The Mystery Kitten

“I was so shocked when you called me,” Mrs Bell began in a wavering voice. She looked round at the three of them. “I’m so sorry. You really found a kitten in the house?”

“Yes.” Dad nodded. “A little black kitten. Only a few weeks old, we think.”

“Oh my goodness. I just don’t understand,” Mrs Bell murmured.

“So … you didn’t know he was there?” Dad asked uncertainly.

“No! Oh no, of course not! If you hadn’t moved in quickly, the poor little creature might have…” Mrs Bell looked up at Dad in horror. “Did you think I’d abandoned him?”

Dad gave an uncomfortable sort of shrug. “Well, we did wonder… We weren’t quite sure how it could have happened.”

“What did happen?” Elsa asked. “Please? Where did Pepper come from?”

“Yes, I’d better explain. I don’t really understand either, but – well, my lovely cat Jemima –” Mrs Bell sniffed. “I’m sorry, it’s still rather hard to talk about her. She was a stray, I found her in the back garden about a year ago. So thin and hungry, poor little thing. She was far too shy to come in, but obviously no one was feeding her, so I bought some cat food and put it out for her in a little dish on the patio.

“It was lovely, seeing her get sleeker and happier, and eventually she got used to me. She moved into the house very slowly, you see. I think it was the cold that won her over – it snowed last year and that was the first night she spent inside. She was never a lap cat, but she’d purr, and she had a little basket in the kitchen…”

“What colour was she?” Elsa asked curiously, wondering if Jemima was a black cat like Pepper.

“Oh, a beautiful tabby, but brown, not grey. She was so pretty, such long whiskers…” Mrs Bell’s face twisted and Elsa realized with horror that she was trying not to cry. What had happened to Jemima?

Mrs Bell sniffed and went on. “I should have taken her to the vet to have her spayed and get her vaccinations done, but she was so shy I didn’t want to catch her and put her in a basket. She’d have been so frightened. So I never got round to it. And then of course I realized she was a lot, lot fatter, and she was going to have kittens.”

Mrs Bell sighed. “And by that time I couldn’t get up the stairs very well. Those steep stairs to the attic were just too much for me. I only went upstairs to bed, and sometimes if I wasn’t feeling well, I slept on the sofa. Then my daughter came to see me and she realized how difficult everything was getting, so she persuaded me to move here. I was quite ready to – all the meals cooked and people to talk to, it’s lovely… Except…”

Dad nodded and then said gently, “Except you couldn’t bring Jemima?”

“Yes. Beth and I looked so hard for somewhere I could go that would let me have a cat, but there wasn’t anywhere.” Mrs Bell rubbed her eyes. “I arranged for the people from the animal shelter to come and get her,” she explained. “She’d had her kittens – I could hear them squeaking – but I never saw them because I couldn’t get up the stairs. I just put lots and lots of food down for her – nice treats like bits of chicken, so she had the strength to feed her babies.

“Beth went up and peered round the door and she said they were gorgeous, all curled up with Jemima in a box of old clothes. She took a photo for me. And of course I saw them when the girls from the shelter took them away. Poor Jemima… She was terrified.”

Elsa sneaked her hand into Dad’s. She’d been so angry about Pepper being left all alone – she hadn’t imagined there would be such a sad story behind it.

“But they didn’t take Pepper?”

Mrs Bell shook her head, wiping her eyes with her hand again. “Beth and I must have miscounted, that’s all I can think of. We told the shelter people there were four kittens, and they found four kittens. All tabby. But perhaps the little black kitten was hiding? They just didn’t know to look for him. I’m so sorry. Thank goodness you found him.”

“Yes.” Elsa nodded earnestly. Then she added, “We weren’t sure if you were going to want him back.”

“I wish I could,” Mrs Bell said. “It broke my heart giving up Jemima and I would have loved to keep the kittens too. Though I would have made sure to get them all neutered or spayed, of course.” She looked at Elsa and Sara and Dad hopefully. “Are you going to be able to keep him? If not, I can let you have the details of the shelter where they took Jemima and his brothers and sisters.”

Elsa turned to look at Dad, her eyes wide with hope, but he was nodding. “That would be really helpful. The girls are keen to keep him, but I’m not sure we can manage a cat when we’ve only just moved house.”

Elsa blinked back tears and she saw Sara’s face fall. How could Dad still say that, after hearing Jemima’s sad story?

Both the girls were silent in the car on the way back. Sara didn’t sit in the front with Dad, like she often did. Instead she got in the back with Elsa and reached for her hand. They held on to each other all the way home.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Dad said gently as he turned off the engine in front of the house. “I know you two want to keep Pepper. Maybe once we’re more settled, we can look at getting a pet. Guinea pigs, like you wanted, Elsa, or we could think about a cat.”

Elsa nodded, and sniffed, and she stumbled up the path after Dad and Sara, trying not to burst into tears. There didn’t seem to be any point crying and arguing when Dad had made up his mind like this.

Then Dad pushed the door and it bumped against a little ball of dark fur. Dad peered around and caught his breath worriedly. “Pepper!”

The kitten blinked up at them, limp and bedraggled, and then his eyes seemed to glow golden. He sprang to his feet, mewing frantically.

“It’s not that long since Elsa fed you,” Dad said, shaking his head. “Are you hungry already?”

“Oh, Dad…” Elsa scooped Pepper up, half laughing, half crying as he nuzzled desperately at her, nosing at her cheeks and chin. “I don’t think he’s hungry. Look at his paws. His claws are split. And there’s a bit of blood on this one.”

“Look at the door…” Sara put in.

“We left him behind,” Elsa said shakily. “Like Jemima and the other kittens did.”

“You mean, he thought we’d gone forever?” Dad reached out to stroke Pepper very gently with one finger. He looked shaken, Elsa thought.

“He’s been abandoned before,” Sara said quietly.

Dad sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “I suppose so. All right.”

Elsa blinked at him. “All right what?”

“We’ll keep him.”

“What?” Elsa could feel her mouth gaping open, like a fish. “You mean it?” she whispered at last. When Dad nodded, she pressed her cheek against Pepper’s fur, feeling a faint purr start up. She was holding on to him as tight as she dared, and it didn’t feel like enough.

Elsa reached over and lifted Pepper out of the Christmas tree – again. This time he came with a long strand of silver tinsel wrapped all round his paws.

“It’s not a cat toy,” she told him sternly, but Dad laughed.

“It’s the best cat toy, Elsa. Climbing frame, jingly bells, nice squishy presents to land on if you fall out… Talking of which… Here – open this one. It’s for you and Sara. Sara, put your new phone down for a sec. Look at what Elsa’s opening.”

He handed Elsa a thin flat parcel wrapped up in paper with hearts on and Elsa started to tear it open curiously. She’d already opened her big present – the bike she’d asked for – plus lots of cool stuff for Pepper, including a squashy igloo cat basket, which he’d completely ignored so far. She had no idea what this present could be, unless maybe it was a book about looking after cats.

Sara helped her pull off the last of the paper and the two girls stared down at a picture frame with a photo of a beautiful chestnut-brown tabby cat. She was gorgeous, but quite thin, and she had big golden eyes. She was gazing at them out of the picture and she looked worried.

“Oh! Is it Jemima?” Elsa asked, remembering how Mrs Bell had described her. “Is it for Pepper, so he knows what his mum looks like?”

Dad was grinning at them. “There’s an envelope!” he said, rubbing his hands excitedly. “You have to open the envelope as well.”

“Oh…” Elsa picked it out of the wrapping paper and tore it open. Inside was a sheet of paper headed Adoption Certificate. “‘David, Sara and Elsa Parsons, congratulations on adopting Jemima’…” she read. “Jemima? Dad! You went and got her from the shelter!”

“I really wanted to have her here on Christmas Day, but she’s still feeding the other kittens,” Dad explained. “Anna, the lady who organized it all, said she’s pretty sure the kittens will have new homes soon. Apparently they’re quite unusual, being born late in the year, so there aren’t many kittens around wanting homes right now.”

“And then Jemima can come back here.” Elsa hugged him, but then she looked worried. “What about Mrs Bell? Won’t Jemima think it’s weird she’s not around?”

“Possibly,” Dad agreed. “But Anna seemed to think that she’d get used to it. She’s very timid with the shelter staff, apparently, so Anna leaped at the chance of Jemima going back to her old home, even if it is with different people. She thinks Jemima’s more likely to settle here than anywhere else. Though you have to realize she’ll probably never be as friendly as Pepper.”

“I don’t mind,” said Elsa. “I hated it when Mrs Bell said how scared she was, being taken off to the shelter. And we could take photos and send them to Mrs Bell, couldn’t we?” she suggested.

“That’s a very good idea.” Dad looked pleased with himself. “Good surprise?” he asked hopefully.

“The best!” Elsa reached down to grab Pepper, who was just about to leap into the lower branches of the Christmas tree again. “Pepper’s going to think so too. And if we have Jemima, then he won’t be lonely when me and Sara are at school.”

Pepper wriggled grumpily in her arms. Why wouldn’t they let him climb that tree? It smelled good, and it was full of things that sparkled and jingled and rustled when he patted them with his paws. But every time he got anywhere near it, someone always whisked him away.

“Here, you can play with the tinsel you’ve already stolen,” Elsa told him, dangling it over his nose, and Pepper lunged at it, hugging the tinsel close and growling at it fiercely. He was not going to give it back.

He lay there on Elsa’s lap, wrapped up in tinsel and patting the glittery fronds every so often. He was getting sleepy now. Trying to climb the tree so many times had worn him out. He yawned, showing all his tiny needle-sharp teeth, and then purred as Elsa rubbed under his chin.

“You’re staying with us, and now your mum’s coming back too,” Elsa whispered. “We’ll have two cats. Oh, I can’t wait to tell Lilly.”

Pepper purred sleepily and rolled over, snuggling up against Elsa’s hand and nuzzling her. He stretched one paw over her fingers determinedly.

He wasn’t letting her go.

Copyright

STRIPES PUBLISHING LIMITED

An imprint of the Little Tiger Group

1 Coda Studios, 189 Munster Road, London SW6 6AW

First published in Great Britain in 2020

Text copyright © Holly Webb, 2020

Illustrations copyright © Sophy Williams, 2020

Author photograph © Charlotte Knee Photography

eISBN: 978–1–78895–257–6

The right of Holly Webb and Sophy Williams to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.