The Curious Kitten

Amber turned to her mum, smiling in relief. “It’s OK! Cleo’s not in the front garden. She must have decided to stay round the back today.”

Mum nodded. “Maybe the novelty’s worn off.”

All the same, Amber was a little bit hurt that Cleo didn’t come rushing to see her as she stepped into the house. Whenever they’d been out over the summer holidays, she’d always come to greet them. As soon as she heard the door bang, she would come dashing downstairs from Amber’s room, where she’d been asleep on her bed. Or sometimes she was sitting on the living-room windowsill, watching to see them drive up.

The house felt oddly quiet and empty without a little tortoiseshell cat twirling around her feet. “Cleo!” Amber called up the stairs. “Cleo, where are you?”

Mum pushed the front door shut and looked around in surprise. “Isn’t she here? She’s usually desperate for us to feed her when we get in from school.”

“I know…” Amber said. “Cleo! Cleo!” She hurried through to the kitchen and out into the back garden. But no kitten came galloping over the grass to meet her. The garden was empty and still, with just a few birds twittering in the trees.

Amber trailed back inside, feeling worried.

Her mum was emptying one of Cleo’s pouches of kitten food into her bowl and she glanced up as Amber came in. She put down the pouch, looking thoughtful. “No sign of her?” she asked.

Amber shook her head.

“That is odd. Go and check upstairs, Amber. She might have got shut in one of the bedrooms.”

Amber smiled. “I didn’t think about that! I hope she hasn’t made a mess in Sara’s room. Sara got really cross when Cleo tipped over all her hairbands and stuff the other day.”

She raced upstairs, but all the bedroom doors were ajar. She checked the airing cupboard on the landing, just in case, but she wasn’t in there... Or in Sara’s wardrobe, or hers, or Mum and Dad’s. She wasn’t anywhere at all.

“Mum, I don’t know where she can be,” Amber said, bursting back into the kitchen. She was trying very hard not to cry. Mum would only say she was getting in a state about nothing. But this really didn’t feel like nothing. Cleo never missed meals.

Mum put her arm round Amber’s shoulders. “Sit down for a moment, have a drink, and let’s think about this.” She handed Amber some squash and pushed her gently into a chair. “Cleo was around just before lunch when I went into school. And we know she’s been getting more adventurous lately, going over the wall into the front garden. She’s probably just gone further than before. After all, you’ve only been back at school a week. Cleo doesn’t really know what time you come home, does she? And the fact I’m working different times of day probably confuses her, too.”

“I suppose so…”

“I expect she’ll be back in a minute, yowling if we don’t get her food in front of her before the cat flap bangs shut.”

Amber tried to laugh, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

Cleo stood perched on the pile of old sacks, mewing anxiously. She didn’t understand why the doors had closed so suddenly. All she knew was that now she couldn’t get out. She started to pick her way carefully between the boxes back towards the doors. Perhaps when she got closer she’d find a way to escape. When she pushed on doors in the house, sometimes they opened. Although sometimes they didn’t… She scampered up to the doors and scrabbled at them with her front paws. They were shut tight.

There was a growling noise and then suddenly the van lurched, and Cleo slipped over sideways with a little squeak of fright. She’d only been in a car a few times, when she was brought home from the shelter and for trips to the vet. She’d always travelled in a comfortable basket, padded with a blanket, though. She slid across the floor of the van as it pulled out into the road, meowing frantically. She hadn’t meant for this to happen at all.

Cleo pressed herself into a small dark space under a storage locker that had been built for tools. It was a tight fit, but it made her feel safer. Nothing could get at her under here. She squashed herself back against the cold metal of the van’s wall and waited.

Eventually the van seemed to slow down, and then it lurched to a stop. The noisy engine was turned off, leaving Cleo’s ears buzzing. There was a crunching, clashing sound, and the doors swung open. Cleo wriggled her nose out of the tiny gap and tried to see what was happening. She could smell the fresh air coming in through the open doors, and she desperately wanted to race for them. But there was so much noise. She darted back into her safe hiding place as a huge box slid past her with a shriek of metal on metal and shivered. What if more of the boxes moved as she ran for the doors? She had to try, though.

Cleo laid her ears back close to her head and crept out. With her tummy pressed against the floor of the van, she edged across to the doors.

She could see the road outside, and her whiskers twitched with the warm smells of the sunny afternoon. But just as she was getting ready to jump down, the doors clanged shut. She was trapped once more.

Cleo flung herself at the doors with a desperate wail, banging her paws against the hard metal. The doors didn’t budge. She should have run for it when she could! Furious and frightened, she stomped back across the van, the fur all along her spine raised, her tail fluffed up. What was going to happen now? What if she never got out?

Miserably aware of how hungry and thirsty and lonely she felt, Cleo meowed as loudly as she could, hoping that Amber would come, the way she always did. Surely Amber would come and rescue her…

“Amber, I don’t think she can have been hit by a car,” Mum said gently, as Amber’s dad came into the kitchen and hung his laptop bag over a chair. “We’d have heard. Cleo’s microchipped. If she’d been taken to a vet, they would have called my mobile.”

Amber had searched everywhere she could think of. She’d opened every cupboard in the house, remembering the day when Dad had accidentally shut Cleo in the cupboard under the stairs. And then she’d gone back and checked all the drawers, too. When Sara had got home from school, the sisters had gone down their road calling for her, while Mum had checked the garage and the shed. But Cleo was nowhere to be found. And what made it even worse was that Amber and Sara had found her collar under one of the bushes in front of the house next door. So now even if someone found her, they wouldn’t know the number to call.

“What’s up? Has Cleo disappeared?” Dad asked, giving Amber a hug. “She’s probably just out exploring.”

“Well, that’s what I said,” Mum sighed. “But it’s six o’clock, Dan. She normally has her dinner about four. It’s really unusual for her not to turn up for that.”

“And now we’ve found her collar,” Amber said shakily, pointing to it on the kitchen table. “So we know she was out at the front of the house. What if she’s been run over?”

“No, your mum’s right. I’m sure someone would have found her and let us know, Amber.” Dad frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe she is lost, though. She’s only little – she could just have got confused about where she was going. How about I have another quick look along the street?”

When Dad came back a while later, he had to admit that he hadn’t seen any sign of Cleo, either. As Amber picked at her dinner, she kept thinking of the open cat food pouch, which Mum had folded over and put in the fridge. Cleo must be so hungry, wherever she was.

“Try not to worry, Amber,” Mum said, as she turned off Amber’s light at bedtime. “She’ll probably be back in the morning.”

“You’re not sure…”

Mum sighed. “No, I can’t be absolutely sure. I really do think she will be, though.”

Amber pulled the duvet over her head. She was desperate to sleep so that she could wake up and find Cleo stomping up and down her bed, purring and mewing until Amber got up and fed her her breakfast. But she lay awake for what seemed like hours, imagining the kitten hungry or lonely or, worst of all, hurt.