Cleo sat on the patio, feeling the warm afternoon sun on her fur and wondering what to do. She had slept for a lot of the morning, and now she wanted to play. Amber’s mum was working on her computer, and she’d stroked Cleo for a bit. But when Cleo had tried to pounce on her keyboard, she’d shooed her away. Cleo was used to playing with Amber, and she missed her. It wasn’t as much fun being on her own. She could chase down the garden after that bird or wriggle into the lavender and swipe at the bees. But she never seemed to catch anything… When would Amber come back?
Then her ears flattened and she sprang up, stalking across the patio to the bench by the garden wall. Amber had gone out of the front door. Perhaps she was at the front of the house somewhere. If she hopped up on to the bench, she wouldn’t be that far from the top of the wall…
Cleo wriggled her bottom and leaped, scrambling from the arm of the bench into the twiggy mass of jasmine that was growing up the wall. She clawed and scrabbled and pulled her way up on to the top. Half her fur was standing on end and it was full of tiny green leaves, but she had done it. She was almost sure this wall led round to the front of the house, where Amber was.
Cleo paced along the top of the wall, then over the flat roof of the garage. She dropped back down on to the wall again where it ran along the side of the little front garden. She had to pick her way carefully through the tall plants that grew up against it, but eventually she reached the front of the garden, where the wall was lower and half-hidden by bushes. She perched between the bushes, looking out on to the street.
“Cleo!”
The kitten peered curiously round the bushes and saw Amber racing down the street towards her, with her rucksack bouncing against her shoulders. Cleo stood up and purred, arching her back proudly. She’d been right! Amber was here! Amber would see that she’d been clever and climbed the wall. As Amber ran up to her, Cleo purred even louder and leaned down to rub her head against Amber’s shoulder.
“Oh, Cleo,” she murmured lovingly, “you’re so naughty! How did you get out here? Mum, look!”
“Cleo!” Amber’s mum stared at the kitten. “I made absolutely sure she didn’t slip past me when I left to get you from school. She was in the house this afternoon – I know she was. She tried to sit on the computer while I was working.”
Amber gently scooped the little kitten off the top of the wall. She held Cleo against her shoulder as Mum went to unlock the front door. “But that means she must have got round the house by herself,” Amber said, looking up at the garden wall. “She can’t have done… That wall’s so high for her to jump up to, and then she had to get on to the garage roof!”
Cleo looked up at the wall, too, and purred smugly into Amber’s ear.
Now that Cleo had worked out how to climb the wall in the back garden, she was desperate to try it again. Amber had homework to do – which she thought was really unfair on her first day back. She left Cleo gobbling down her tea, hoping she would come and find her when she’d finished. But Cleo had other ideas, and when Amber’s dad came home from work he was met by a purring kitten on the path.
Dad laughed as Cleo danced happily around his feet and he crouched down to fuss over her. “You’re not meant to be out here, little miss. Did you slip out? Come on, then.”
He opened the front door and called out, “Look who I found!”
Amber and Sara peered over the top of the stairs.
“Oh no! Was she out at the front again?” Amber hurried down to scoop Cleo up. “She’s definitely learned to climb the wall, then. Mum said she must have done it earlier, but I thought Cleo might have sneaked out without her noticing. She was on the front wall when I came home!”
“She was only in the front garden.” Dad looked round at Amber as he hung up his jacket. “I don’t think she’ll come to any harm.”
“What about the road, though?” Amber sighed worriedly and then laughed as Cleo’s head butted into her chin. “Oh, Cleo, are you telling me not to fuss?”
“How’s Cleo?”Amber’s friend Maisie asked in class a couple of days later, spotting the photo that Amber had stuck on the front of her planner. “Has she learned any more tricks?” Amber had told her about all the games she’d invented with Cleo.
Amber rolled her eyes. “Yes! She’s learned how to scramble on to the back wall, then climb all the way over the garage roof so she can get into the front garden.”
Lila leaned over the table. “Why? What’s so exciting about your front garden?”
“Who knows?” Amber sighed. “But it’s got a road in front of it, that’s the problem. There’s this really nice lady who lives down our street, Susan. Her cat got run over last year. He crawled back in through the cat flap with a broken leg. He had to have an operation to fix the bone back together with metal pins. Then he had to live in a cat crate for two months to stop him walking on it.”
“But that’s not going to happen to Cleo,” Lila said comfortingly.
“It might do.” Amber ran her finger over Cleo’s whiskers in the photo – they were so white, and they fanned out like she had a moustache. “She’s only little and she doesn’t know what cars are. The people across the road are starting to have an extension built this week. Mum was telling me. She was saying it might be tricky to get out of our driveway because of all the builders’ vans and things. So that’s loads more traffic to worry about.”
“I’m sure it will be OK…” put in a quiet voice.
Amber looked over at the other side of the table, a bit surprised. The two classes in the year had been mixed around again, and she didn’t know George very well. He’d always been in the other class in her year. She’d not seen him on her way to school, either, so she guessed he didn’t live very close by. They’d been on the same table for a week now, but George hadn’t said much at all.
“My mum’s cat, Pirate, goes up and down our street, and he does cross the road sometimes. But he’s really careful. I bet your kitten will just learn what to do.”
“George is right,” Lila agreed. “Cats are clever. I’m sure Cleo will learn how to cross the road, no problem.”
“Maybe,” Amber said. She loved how Cleo was so curious – it made her even more fun to play with. But it also meant that she liked to explore everything. She sighed to herself as Mr Evans told them to stop chatting and settle down. She was probably worrying too much – it was the first time they’d had a pet, after all. She just couldn’t help that little nagging feeling that Cleo was too nosy for her own good.
Cleo sat perched on the front wall, peering out from under a climbing rose and eyeing the men working on the other side of the road. There was one big truck, with a crane lifting off huge pallets of bricks. Then there were two smaller vans and lots of people going backwards and forwards between them and the house. She wanted to get closer to see what was going on.
The road was in between her and the action, though, and she didn’t like the way the cars roared and growled as they shot past. Yesterday, after a few days of exploring the front garden, she’d actually ventured out on to the pavement. At first she’d just stood by the gate, flinching back when a car came past. But they all seemed to stick to the road, and she was sure the pavement looked safe enough.
She’d crept along the bottom of the wall, keeping well away from the road. Then a car had sped by. Cleo had felt the rumbling of the road under her paws and smelled the exhaust, and she’d raced back to the safety of the garden.