The Rescued Kitten

Chapter Two

“A kitten!” Edie breathed. “I thought it had to be a bird…”

Layla nodded. “Is it stuck?”

“Yeah, poor little thing.” Edie wriggled a bit closer into the hedge, ignoring the thorny branches catching on her jacket and tangling in her hair. “I think it’s her long fur – she’s got it all tangled up in the barbed wire. Oh, poor baby, she’s actually cut her neck on it, too.”

“Can you get her out?” Layla asked. “Do you want me to lift up the wire or something?”

Edie sat back on her heels for a moment. “I’m just thinking. Maybe we should go and fetch my mum? She’ll know how to rescue the kitten without hurting her.” She looked worriedly at the tiny kitten, wondering what to do. What she wanted was to get her off the wire as quickly as possible. She seemed so small and fragile, stuck there, and the cut on her neck looked horrible. Edie’s mum and dad were both vets, so it wasn’t as if Edie hadn’t seen sick animals before. Quite often if no one was able to look after a sick cat or dog at the surgery, Mum or Dad would bring them home, and Edie loved the chance to fuss over them and pretend she had a pet of her own. But she’d never seen a creature look so feeble and so clearly in pain.

As Edie looked at her, the kitten opened her eyes – tiny round green eyes – and stared back. She mewed, or at least she tried to but no sound came out. She didn’t even have the strength left to mew, Edie realized.

“No, we need to get her out of there right now,” she muttered. “She’s so weak. We need to get her back home so Mum can have a look at her.” She reached tentatively towards the kitten, wondering if the little thing would scratch or bite – not to be nasty, just because she was so scared. But when Edie touched the clump of fur that was twisted up in the teeth of the wire, the kitten didn’t try to fight. She just shuddered a little and opened her mouth in another heart-breaking silent mew.

Edie tried to pull at the clump of fur, but it was stuck so tightly that it didn’t budge and she could feel the kitten flinching. “It’s no good, I’m only hurting her,” she whispered, looking round at Layla anxiously. “What are we going to do?”

“Scissors! I’ve got scissors in my pencil case!” Layla shrugged off her backpack and fished inside for her pencil case. “Here, look, and they’re nice and sharp. You can just cut the fur away.” She passed a pair of scissors to Edie and Edie leaned in closer to the kitten.

The tiny creature opened her eyes again, but when she saw Edie looming towards her, and the shiny blades of the scissors, she started to struggle.

“It’s OK,” Edie whispered. “We’re trying to get you out of there.”

“Is it working?” Layla asked worriedly, peering over Edie’s shoulder.

“Yes … nearly there.” Edie snipped at the ginger fur. She cupped her left hand underneath the kitten to catch her and cut through the last chunk of fur. The kitten slumped into her hand, limp and floppy like a beanbag toy.

Edie passed the scissors to Layla and crept backwards, the kitten cupped in her hands. The tiny thing stirred and wriggled a little as she was brought out of the shadow of the hedge and into the light. The two girls stared down at her.

“She’s so little,” Layla whispered. “What’s she doing here on her own?”

“I don’t know.” Edie cuddled the kitten against her school dress for a minute, trying to reach round to her backpack. “Ugh, I can’t do this with one hand – can you get my cardigan out? We can wrap her up in it – I know it’s not all that cold but you’re supposed to keep tiny kittens warm and it was chilly under that hedge.”

Layla found the cardigan and Edie wrapped the kitten up in it, so that just her little ginger face was peeping out. Her eyes were closed again and Edie was sure that wasn’t a good sign. “She’s got a cut on her front paw, too, did you see? Maybe she was trying to claw her way out of the wire. Come on – we’d better not run and bounce her around but we can walk fast.”

Layla nodded and they hurried along the path with the kitten in Edie’s arms.

“Mum! Mum!” Edie rang the doorbell for a second time and called in through the open front window.

“I was in the kitchen…” Edie’s mum pulled open the door, rolling her eyes at the two girls. “I didn’t take that long!”

“No, I know, sorry – Mum, look!” Edie held out the sad little bundle in her arms.

“Oh my goodness. Where did you find a kitten?” Edie’s mum took the cardigan and looked down worriedly. “Was it hit by a car?” Then she looked up, confused. “No, you’d have gone to Dad at the surgery if you were by the road. So what happened?”

“We found her in a hedge. She was caught on some barbed wire. I had to cut her fur with Layla’s scissors. Is she going to be OK?”

Edie’s mum gently put the bundle on the kitchen table. The kitten was lying there, curled up on Edie’s cardigan, not moving at all. Edie could just about see she was breathing but that was it.

“I don’t know,” her mum said slowly. “She could have been there for a while, you see, and she’s very tiny. Maybe about five weeks old? That’s very small to be away from her mother. Edie, can you get me a cardboard box out of the garage? Not a massive one – just something we can make into a nice little nest for the kitten.”

When Edie came back with the box she saw that her mum had found a hot-water bottle and was filling it up. “We need to get her nice and warm,” she explained. “Not too warm, though, we’ll wrap the bottle in a towel. Edie, could you—” but Edie was already racing up the stairs to the airing cupboard. Her mum padded out the box with the hot-water bottle and the towel, and gently lifted the kitten inside. “I’m pretty sure we’ve still got some of that kitten milk from the last time we had kittens here,” she murmured. Then she looked up at the girls. “Look, we’ll do the best we can, of course we will, but you have to understand, she’s very little and she’s injured and shocked. She might not have the strength to get through this.”

Edie swallowed and nodded, and she felt Layla’s hand slip into hers. “We can try, though?” she whispered.

Her mum nodded. “Definitely. Just … don’t get your hopes up too much.”

The kitten blinked wearily. She was warm and she wasn’t being jogged about any more. She wasn’t caught up in the wire now either, she was somewhere soft and comfortable. That was good. The kitten flexed her tiny claws in and out of the towel, and a shiver ran over her. But her mother still hadn’t come to find her and she was so hungry. And the wound on her neck hurt, and so did her paw. She was sure she wouldn’t be able to walk on it, even if she had the energy to try.

What was happening? Where was her mother and why hadn’t she come back?