As the van drove off, a small bright-pink nose peeped out from the wheel of the tractor. Ginger watched the van rattling out of the farm gate, carrying his brother and sisters away from him, and gave a miserable little mew. Should he try to follow them? But he was sure his mother hadn’t been happy about where they were going. Where was his mother? Maybe she’d managed to find a hiding place, too? Perhaps she would come and get him now the people had gone? Or should he try to find her?
Ginger crept out of his hiding place, and started to search the farmyard. It smelled empty, and there was no sign of any other cats at all. But he couldn’t believe that his mother had left him. She wouldn’t! Even if they had caught her, she would have got away somehow.
He wandered round the outside of the barn, mewing sadly, and wishing she would come back soon, because he was getting hungry. Maybe she’d gone hunting for a nice mouse for his breakfast. Yes, that was probably it.
As the morning wore on, he got hungrier and hungrier. He searched around for his mother and mewed pitifully for her, but still she didn’t come.
At last he went a little closer to the farmhouse, drawn by the smell from the bins. Mrs Bowen had been clearing out her fridge and cupboards, and there were some black plastic bags lying there. The kitten pawed at one of them hopefully and clawed a little hole, hooking out some old cheese. He nibbled at it. It wasn’t very nice, but it was better than nothing.
He ate all of it, his whiskers twitching at the strange taste. He wished the girl would come back and feed him some more of that delicious ham. He had been surprised when she stroked him, but he’d quite liked it. If she came back now, he wouldn’t be all on his own and she might stroke him some more. Oh, if only somebody would come!
Rosie practically towed Gran to the farmyard after school.
“All right, Rosie, all right! But we can’t stay long. Mrs Bowen is still busy packing. She’s moving tomorrow. She won’t want us bothering her today,” Gran said firmly.
“I know, but I must just find out about the kittens, whether the people did come today. Mum said we might be able to pop into the rescue centre on the way home!” Rosie looked up at her gran with shining eyes. “If she likes him, we could even take him home this afternoon!”
Gran smiled. It was lovely to see Rosie so excited, although she wasn’t sure Rosie’s mum would agree to a kitten straight away.
Mrs Bowen waved to them from the kitchen window. She was piling china carefully into a big box, and looked a bit hot and bothered.
“Did they come?” Rosie asked her excitedly. “Did they take all the kittens to the rescue centre?”
Mrs Bowen smiled. “Oh yes, dear. This morning.”
“Have you got the address?” Rosie asked hopefully. “Mum says we can go and look at the kittens – she might even let me keep one of them! The sweet little ginger one, you know?”
Mrs Bowen wrote it down, and Rosie folded up the piece of paper and tucked it carefully in her pocket.
Mum had said she’d try and leave work a bit early so they could go to the rescue centre that evening, and now Rosie sat by Gran’s front window, watching for her car. When her mum arrived at last, she dashed out to meet her.
“The kittens are at the rescue centre! I’ve got the address, Mum. Come on, they’re only open until six!” she cried.
Her mum laughed. “All right! But remember, Rosie, we’re just looking. I know you hope we’ll be taking that kitten home, but I still need to think about this. And anyway, I can’t imagine we’ll be allowed to take one of them yet. They’ll need to be checked by a vet, to make sure they’re fit and healthy.”
Rosie nodded. “But at least let’s go and see!” she pleaded.
Secretly she was sure that as soon as her mum saw Ginger, she would give in. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to take him home today, but they could still tell the rescue centre people that they wanted him!
The rescue centre was in the next village. The girl at the reception desk knew about the kittens, and she smiled at Rosie’s eager questions.
“I’m sure you can go and see them,” she said. “We wouldn’t usually let people visit the kittens until we’d checked them over, but seeing as you already know them…” She led Rosie and her mum through to a room at the back, with large cat-runs in it.
Rosie spotted the tabby mother cat at once. She was prowling up and down the run, looking anxious.
“Oh, she really doesn’t like being shut in. And she must be upset that she’s not with her kittens,” Rosie said sadly.
The girl from the rescue centre nodded. “I know. But because she’s a feral cat we need to separate her kittens from her now, before they get too old. It’s so the kittens can get used to humans and to give them the best chance of settling in when they go to their new homes. They’re in that run at the end, want to see them?”
“Oh, yes… Come and see, Mum!” Rosie whispered, grabbing her mum’s hand and pulling her along.
“Oh, they are sweet!” her mum agreed, peering through the wire. “Look at that little black one!”
But Rosie was staring anxiously into the run. There were four kittens in the basket, curled up asleep – one black, and three tabbies. There was no lovely little ginger kitten.
Ginger wasn’t there!
Chapter Four
“Don’t cry, Rosie,” Mum said gently as they walked back to the car.
Rosie was trying not to cry, but there were just a few tears that she couldn’t seem to stop. She was thinking about what could’ve happened at the farm when the cats were caught.
Why hadn’t Ginger been with them?
Probably he’d found a sneaky way out of the barn and slipped away. But why? Perhaps he’d just been frightened of the rescue centre people, but it was also possible that he had stayed behind at the farm to wait for her. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to go with the other cats because of her, because she’d been feeding him and playing with him.
She had read about feral cats on the internet and knew that they were good hunters, but Ginger was too young to hunt properly for himself. His mother would still have been catching food for her kittens, and showing them how to chase the mice in the barns. Without her to feed him, he might starve. Rosie nodded firmly to herself. She had to go back to the farm. She just had to find him, however long it took.
Rosie was determined to stop and look for the kitten the next day, but she and Gran got a shock when they reached the farm. Gran had come another way to collect Rosie from school, because she needed to go to the shops, and they both stopped in surprise as they came close.
“Goodness, that’s gone up quickly!” Gran exclaimed.
A huge wire fence was now surrounding the farmyard, covered in big notices about wearing hard hats, and no children playing on the building site. It was a building site already!
Rosie pressed her face up against the wire fence. The farmyard was deserted, with no sign of life at all.
“Can’t we go in and look for him?” she asked Gran.
“No, Rosie, look – it says no one can go in.” Gran sighed. “We’ll just have to keep coming by and hope we spot him – or perhaps we could ask the builders to keep an eye out. There’s no one here now, but I’m sure there will be soon, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to put the fence up, would they?”
Gran was right. The next day, a couple of men in yellow hard hats were wandering round the building site with a little machine that beeped, which Rosie and Gran guessed was some sort of clever measuring gadget. It took them ages to catch the men’s attention, but at last one of them came over.