take her home.”

“If it’s OK with your mum. You can sit in the front with me and hold the carrier. I don’t want it wobbling about.”

“Of course you can,” Mum said. “Hold on a minute and I’ll get it out of the garage.”

George smiled. He could imagine how pleased Amber was going to be. If he’d lost Pirate, he’d have been in a real state.

“Amber, can you get the door?” Mum called. “I’ve got crumble mix all over my hands.”

Amber put down the jingly ball she’d found under the shoe rack, blinking away her tears. She kept wanting to cry – everything in the house seemed to remind her of Cleo.

“If it’s those window people again, just say no thank you,” her mum added.

Amber’s mum really didn’t like people trying to sell her double-glazing, and they always turned up when she was cooking the dinner. Amber opened the front door, rehearsing a polite go-away smile.

“Oh!” It was the builder from across the road. Amber bit at her bottom lip. What if he was coming to tell Mum on her, after all? But he was smiling.

“I’ve brought you a present. Me and my friend here.” He stepped back so that Amber could see the boy beside him, who was holding a plastic cat carrier.

“George?” Amber stared at her classmate for a moment – then she looked down at the cat carrier, and her eyes went wide with hope. “Have you… Have you—?”

“Is it her?” George asked anxiously. “We thought it must be.”

Cleo scrabbled madly at the sides of the carrier, mewing and mewing. Amber was there! The boy had brought her back to Amber. Why wouldn’t they let her out?

“Amber, what is it?” Amber’s mum came up the hallway, drying her hands on a tea towel. “Luke, hello. Is there a problem over the road?”

“Mum, they’ve found Cleo! Thank you so much!” Amber pulled open the latch and reached in to stroke the kitten. “I thought you’d never come home…” she murmured, lifting her out and snuggling Cleo against her shoulder. “Where was she?” she asked.

“I found her in my garden,” George explained. “But I didn’t know she was yours. I, um, fed her my leftovers,” he admitted. “And then she got stuck on our garage roof, and Luke helped to get her down.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell Amber that he’d lured her kitten into his house and got her into a fight with Pirate.

But Amber beamed at him. “Thank you for feeding her. I was so worried she was going to be starving!”

“I reckon she went for a ride in the back of my van,” Luke put in. “I can’t see how else she turned up in our neighbourhood. It’s a good couple of miles away.”

“Goodness,” Amber’s mum said. “She stowed away! I’ll have to ring Sara and Dad and tell them. You don’t know how relieved they’ll be. We were imagining the worst things…”

“I’m glad I found her,” George said to Amber.

“Not as glad as I am,” Amber said, giggling as Cleo licked her chin. “You couldn’t be.”

“You know a lot about cats,” Amber said admiringly, watching George tickle Cleo on just the right spot behind her ear. She’d invited George round to tea to say thank you – and to let him see how Cleo was. He’d asked Amber about her at school a few times, and she thought George must have really liked the kitten.

“Our cat’s called Pirate, because he looks like he has an eye patch. He’s my mum’s actually. She got him before I was born.”

“So he’s pretty old then?”

“Uh-huh. He’s a bit slow now – he doesn’t race around like this one does. But he’s still special,” George added firmly.

It was true. Pirate might be slow and not that good at chasing toys, but he almost always slept on George’s feet at night. Mum had told him the other night that Pirate had done that since George was a baby. She and Dad had tried to keep him away because they were worried that Pirate might hurt him by accident. But Pirate wouldn’t be shooed away – and he was the best one for stopping baby George crying. “In the end we gave up,” his mum had said, smiling down at Pirate, who was sitting between them. “He’d obviously decided you were his, you see.”

George watched Cleo clamber up into Amber’s lap and flop down, purring. He stroked her ears, and nodded to himself. Amber was Cleo’s, and he belonged to Pirate – and that was exactly the way it should be.