Kitten Catastrophe Read online

  For Felix and Minkie,

  with love xx

  Contents

  1 New Beginnings

  2 Cat-Sitter Wanted

  3 Famous Already

  4 Cold Comfort

  5 Freaky Goings-On

  6 Another Mystery Mess

  7 Stowaway

  8 Gruesome Twosome

  9 A Canine Plan

  10 Guard Dog

  11 A Walk in the Park

  12 Something's Up

  13 Plan Number Two

  14 Lights, Camera, Action!

  15 Intruder Apprehended

  16 Love at First Sight

  17 New Home Sweet Home?

  18 Undercover Agent

  19 The Plot Thickens

  20 Fiona to the Rescue

  21 Winners and Losers

  Epilogue Kitten Cupid

  THE GREAT KITTEN CAKE OFF

  THE PARENT PROBLEM

  1

  New Beginnings

  After the summer when my (very own!) cute little ginger kitten, Jaffa, won a TV talent show, Pets with Talent, and my best mate, Jazz got to meet her idol, Danni Minnow, you would think that life could only be described as totally megafantastically excellent. And it was – for the rest of that summer. In fact, when I looked back, I could hardly believe I was the same Bertie Fletcher as the year before. So much had changed, and in such a short space of time.

  Not only had my previously non-pet-loving dad fallen completely head over heels for my new kitten, but Jazz and I had patched up the worrying cracks that had been appearing in our friendship. And we had a new friend, Fergus Meerley. (Not a great name, I know, but you can’t have everything.) He and his parents, Fiona and Gavin, moved into our neighbour Pinkella’s house when she had to go away. Between you and me, his mum was a bit of a pain in the neck to start with. (Actually, that’s an understatement. Make that a TOTAL AND UTTER pain in every single part of the body you can think of.) She persuaded Jaffa to move in with them and made out it was because she thought my kitten was an abandoned stray! But she more than paid for her ‘mistake’ by sorting out the Pets with Talent show that Danni Minnow judged. And Jazz was made up about that, I can tell you!

  Anyway, it was worth putting up with someone like Fiona because without her I wouldn’t have met Fergus. (Yes, he’s a boy, but he’s cool, all right? Not only does he love animals as much as I do, he’s also an amazing musician.)

  So, you might be forgiven for thinking that by the end of the summer all my worries were dead and buried. But I am a natural worrier, so I was still left agonizing over the next thing on the horizon: senior school. And that was a worry which would not go away, no matter how much Jazz and Fergus tried to reassure me.

  ‘I just don’t get what you’re so uptight about,’ Jazz said one afternoon when the two of us were lounging around on rugs in my back garden. We had been idly watching Jaffa chase butterflies when I’d suddenly realized how little freedom we had left.

  ‘I can’t WAIT to start school!’ Jazz chirruped, pushing herself up on one elbow and grinning at me. ‘It’s going to be, like, immense! For starters, I’ll be getting the bus instead of having to go in the car with my complete earwig of a brother. Oh wow, just think – no more Tyson coming up to me at break time with snotty tears running down his face because someone’s “been nasty” to him; no more Tyson calling out annoying insults to me in the lunch queue. Hey, just NO MORE TYSON, actually!’

  ‘But aren’t you nervous about starting at a new place?’ I asked.

  ‘Nervous? What’s to be nervous about?’ Jazz sounded puzzled.

  ‘Well, you know – finding your way around the place, loads of difficult homework, new teachers who might turn out to be freaks. That kind of thing,’ I babbled, avoiding mentioning what was really at the front of my mind.

  ‘Oh, Bertie!’ Jazz said, her voice oozing pity all of a sudden, making me squirm. ‘We’re not the only new ones, are we? And we’ve had that induction day already, when they showed us around. I bet they’ll even get some of the older guys to look out for us.’

  Exactly, I thought. A picture flitted into my harassed mind of my best mate joking and flirting with a load of older pupils – maybe even some of the guys in Fergus’s year.

  ‘I guess,’ I said reluctantly, rolling on to my back and staring at the clouds. ‘But what if . . .’ I tailed off.

  Jazz peered at me encouragingly. ‘Yeah? What if what?’

  I rolled over on to my front again so she couldn’t see my face, took a deep breath and let the words come out in a rush: ‘What if you make a whole load of super-cool new friends and don’t want to have anything to do with me any more?’

  Jazz tutted and flung a long skinny arm around my shoulders. ‘Doh! You numpty! What would I want to do that for?’

  I felt a mixture of embarrassment and relief flood through me as my best mate gave me a squeeze. ‘Dunno,’ I grunted, shrugging.

  ‘Is that it? Is that what you’re really worried about?’ Jazz said. ‘Me abandoning you, my best friend in the whole world? As if!’

  ‘Sorry, you’re right,’ I said, turning to look at her from under my fringe. ‘But, er . . . what about Fergus?’

  ‘What about Fergus?’ Jazz prompted. There was an edge to her voice now.

  She was getting impatient with me.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘Want an ice pop?’

  I wished I hadn’t mentioned Fergus. Jazz had teased me about him a bit recently, saying she thought I fancied him, and I didn’t want to give her the chance to start that again. How could I explain to her that I really liked him. That was all. I didn’t want anyone thinking it was ‘like that’ between us. I could just picture Jazz in one of her gossipy moods letting slip one day to someone that she thought it was more than that. Boy, that would be sooooo embarrassing.

  My kitten saw me leaving the garden and stopped chasing bees and butterflies to pad along behind me and Jazz, following us into the kitchen. She never liked being far from me these days.

  ‘Whassup?’ she mewed.

  I whirled round and scooped her up to face height. ‘Ssh, Jaffsie,’ I whispered. ‘Can’t talk now with Jazz here.’

  (And before you go thinking I’ve well and truly lost my marbles, yes, I can talk to my cat. But my friends and family don’t know about it, so please don’t tell anyone; just go with me on this, OK?)

  ‘Hey, you talking to your little puddy tat again, Bertie?’ Jazz teased, flinging open the freezer door. ‘You really love that cat, don’t you?’

  ‘Mmm, I sure do!’ I grinned, rubbing my face against my kitten’s whiskery cheek.

  Her purring went up a notch and I giggled as her fur tickled me.

  ‘Awww,’ said Jazz, watching us. ‘You’re going to miss your Bertie when she goes back to school, aren’t you, diddums?’

  ‘Cut out the baby talk, can’t you, Jazz?’ I said. I knew it probably sounded weird to Jazz, my talking to my kitten like I did to a person instead of the usual way people talked to their pets, but it irritated me that Jazz took the mickey. Why shouldn’t I talk to my pet how I wanted? I hated all that ‘pussy-wussy-cat-kins’ nonsense I heard from other cat owners.

  ‘Whoooo! OK, keep cool, man!’ Jazz guffawed, waving an ice pop at me while tearing open another with her teeth.

  I couldn’t help sniggering at Jazz’s lame joke. But I stopped mid-giggle when Jaffa said:

  ‘What is the Jazzer talkin’ ‘bout, Bertie? What is “school”?’

  My throat went dry. I hadn’t told Jaffa I’d be going to school! She had come to live with me at the beginning of the summer holidays so as far as she was concerned I was at home all the time, day in, day out, 24-7. The longest I’d ever left her was to pop out to Jazz’s
house or to go and see Fergus. And now I was about to leave her from breakfast until teatime, five days a week. She would freak, wouldn’t she? I would have to break it to her gently.

  ‘Earth calling Bertie!’ Jazz was jeering, waving a hand in my face and laughing. ‘What’s happened to you? Turned into a statue or something?’

  I blinked and tried to push my increasingly panicky thoughts to the back of my mind. ‘Oh, ha ha ha!’ I chuckled unconvincingly. ‘Sorry, went off into a bit of a dream there for a second!’

  ‘Bertieeeeeee!’ Jaffa mewed. ‘Tell Jaffsie what is happening! Tell Jaffsie what the “school” thing is!’

  ‘Blimey, Jaffa,’ I said, frantically trying to distract my kitten. ‘You are making a racket. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Noooooo!’ Jaffa howled. ‘Me wants you to tell meeeeee—’

  ‘So did you hear what I said just then?’ Jazz raised her voice to talk over the rumpus Jaffa was making. She raised one eyebrow at me and slurped loudly on her ice pop. The red colouring was already leaking around the edges of her mouth.

  I must have looked blank, because Jazz rolled her eyes and, taking the ice pop out of her mouth, she said in a sing-song tone, ‘What are you going to do while you’re at school?’ When I didn’t respond she persisted: ‘Will Jaffa be OK on her own here all day? Or will your dad be working at home the whole time?’

  I started mouthing at Jazz to stop talking, and when that didn’t work I threw myself into a loud coughing fit in desperation.

  ‘Whaaaat?’ Jaffa positively shrieked. ‘Bertie is going to leave Jaffsie ALL DAY?’

  Holy Stromboli with mushrooms and extra cheese on top – as if it wasn’t bad enough being worried about starting a new school! Now I had a hysterical kitten on my hands.

  How on earth was I going to get out of this one?

  2

  Cat-Sitter Wanted

  Eventually, when she could see she wasn’t going to get anywhere with me, Jazz let the whole Jaffa thing drop and moved on to jabbering about the stuff we needed for school. She also wanted to run through our plans for the first morning for about the millionth time that week. Jazz was going to wait for me and Fergus at the bus stop, and we would hopefully all sit together. I was relieved about that. I didn’t much like the idea of getting the bus on my own with all the older kids.

  Jaffa wasn’t so easily thrown off the scent though. She prowled around, listening in and constantly nudging my arm with her fluffy little head, asking me what we were talking about. Not for the first time she reminded me of Jazz’s little brother, Tyson, who had no concept of personal space and would get right in between me and Jazz and practically tread on our toes so that he could get bang in the middle of a conversation we were having.

  I decided that the best policy was the one I often had to adopt with Ty, which was to ignore Jaffa’s interruptions, and thankfully she finally gave up mewing and pawing at me and fell asleep on the rug on her back, her paws in the air as though she’d just fallen out of an aeroplane and landed like that, back legs outstretched and front paws up above her. It was a pose she was adopting more and more these days, and it usually made me want to tickle her tummy. But this time I was so grateful to be finally left in peace that I resisted the temptation.

  Jazz had to go home soon after that, and I saw her out, leaving Jaffa snoozing on the rug. As I closed the front door Dad came out of his study.

  ‘Oh, Jazz gone?’ he asked. ‘That’s a shame. Thought she might like to stay for supper. I was going to do pizza tonight. Bex is coming round.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Dad asked, coming down the stairs and eyeing me anxiously.

  I sighed. How could I say I minded? It wasn’t that Bex wasn’t nice. She’d been a great help with Jaffa when we’d first got her, and she was always friendly to me. She owned the pet shop in town, Paws for Thought: Dad and I had met her when we first got Jaffa and needed advice on what to feed her and so on. Bex was crazy about animals, as you’d expect from someone who owned a pet shop, and she had a cheeky Border terrier called Sparky, who came to work with her and sat in a sweet little bed at the foot of the counter, wagging his tail at anyone who came in. In any other circumstances I would have been over the moon to get to know a person who owned such a cool shop and such a friendly pooch. But the thing was, Dad was even more interested in getting to know Bex than I was, if you see what I mean. And I wasn’t sure I was ready for my dad to get himself a girlfriend. You know what they say: two’s company, three’s a crowd . . .

  ‘It’s just pizza!’ Dad laughed awkwardly, noting the look of distaste on my face.

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ I said hastily. I didn’t really want him to go into any more details.

  ‘You OK, love?’ he asked, giving me a hug. ‘You seem a bit down in the dumps for someone who’s just spent a lovely summer’s day outside with her best mate and her favourite kitten!’ he added. He was trying to sound jolly and light-hearted.

  I found myself getting increasingly irritated with every word that came out of his mouth.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, all right? I’m going to feed Jaffsie,’ I said sullenly. I shrugged his arm from my shoulder. A little voice inside me was telling me not to be so mean to him, but I couldn’t help it.

  I stomped sulkily towards the garden, intending to call Jaffa in, but Dad wouldn’t let it go.

  ‘Bertie,’ he said, following me out,’if you’ve got a problem, you know you can talk to me. Have you and Jazz had one of your, er, fallings-out?’ he asked nervously.

  ‘No!’ I spluttered. ‘Really, it’s nothing.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look like nothing to me,’ he persisted.

  That was it. Something inside me snapped, and everything I’d been silently battling with that afternoon came out in a rush.

  ‘OK!’ I said harshly, throwing my hands up in the air. ‘You want to know what’s bugging me? It’s this: I don’t want to go to school. I don’t want to go to a big new school where I hardly know anyone and where I’m going to have to be bottom of the pile again – one of the babies.’ I hesitated, gulping for air. ‘And I . . . and I don’t want to leave Jaffa at home every day!’ My voice rose in a squeak and a hot pricking sensation rose up behind my eyes. I blinked hard. I was not going to cry.

  Dad frowned and then bit his bottom lip. He looked as though he was trying to decide whether to tell me off for being rude to him or give me a big bear hug and reassure me things would turn out OK.

  In the end he said softly, ‘Bertie, I wish you’d talk to me before you go and make everything so complicated for yourself.’ He shook his head slightly and looked at me sadly. ‘I was your age once too, you know.’

  I rolled my eyes. Yeah, yeah. About a hundred years ago, I thought bitterly. But I just said, ‘You weren’t a girl though, were you, Dad?’

  ‘Not as far as I remember,’ Dad said, a cheeky grin breaking through his worried expression. Then his eyes lit up and I saw he was having one of his light-bulb moments. My stomach did a somersault as I realized even before he opened his mouth what he was going to say.

  ‘No, Dad!’ I said hastily, waving my hands in front of his eager puppy-dog face. ‘No, no, no. I am not going to talk to Bex about this.’ Dad was always trying to make up for the fact that I didn’t have a mum. (Any more, that is. She died when I was small.)

  Dad blushed and said, ‘I was only going to say—’

  ‘I know what you were going to say: that Bex, being a girl – woman, whatever – might be a good person to talk to. Well, I don’t want to.’

  Dad opened his mouth to reply, but then, as if on cue, the doorbell rang.

  ‘That’ll be her,’ Dad said, blushing a deeper red and flicking his eyes towards the door. ‘Look, I promise I won’t embarrass you, OK? But don’t go to your room, Bertie – stay and have pizza with us?’

  I gritted my teeth.

  The doorbell rang again, and Dad shot me a pleading look and went into the h
ouse to let Bex in.

  I followed, wondering whether I should ignore Dad’s request and go to my room anyway, when my thoughts were interrupted by Jaffa, who came skittering down the hall so fast her little legs were flying out at all angles.

  ‘Is it Jaffsie’s teatime yet?’ she mewed breathlessly. ‘Jaffsie was sleepin’, then me hears that ringy bell thing goin’. Where’s the Jazzer gone? Oh!’ she said, skidding to a halt as she saw Bex standing in the doorway, greeting Dad, all shiny smile and sparkly teeth and glittery everything. Urgh. ‘It’s the lovely Bexy lady!’ Jaffa purred, trotting up to her and rubbing her head against her legs.

  ‘Hello, Bertie!’ Bex beamed. ‘And hello, little darling!’ she cooed, bending down to stroke Jaffa.

  ‘Thought you were talking to me for a moment there,’ Dad said in a goofy voice.

  ‘Oh, Nigel! Tee-hee! You are a silly billy!’ Bex trilled, tittering in that annoying way she always did whenever she spoke to Dad.

  ‘Yes, Bertie’s dad very silly. Me is the only darling around here,’ Jaffa muttered grumpily.

  I let my head sink back and stared at the ceiling in despair. How was I going to survive this evening?

  Jaffa was up on her hind legs now, pawing at Bex and begging for a cuddle.

  ‘Someone’s pleased to see me!’ Bex twittered, picking Jaffa up and nuzzling her. ‘Good job I didn’t bring Sparky. Otherwise you might change your mind, mightn’t you, you gorgeous little thing?’ she went on.

  Jaffa was purring so loudly she sounded more like a contented puma than a small ginger kitten. ‘You is so right – me is totally gorgeous,’ she said.

  ‘Doh!’ I let out an exasperated breath and stomped off to the kitchen, thinking I might as well leave the three of them out there to enjoy their mutual love fest.

  ‘Bertie!’ Dad called. ‘Can you lay the table out in the garden? There’s a love.’

  I crashed around the kitchen, getting what I needed, and then went out on to the patio, practically throwing plates and cutlery at the table in my fury. How dare that woman be such a flirt with my dad – not to mention with my kitten! My mind was whirring with so many confused and angry thoughts that I didn’t hear anyone come outside.