The Secret Kitten. Sammy The Shy Kitten. The Curious Kitten. The Homeless Kitten. A Kitten Called Tiger. The Rescued Kitten

The kittens were wriggling even more now, starting to climb on top of each other, so it was even harder to see which paws and tails went where. One of them was ginger like Barbie, but with shorter fur, and the other two were mostly black, but flecked and spotted with ginger.

“These have to be Barbie’s brothers or sisters,” Edie said. “Actually, two sisters and one brother, I think.”

Layla frowned.“You’re making that up!”

“I’m not! You know everyone thinks ginger kittens are boys? And actually, you can have ginger girl cats like Barbie, it’s just rarer? Well, I asked Mum to explain it to me again, and she said it’s super-rare to have a tortoiseshell boy cat. And two of these are tortoiseshell.” She pointedto the two kittens currently squirming on top of the ginger one. “And the ginger one is probably a boy.”

“Oh… OK. Well, whatever they are they’re gorgeous. And the tortoiseshell ones are so pretty. Look! This one’s got a ginger streak down her nose!”

“They don’t look like they’ve been abandoned, do they?” Edie looked around the shed. “This is a nest that their mum’s put them in, and they’re really plump and lively. She must be off hunting for food.” She turned to look out of the door. “I think Mum was right about what happened. Barbie can’t have wandered off from here and ended up caught on that fence, not by herself. Her mum must have had to move the kittens, but Barbie got stuck.” Edie’s voice shook a little. “Her mum had to choose between her and the others. She had to get her kittens somewhere safe.”

“She wouldn’t have been able to get Barbie off that wire either.” Layla sighed. “Wow. I wonder where she had to carry them from? And trying to do the journey four times with four kittens!”

“Every time she put one down to go and get the others, they must have been trying to wriggle away all over the place. She would have hated it. Poor cat, it must have been so horrible for her. Imagine having to leave your baby behind…”

“Layla, look…” Evie whispered, gently turning her friend round. “In the doorway.”

Watching them, frozen at the entrance of the shed, was a tiny black cat. She didn’t look big enough or old enough to have had kittens, Edie thought. She was so skinny and little, but she had the most beautiful golden-green eyes.

“Shuffle back!” Edie told Layla. “I think she’s scared to come in because we’re here.” Her mum had told her how shy feral cats could be. The kittens were too little to be scared but their mum wouldn’t want to come near people.

Slowly, carefully, the two girls wriggled back to the side wall of the shed, as far away from the kittens and the mother cat as they could get. Edie wished they could just leave, but the kittens’ mum was in the doorway. She had her ears laid back flat, and she was pressed against the side of the door as if she was terrified – but she didn’t run away. She was obviously desperate to get to her kittens.

“She’s shaking,” Layla whispered.

“I know… Maybe if we keep still she’ll come in and then we can get out of the door without scaring them.”

The cat watched them suspiciously, glancing back and forth between them and her kittens as if she still wasn’t sure it was safe to move. Then, at last, she darted across the shed to her nest on the old sacks. She huddled herself over her kittens, as if she thought she needed to protect them from the two girls. Then she leaned down and picked up the ginger kitten in her mouth, hauling him out of the nest by the scruff of his neck.

Layla gasped.“She’s hurting him!”

“No,” Edie whispered. “That’s just how they carry their kittens. Look, he’s gone all limp. I don’t think it hurts. But where’s she moving him to?” She looked worriedly at Layla. “I think she’s doing this because of us! We scared her, and now she thinks this place isn’t safe and she has to take them somewhere new.”

The cat didn’t seem to know what to do. She jumped up on to an old wooden crate that was behind the nest, with the kitten dangling from her mouth, but then she hesitated and jumped down again, putting the kitten back with his sisters. She padded around the little pile of sacks, looking over at the girls every so often and then nudging worriedly at her kittens.

“Let’s get out of here,” Edie suggested, breathing into Layla’s ear. “We’ll stay by the wall and try to be really quick. Yes?”

Layla nodded, and they scurried as quickly as they could round the side of the shed and out of the door. Edie looked back as they dashed out and saw the mother cat still staring after them anxiously.

“What if she moves them and they get hurt like Barbie did?” Edie said, as they stood in the long grass outside the shed. “Where’s she even going to take them? She had to go so far last time, all the way across two fields and the road at least. It’s so dangerous!”

“We were trying to help…” Layla said, her voice faltering.

“And I think we’ve just made everything worse.” Edie shook her head. “We shouldn’t have stayed looking at the kittens. But they were so cute, I didn’t think about the mother cat coming back and getting scared. We should have gone away and got some food for her and left them alone.” She bit her bottom lip. “We messed up. Can I borrow your phone to ring my dad? Maybe he’ll know what to do.”

Layla nodded, pulling the phone out of her pocket and handing it to Edie. It had been her birthday present and Edie was definitely planning to ask for a phone for her birthday, too.“Dad?” she gasped, as soon as he picked up. “Dad, we’ve found Barbie’s mum and the other kittens. They’re in the old machine sheds, across the field from where we found Barbie. But I think we scared her, she’s going to move the kittens, and we don’t know what to do…”

“Wow!” her dad murmured. “OK.” He paused and Edie could almost hear him thinking. “Right. I reckon we need to get them all to a shelter. They probably won’t be able to rehome the mum, not if she’s feral, but they could find homes for the kittens once they’re not feeding from her anymore. They’re still young enough to get used to people. So … we need to catch the mum and the kittens before she moves them again.”

“She’s really nervous, Dad. I don’t think she’s going to be easy to catch.”

“I know, but we’ll bribe her. I’ll bring a cat cage and some good snacks. Your mum’s going to wonder what’s happened to the contents of the fridge. We just need to find out what she likes. I’m betting on cheese. Lots of cats can’t resist cheese. But you never know, it could be cold baked beans! I’ll bring those, too, just in case.”

Edie laughed shakily. She could tell that her dad was being funny on purpose, to try and calm her down.

“Don’t worry, Edie. We’ll manage. And it’s wonderful that you and Layla found them. I honestly didn’t think that you would. See you in ten.”

“Bye. Thanks, Dad.” Edie handed the phone back to Layla with a sigh of relief. “He’s going to come and catch them, and take them to a shelter.” Then she glanced around, pulling a face. “And then he’ll know we went inside this falling-down old shed. Maybe he won’t mind because we were so clever and found the kittens.”

Layla rolled her eyes.“I know… I’ve probably lost all my pocket money for about a month. But it was worth it.”

Barbie stood up with her paws on the side of her box, mewing hopefully at Edie’s dad. It was only a little while since she’d been fed, but she was wide awake and wanted to get out of the box. She could hear him moving around, opening and shutting the door that led into the garage, and then the squeak of the door to the fridge.

She mewed again, a sharp, demanding squeak. If Edie had been there, she would have come running to see what was the matter. She would have picked her up, and petted her and let her play on the kitchen floor, patting bottle tops around and climbing all over her lap. Edie’s dad was ignoring her.

Barbie scrabbled at the side of the box and sank her claws into the thick cardboard. It was a new box, bigger than her first one, and it had taller sides. But if she tried hard enough… Determinedly, she hopped and hauled herself up to the edge and mewed, half-scared, half-triumphant as she wobbled on the side of the box.

Edie’s dad looked round and saw her, just as she scrambled and jumped to the kitchen floor. “Perfect,” he murmured, scooping her up and popping her back in. “Just when I have to go and rescue the rest of your family, you decide it’s time to learn how to escape from your box. Brilliant timing,kitten. Sorry, but I’m not taking you with me. No, don’t just climb out again!”

But Barbie was already climbing up the side of the box and Edie’s dad looked around the kitchen, trying to work out if there was anything she could hurt herself on if he left her. There weren’t any gaps she could get stuck in and there was no way she could get out of the doors. With a sigh, he grabbed a piece of paper and some Sellotape and scribbled a quick note to warn Edie’s mum:

Free range kitten!

Then he closed the kitchen door behind him and taped it up where she’d see it before she opened the door.

“Dad!” Edie waved as she saw the car bumping down the lane that led the long way round back to their house. She pointed to the overgrown yard in front of the sheds, but her dad stopped the car in the lane instead.

“I’ll leave it here, I don’t reckon anyone’s going to be coming past and I don’t want to scare the cat any more. Where is she?” he added, as he got a wire crate out of the back of the car and a bag of food to bait it with.

“They’re all inside this shed.” Edie pulled him into the yard and across to the doorway.

“This isn’t the kind of place you two should be exploring,” Edie’s dad pointed out, glancing around and then eyeing the two girls.

“I know – and we never would usually…” Edie said apologetically and Layla nodded.

“We only meant to look round the door…” she said.

“And then we saw the kittens,” added Edie. “They’re gorgeous, Dad, look.”

Edie’s dad peered cautiously through the doorway and smiled. “Three of them, right? They’re all walking around now. I can’t see the mum, though.”

“I know, after we called you, we went on watching them from the door – the mum kept picking the kittens up in her mouth and putting them down again, and then she disappeared into this pile of old boxes and stuff at the back of the shed. That was a few minutes ago. Now the kittens are starting to wake up and mew, and one of them’s wandering round the shed crying for her but she hasn’t come back.”

“There are lots of holes in the walls,” Layla put in. “She could have gone without us seeing her. Maybe we just scared her off and she’s left.”

Edie swallowed hard.“What if we made her leave all her kittens behind?”

Behind a pile of old wooden crates, the black cat sat shivering. She didn’t know what to do. She was desperately hungry and she could smell food, just there, so close… But her kittens! The talking and scuffling and banging must mean danger for them, and she couldn’t get close enough to pick up even one of them and run. She would wait. She had to, even though it made her whiskers itch with fear.

And all the time there was that delicious smell of food. If only she could eat, she would be able to feed the kittens better. She could even bite off some little bits of food for them, too. It was time they were learning… Perhaps she could just get close enough to snatch the food and run? But she could still hear the voices, rising higher. Her ears flattened back and she squirmed away, closer to the wall.

“I don’t think the mother cat would leave her kittens,” Edie’s dad said gently, putting his arm round Edie’s shoulders to hug her. “She’s probably just a bit spooked by you two turning up. Don’t panic.”

“Should we put the kittens in the cage?” Edie asked. “Maybe that would tempt her to come and look, too… Or it might just scare her off.” She sighed.

“It’s tricky to know,” her dad agreed. “Show me where you think she went.”

Edie and Layla crept back into the shed, and Edie’s dad laughed at the three kittens. The ginger boy was sitting on the sacks, making loud squeaky mews, obviously wanting his mother to come back and feed him. But the two tortoiseshell girls were stomping about the shed, batting at bits of straw. Then they both decided that they wanted the same tiny piece of stick, and pounced on it. One of the kittens whipped it from her sister, who jumped on top of her, trying to wrestle it away.

“Typical.” Edie’s dad shook his head. “Naughty torties.”

“What?” Edie stared at him.

Her dad laughed.“I don’t know if it’s really true but tortoiseshell cats have a reputation of being … um … determined? Stubborn? What your grandma would call a bit of a character. So, naughty tortie.”

“I think they’re gorgeous,” Layla said indignantly. “They’re only babies.”

“Shh, look!” Edie grabbed her dad’s arm. “I just saw her, the mum! She’s behind those wooden crates.”

“OK. Let’s try putting the cage over there then, with a trail of food to tempt her…” Edie’s dad suggested. He opened the bag he’d brought and pulled out a packet of cocktail sausages that were meant for Edie’s packed lunches. “I knew you wouldn’t mind,” he said, showing her the pack. “If she doesn’t go for these we’ll try cheese.”

“She looks hungry enough to eat anything,” Edie whispered. “Oh, I hope this works.” She watched eagerly as her dad laid a couple of sausages close to the boxes where the cat was hiding and then a few more inside the cage.

“I need to stay fairly close because I’ve got to shut the door once she goes in,” her dad explained. “If this is no good I’ll get the local cat shelter out, they’ll have a trap cage we can use. But I shouldn’t think they’ll be able to come today.”

“She might have moved the kittens by the time they get here,” Edie pointed out, and her dad nodded.

“Yes, so let’s hope we can tempt her in now.”

But the black cat stayed stubbornly away from the sausages. Edie was sure that she could see her pacing back and forth in the shadows behind all the junk but she wouldn’t come out. She didn’t appear when her dad added cheese to the trail of bait either.

“This is not looking good,” he said, after about half an hour of waiting. The kittens were all mewing miserably now and they sounded really hungry. He looked around, frowning. “I wonder if it’s worth putting the cage round the back of the shed instead? There’s a pretty big hole in the wall there. We could put the cage up against it. Maybe she’d go for the food if she couldn’t see us?”

He picked up the cage and the girls followed him round to the back of the shed. The wooden wall had several rotten pieces crumbling away and there was a hole that looked a perfect cat-door size. Edie’s dad put the cage close to the hole, and stood flat against the wall, ready to swing the door shut.

“Dad, I’ve just thought of something!” Edie whispered urgently. “Layla’s got a video of Barbie on her phone and Barbie’s mewing really loudly in it. If we played it, do you think the mum might come? Would she know it was Barbie? She’d come and see, wouldn’t she?”

“She might…” her dad said slowly. “It’s worth a try, anyway.”

Layla pulled out her phone and crouched against the wall on the other side of the cage. She started the video, turned the sound right up and held the phone just by the side of the hole. Barbie’s squeaky mew echoed around them and Edie looked hopefully at the hole. Surely her mother wouldn’t be able to resist?

After a moment, there was a rustling on the other side of the wall. Edie made frantic faces at her dad, pointing to the hole, and he nodded back. Layla set the video to play again, and black whiskers appeared at the hole, followed by a black nose and then the rest of the cat, her ears twitching cautiously. She looked around for her kitten, and then sniffed the sausages and cheese, the first piece just inside the open cage.

Edie and Layla stood frozen against the wall of the shed as the cat stepped forward. She obviously couldn’t resist the food right in front of her and she gobbled down the first sausage in seconds. Then she walked right into the cage to eat the rest of them – and Edie’s dad swung the cage door shut.

“Look at you, you’re so clever,” Edie murmured, as Barbie sat up on her bottom and waved her front paws at the feathery toy. Edie had spotted it in the supermarket while she was out shopping with her mum the day before, and it was Barbie’s new favourite thing. It was like a mini feather duster, a bendy wand topped with lime green feathers and tinselly bits, and the little kitten loved the way it bounced. She danced about all over the kitchen chasing it.

“And you’re getting so big… I don’t know how you can be so different in just a week. I wonder how your brother and sisters are doing?” Edie said, flicking up the feathers and giggling as Barbie sprang into the air. She was learning to do the most amazing standing leaps – she could jump twice her own height when she really tried. “Do you think your sisters are being naughty torties, like Dad said? Layla thought they were gorgeous, but they’re nowhere near as cute as you. Dad said the lady at the shelter thought they’d all be adopted easily, though. She said they’d do lots of work to socialize them, so they made good friendly pets.”

The kittens’ mum wouldn’t ever be gentle enough to become a pet, though, which Edie thought was really sad. The shelter had said they would wait until the kittens were fully weaned and rehomed, which would be another couple of weeks, when they were about eight weeks old. Then they’d neuter their mum so she couldn’t have any more kittens and release her back near where Edie and Layla had found her. Edie didn’t like the idea of the black cat living outdoors again, in the cold and the rain, but Mum and Dad had said it was probably what she’d be happiest doing.

“Do you miss them?” Edie whispered, as Barbie gave a massive yawn, which showed a lot of her bright pink tongue. “Do you even remember them?”

Barbie sniffed at the green feathers, which Edie was dancing in front of her nose again, and batted at them with one paw. She wasn’t really trying. She’d been jumping and chasing for ages and now she was tired. She gave another huge yawn and padded over to Edie, climbing up her jeans and scrambling into her lap. She slumped down and then stood up again, marching round in a circle on Edie’s tunic top until she had it just right. Then she curled herself into a little ginger ball, with one paw over her eyes and went to sleep.

“Guess what! Guess, you have to guess!” Layla was hopping up and down on the front doorstep, hardly able to get the words out, she was so excited.

“What? Oooh, catch her! Sneaky puss!” Edie and Layla both lunged for Barbie, who’d crept up behind Edie and was making a dash for the front door. Layla grabbed her and snuggled her up against her fleece.

“Well done,” said Edie. “She’s desperate to go outside but Mum and Dad say she can’t until she’s had all her vaccinations and she’s been neutered. And that won’t be for ages. She’s got to be almost four months old before they do it.”

Layla beamed back at her.“No problem. I need the practice,” she said happily, glancing meaningfully between Edie and Barbie, who was now trying to climb up her fleece.

“Practice? Hey, come in before she disappears down the back of you and makes another run for it.” Edie beckoned Layla inside and shut the door, and Barbie sprang down from Layla’s arms and marched away in a kitten huff, tail whipping from side to side. Edie giggled. “I don’t think she’stalking to us now. Anyway, what are you so excited about?”

“I persuaded them! Actually, I think it was mostly Barbie. Remember when my mum and dad came over to have coffee with yours the other day and Barbie was playing, and then she spent all that time sitting on my dad’s lap?”

“He did look pretty happy about it,” Edie observed.

“He’s never had a cat, he’s always said he wasn’t a cat person. But they know all about Barbie’s sisters – I showed them the photos I took on my phone that day we found them, and so…”

“You’re going to adopt one of the naughty torties?” Edie threw her arms round Layla. “That’s amazing! Barbie’s going to have her sister living next door!”

“We went to see them at the shelter yesterday afternoon and we’re picking her up the weekend after next! They have to come and do a home visit first, and the kittens have to be eight weeks old to leave their mum.”

“Which one? The one with more ginger, or the darker one?”

“This one.” Layla showed Edie a photo on her phone – Layla holding a gorgeous tortoiseshell kitten against her shoulder. They were nose to nose and Edie thought she’d never seen her friend look so happy. “She’s the dark one, but she’s got a big ginger streak down her nose. And her whiskers are white on one side and black on the other!” She smiled blissfully. “Sorry, Edie, but I think she’s even cuter than Barbie.”

Edie grinned.“That’s OK. But don’t you listen to her, Barbie! She thinks your sister’s more gorgeous than you are!” she added to her kitten, who’d forgotten to be cross and was marching back down the hall towards them, dragging a huge catnip-stuffed fish in her mouth. It was nearly as big as she wasand she kept tripping over it. Eventually she just gave up and lay down on her side, hugging the fish and kicking at it with her hind paws.

Edie shook her head as she crouched down beside her. She tickled Barbie’s cream-coloured tummy, and the ginger kitten gave up on the fish and came to nudge against Edie’s arm, rubbing the side of her head up and down Edie’s sleeve, and purring and purring.

“She really loves you,” Layla murmured, and Edie smiled at her.

“Dad says it’s because I’m the one who feeds her but he’s only being grumpy.”

“No, it’s more than that. Do you think the tortoiseshell kitten will love me, too?” she added shyly. “I’m going to be looking after her.” She reached out to run her hand over Barbie’s ears and the kitten purred for her as well.

“Of course she will. It looks like she already does in that photo.” Edie gathered Barbie up in her arms, gently combing her fingers through the kitten’s long ginger fur. “Imagine if we hadn’t stopped to find out what that noise was,” she said, looking round at Layla wide-eyed. “We’dnever have found them all.”

“Best walk home from school ever,” Layla said seriously and then she laughed as Barbie wriggled in Edie’s arms so that she was snuggled in the crook of her elbow, on her back like a baby. Her pale ginger paws were folded on her chest, and she yawned, wide enough to show her needle-sharp whiteteeth. Then her green eyes closed slowly, and she breathed out a tiny, quiet purr.

Barbie batted a cautious paw at her new cat flap. She had only been allowed to go out for a few days, and she was still a bit confused by the flap– the way it sometimes opened and sometimes didn’t – and she didn’t much like the bang it made when it shut behind her. She usually jumped through it as fast as she could. She patted it again and then dived through, out into the garden.

It was sunny and warm, and there were butterflies. She loved butterflies. They were like the feathery toy that Edie waved for her– they bounced and fluttered, and she never knew which direction they would go in. She had tried chasing them, but they were hard to catch…

Barbie turned as she heard the back door open behind her, and Edie stepped out carrying a sandwich. Barbie eyed the plate hopefully. Edie was good at sharing, and her sandwiches often had ham in them, or cheese. She liked cheese. She padded over to Edie and started to weave around her feet.

“Layla!” Edie called across the garden. “Are you there? Is Amber out?” She hopped up on to the garden bench and looked over the wall.

“Yes! She’s chasing butterflies, I really hope she doesn’t catch one.”

“Barbie loves doing that, too. Oh! Hello, Barbie!”

Barbie was scrabbling at the wall, and Edie watched impressed as she climbed all the way on to the top, next to Edie’s elbow. The little kitten perched there looking proud of herself and Edie scratched her behind the ears.

“Aren’t you clever? Look, who’s that?” Edie whispered to her, pointing across Layla’s garden. “Can you see?”

Barbie’s tail fluffed up a bit and Edie watched her, a little worried. She wasn’t sure how Barbie was going to feel about another cat so close to her own garden.

Amber came pacing down the garden towards the wall. There wasn’t a bench on her side, so she couldn’t jump up, but she stood beneath the wall, gazing up at Barbie, her golden eyes round and curious.

The two kittens stared at each other, and Edie and Layla stood watching. Neither of them had been sure how their kittens would react when they met. Would they even understand that they were sisters?

Then Amber stood up, patting her front paws against Layla’s leg, asking to be picked up. Layla lifted her, and Amber leaned out of her arms, reaching forward curiously towards the wall.

Barbie leaned over, too, and the kittens sniffed at each other. Amber wriggled and Layla reached up to put her on the wall next to Barbie.

“Do you think they remember?” Edie whispered, as the sisters inspected each other carefully, sniffing and nudging. Then she smiled as Barbie stepped closer to Amber and rubbed her head all round Amber’s, nuzzling at her gently. “They do, look! They know they’re sisters!” Edie rested herchin on her arms, watching as Amber snuffled round Barbie, and smiled at Layla on the other side of the wall.

“We rescued them both,” Layla whispered.

“We’re never going to let anything happen to you,” Edie told them. Then she laughed as Barbie padded back along the wall to nuzzle a cold little nose lovingly against her cheek.