The Kitten Hunt by Anna Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

The whole point of the pet-sitting thing was so I could spend some time with an actual real animal, and it was slowly dawning on me that I could go the whole two weeks
coming round to feed Kaboodle without ever seeing him. Cats were like that. Elusive.
    We agreed to come back at lunchtime and convinced ourselves that he would be home by then.
    But he wasn’t.
    I began to get worried. Pinkella had made it quite clear that Kaboodle liked his meals regularly, and I couldn’t help thinking it was very odd that he was nowhere to be found. But I
didn’t want to say anything to Jazz, as she was winding herself up into a mini-frenzy and saying things like ‘What’ll we do if he never comes back? What’ll we say to Ms P?
Do you think she’ll still pay us?’ which wasn’t helping the state of my own nerves.
    We spent the afternoon at Jazz’s surfing the internet, looking at missing cat websites and Googling:

    I began to feel a bit better when I saw tales of cats that had gone wandering off for a week or two and then come home just as their owners were giving up hope. But there were
also reports of cats who had ‘adopted’ other families and started going round to their houses for meals while their owners were away on holiday.
    We decided to set off round the street, calling and looking in everyone’s driveways and up all the trees in the front gardens. Luckily no one stopped to ask us what we were doing, but
unluckily we did not find Kaboodle.
    ‘This isn’t a great advert for my Pet-Sitting Service,’ I pointed out. ‘If people hear us, they’ll know we’ve lost him.’
    ‘Let’s go back to Ms P’s,’ Jazz suggested.
    I nodded reluctantly. My feet were sore and my voice was sounding a bit hoarse and it was half past four already. Dad would be back soon, I thought miserably. ‘By now I bet
Kaboodle’s sitting on one of those huge fluffy cushions in her sitting room, snoozing,’ I said, sounding a million times more confident than I actually felt.
    But of course, he wasn’t.
    ‘This is a nightmare!’ Jazz wailed. ‘And it’s definitely the hardest way to earn a fiver
I’ve
ever heard of. My feet are going to be so covered in blisters,
forget the funky trainers, I’ll be buying a pair of huge fluffy granny-slippers.’
    ‘Yeah, right – the day I see you in huge fluffy granny-slippers the cow really will have jumped over the moon!’ I hooted.
    Jazz giggled but her face clouded over almost immediately and she groaned, burying her head in her hands.
    ‘Oh Bertie, I’ve just thought of something! What if he’s totally freaked at being left all on his owny-own?’
    ‘What do you mean?’ I asked suspiciously, thinking that Jazz was going to do her whole squeaky-Pinkella routine again.
    ‘No, I’m serious,’ Jazz persisted, letting her hands fall. She fixed me with her velvety eyes, her forehead crumpling. ‘What if he saw her leave this morning and now
he’s decided to follow her?’
    ‘Why would he do that?’
    Jazz crossed her arms. ‘Well, you saw those websites! They said if you move house, you have to put butter on your cat’s paws to stop it running away – or was it margarine? No,
it must be butter. Margarine is gross—’
    ‘What are you on about?’ I cut in irritably. ‘He’s not going to have gone all the way to Scotland, is he? Not unless he was quick enough to stow away in her taxi this
morning, which I think is not that likely. He’ll be back.’
    ‘Oh no!’ Jazz gasped. Her eyes were bulging out of their sockets. ‘What if he
did
try to stow away in the taxi, and he tried to jump into the boot, and he missed and
fell under the car wheels, and the taxi man didn’t see him and reversed on to him and – and – and
squashed him . . .
!’ Her voice trailed off in a horrified
whisper.
    An invisible finger traced a line up my back to my neck and I shivered.
    Jazz continued, the wide-eyed look still etched on to her face. ‘Remember what it said in all those