Kitten Wars (3 page)

‘Dad? Why did you leave the sugar bowl to soak on the table?’ I called.

Dad entered the kitchen. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Watch it!’ I called as he nearly stepped on Jaffa, who was skulking near a chair leg.

Dad stopped abruptly in his tracks and teetered backwards, peering round the bags of cat litter as he looked out for the kitten. He couldn’t sustain this awkward pose and ended up losing
his balance, dropping the sacks and causing Jaffa to rocket across to the other side of the kitchen like a mad March hare to try and hide under one of the fitted cupboards. She got stuck, her
little bottom up in the air as she tried to decide whether to squash herself further under or pull herself back out. It reminded me of the Winnie-the-Pooh story I used to love when I was younger,
where Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s doorway. I giggled while Dad scrabbled around to retrieve the bags.

‘Thanks for helping,’ he said sarcastically. Then: ‘What was that you said about the sugar bowl?’

‘Oh yes – it’s just a bit strange. Look at it,’ I said, gesturing vaguely at the bowl while keeping my eyes fixed on my cute little cat, wiggling her bottom in the
air.

‘OH NO!’

I whirled round. Dad was leaning over the table, holding the sugar bowl out at arm’s length, his face contorted with repulsion. ‘That is DISGUSTING!’ he cried, carefully
lowering the bowl back down again.

‘What?’ I said.

‘That!’ Dad said, jabbing his finger at the bowl.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said, shaking my head.

Dad shuddered. ‘It looks like a case of desperate times calling for extremely desperate measures.’ I looked at him blankly. ‘Let’s just say that your new pet
couldn’t
quite
wait for us to come back from the shops with a litter tray,’ Dad said with a heavy note of irony.

‘Wha—? Aargh!’ I backed away from the table.

‘Cat pee,’ Dad said, to emphasize a point already very well made in my opinion.

‘OK!’ I said irritably. ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’

‘Well now, let me see . . .’ Dad smiled and made a big show of having a think, scratching his head and rubbing his chin, taking his glasses off and giving them a good clean.

‘All right – I get it. She’s my pet, so I have to clean the cat pee out of the sugar bowl.’ Even as I said the words I realized how utterly bizarre they sounded. Who had
ever heard of a cat using a sugar bowl as a loo? I gingerly picked up the offending article and then held it underneath as well with my other hand. There was no way I wanted to spill a drop of the
stuff. I carefully moved away from the table and started a slow journey to the sink.

Behind me, Dad let out a splutter of laughter.

I whirled round in surprise and succeeded in sloshing a wave of sugared pee solution down the front of my best hoody. ‘AARGH! What did you have to do that for?’ I yelled.

Dad was bright red in the face, gasping and wheezing with laughter now. He was pointing at me and then at Jaffa who was still squirming under the cupboard, and squeaked something which sounded
like, ‘Tiny bottom.’

I was not amused.

I put the sugar bowl in the sink and ran out of the room to change my top and wash my hands.

When I came back downstairs, Dad’s face had returned to its normal pinky-whitish colour and he had stopped shaking and heaving with hysterical laughter.

‘So you’ve come back down to Planet Normal then?’ I said, mustering as much sarcasm as I could.

Dad grinned. ‘Sorry, but I just couldn’t shake this picture I had in my head of – of,’ he struggled to maintain control. ‘You know, of Jaffa perching over the sugar
bowl, her tiny bottom . . . perfectly balanced . . . so as to aim right into the . . .’ He tailed off and the wheezing took over again.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head. ‘For goodness sake!’ I snapped. ‘Where is Jaffa, by the way?’ I realized I’d left Dad in sole charge while I’d been
out of the room, which in his present state was not an entirely sensible idea.

Dad just shook his head, tears running down his face. Useless.

Scrabble, scrabble!

‘What was that?’ I asked, spinning round to where I thought the sound had come from. It sounded as if it was above my head, but that couldn’t have been right.

Scrabble, scrabble, scrabble!

It
was
coming from above my head. I looked up. The only things above me were the ceiling, the light fittings and—

‘DAD! She’s on top of the cupboards! Quick – stop laughing, for goodness sake – she’s stuck! Get a chair or something. DAD!’

Oh, that man was hopeless sometimes. I grabbed a chair and then because I wasn’t tall enough to reach the top of the cupboard, I climbed on to the work surface and stretched up to where
Jaffa was peeping over the top of the cupboard where we kept the cereals.

‘It’s OK, Jaffa. I’m here. Just jump!’ I said, reaching forward and trying not to fall off.

Those jewel-like eyes just stared and stared. Then Jaffa stretched her mouth alarmingly wide and did that silent mewing thing again.

Dad hiccuped and dried his eyes. ‘Bertie, come down. You’ll fall—’

Too late. I leaned back too far and slipped off the work surface on to the floor. Picking myself up with stars whirring in front of my eyes, I tried to tell Dad to do something useful and get a
stepladder. But before the words were properly formed in my mind there was a soft thud and Jaffa landed on my tummy, walked up to my face and pushed her nose against mine.

How could I be cross with such an adorably cute ball of fluff after that?

‘Wow, Jaffa!’ I breathed, gently stroking her sticky-uppy fur as she rubbed against my cheek. ‘Life sure is going to be interesting with you around the place.’

J
affa kept us busy round the clock for the next couple of days, ‘missing’ her new litter tray more than once, getting stuck on curtain
rails by using the curtains as ladders (Dad nearly lost his sense of humour over that), and falling asleep in the washing machine (only once, thank goodness). That had totally freaked me out. Dad
had dumped a load of clothes on her and had been about to switch the machine on, when he’d spotted a small frightened face peering out at him through the door.

It wasn’t until the morning of day three that I finally remembered to unplug my mobile from the charger and check my messages. I wasn’t that into using it, mainly because now my
pet-sitting days were over, no one except Dad and Jazz had the number and Dad had said I wasn’t allowed to use it unless it was for emergencies. But Jazz had always ignored that fact and
texted me constantly. And she got pretty cheesed off when I didn’t respond right away.

So when I finally scrolled through my messages, I felt a sickening lurch of guilt as I saw that I had so many unread ones from Jazz that the inbox was full to bursting. And there were a
gazillion voicemail messages from her too. She’s going to be seriously mad at me, I thought grimly as I took the plunge and called up her name from my address book.

As usual she answered after the first ring. I dimly wondered whether she walked around with her phone permanently strapped to her ear, but pushed the thought aside and started talking at top
speed.

‘Hey, Jazz. How’re you doing? Really sorry I’ve not been round this week, but you have
no
idea what’s being going on,’ I babbled.

But Jazz had already interrupted and was talking at top speed herself. ‘Oh yeah? Well,
you’ve
no idea what’s been happening
this
end. It’s been, like,
totally hectic,’ she announced.

Typical. Even in phone conversations Jazz manages to be competitive.

I was relieved she wasn’t angry, but that feeling was already being swallowed up by a sense of impending doom. What was she up to now? ‘OK, don’t tell me,’ I said.
‘You’ve just won the National Eurovision Search for a Child Superstar.’

‘Duh! You can’t be National
and
Eurovision,’ said Jazz. ‘And anyway, it’s got nothing to do with my inevitable rise to fame as a mega popstar singing and
dancing act . . .’

For once, I thought.

‘. . .
yet
. . .’ Jazz added, layering on the suspense.

‘What? Oh, listen, you can tell me later. Can you come round?’ I said. ‘I’ve got something mega cute to show you.’ I tried adding in a bit of suspense myself.
‘You are not going to believe it.’

‘O-kaay,’ Jazz said slowly. ‘No need to go all hyper on me. Hey – what do you mean, cute?’ she added quickly.

‘You’ll have to come round and see for yourself,’ I said in what I hoped was a tantalizing tone.

Jazz sighed noisily into the receiver. It made my ear tingle. ‘All right, I’ll be there in five.’

I grinned. Gotcha! I thought. The expression ‘curiosity killed the cat’ could have been tailor-made for Jazz.

While I was waiting for my best friend to arrive, I put down some of the kitten food to try and tempt Jaffa to come out from under the radiator, but she was firmly wedged up against the skirting
board and peering out at me with those huge glass-button eyes as if to say, ‘If you think I’m moving any time soon, you’ve got another think coming.’ Of course that was only
my interpretation, as she still had not uttered a single peep of anything to me.

‘Let’s put the litter tray by the back door in the utility room,’ Dad suggested. ‘That way she might eventually get used to the idea that she has to go out to pee, rather
than looking for other – receptacles!’ His shoulders started shaking with silent laughter.

Great! That little escapade was going to keep Dad amused for weeks, if not months, I could see. He’d probably end up writing it into one of his plays, knowing my luck, then everyone would
get to know about it. Why did his sense of humour have to be so pathetic?

‘OK,’ I said, shooting him an I’m-ignoring-your-childish-behaviour look. ‘I suppose when she’s had her jabs we could put a cat flap in the back door? Then she can
go out into the garden whenever she wants.’

Dad had turned up the volume on his silent laughter and was wheezing and hooting again.

‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ I snapped.

Luckily the doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be Jazz,’ I said pointedly.

Dad took the hint and went up to his study. I carefully shut the kitchen door behind us, making sure Jaffa was still safely under the radiator. Every day had been like this so far, with Dad and
I working together to cover all available entrances and exits as though we were a SWAT team trying to contain a heavily armed criminal. I grimly thought things might be easier if we’d had
night-vision goggles, motion detectors and perhaps walkie-talkies to communicate from one doorway to the next. This cat was a serious contender for Cat Burglar of the Year Award, she was so swift
and silent.

I opened the front door, my heart still pounding from the covert operation in the kitchen.

‘Hi!’ Jazz was bouncing up and down on the doorstep, grinning like an overexcited chimpanzee – one who’d just won the Banana Lottery, by the looks of her.

But I couldn’t help it; I started bouncing too, all thoughts of my dad’s insanity and my worries of escaping felines immediately forgotten in my eagerness to show off my new kitten.
(
MY new kitten!
How cool did that sound?)

‘Hi! Come and see this!’ I said, flinging out an arm in the direction of the kitchen. I grabbed Jazz by the elbow and propelled her into the house, automatically checking all doors
and windows and slamming the front door shut behind her.

‘Whoa! What’s up?’ Jazz hurtled down the hall after me.

I got to the kitchen door then turned and put a finger to my lips. ‘You’ll scare her if you make too much noise,’ I said, my voice low. ‘And watch where you put your
feet.’

Jazz was shaking her head at me and making a face that quite clearly said, ‘You are an out-and-out ultra-stressy nutcase.’

I opened the door a crack and scouted round to make sure Jaffa wasn’t going to make a break for it or get squashed. No sign of her directly in my line of vision. I took a deep breath and
hissed, ‘Ready?’ to Jazz. She shrugged and half nodded, so I grabbed her arm again and whizzed her in behind me.

I dropped down on to my hands and knees and gestured to Jazz to do the same. ‘Ber-tiiiie!’ she wailed. ‘What is it with all this Alex Rider rubbish? Get up, can’t you?
I’ve got my best black jeans on!’

I pulled down the corners of my mouth in disgust. ‘Get a life, Jazz. I want to show you something much better than your stupid jeans. Under here – look.’

Curiosity overcoming her annoyance, Jazz joined me down on the floor and peered under the radiator. A sweet little orange and white face peered worriedly back, the huge unblinking blue eyes
flashing with fear and trepidation. My heart swelled so much I thought I might choke.

‘Oh. A kitten,’ Jazz said, sounding distinctly underwhelmed. ‘What’s she doing under there?’ She reached out and tried to touch Jaffa, but the tiny cat backed away
and her face creased up into an expression of such total anxiety that I felt I must look like a monster looming over her like that.

‘Hey, maybe we should let her come out in her own time,’ I said cautiously.

‘Why won’t she let me touch her?’ Jazz said accusingly. ‘What is it with me and cats? First Kaboodle and now this one.’

It was true Kaboodle had never exactly been fond of Jazz, but I couldn’t prevent my hackles from rising. I felt incredibly overprotective of my little cat. Trust Jazz to get on the wrong
side of Jaffa already.

‘I think you’ve just got to give her time to get used to you. She’s a real softie, aren’t you, Jaffsie?’ I coaxed, pressing my face closer to the floor to make my
head level with hers. ‘Hey, why don’t you come out?’ I reached one hand towards her to try and stroke her, to reassure her.

Her eyes widened in alarm as my hand crept towards her and in a sudden streak of bright orange, she shot out from under the radiator like a flame and headed for the utility room. Jazz and I
scrambled to our feet and scuttled after her. There was nowhere to hide in there, so the kitten threw herself into the air in a wild attempt to shin up on to a cupboard, but she missed her footing
and slid back to the floor. I swiftly scooped her up before she could rush at the cupboard again. She must have been a bit dazed from her fall, because she shook her head and blinked and then sat
in the palm of my hand and let out another silent mew that seemed to go on for ages, her mouth stretched wide and her whiskers stiff with fear.