Pepper was climbing up the scarf now, paw over paw, looking determined.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_32]
Dad shook his head.“I think he wants to come with you. Not this time, kitten. You need to stay here.” He picked up the end of the scarf and Pepper, and tried to unpick the kitten’s claws from the woolly fabric while Pepper squeaked crossly at him. “No, don’t grab on again… There! OK, kitten, back in your box.”
Dad carried Pepper to the kitchen and put him in the little cardboard box Sara had found. It was padded with an old towel and it made a good temporary kitten basket. Then he hurried back along the hallway.“Right, you two, quick. Out the door before he catches up with us.” He shooed Sara and Elsa out and shut the door.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
Pepper was still caught up in the folds of towel, stumbling his way out of the box and mewing anxiously. Where were they going? Why weren’t they taking him too? Elsa had left him alone in her room sometimes, but this felt different. All three of them had gone and now the house felt cold and silent.
Beyond that big door it smelled strange and a bit frightening. He didn’t want to go out there, but he wanted to be left behind even less. They had all gone and abandoned him, just like his mother and the other kittens had. He stood by the front door and mewed anxiously, calling for Elsa to come and find him. He even scratched at the door with his claws, hoping it would open so he could run after her. He banged and scrabbled until his paws hurt, howling over and over. Why had they gone? Where were they? Where was his mother?
At last he sank down on to the doormat, huddling in a limp little ball, his sore paws tucked under his chest. He was so tired and so cold. There was no one to cuddle up against. Pepper tucked his nose into the soft black fur of his chest, his breath shaky.
He was too small to understand that sometimes people came back.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_33]
[Êàðòèíêà: img_34]
Elsa followed Dad and Sara and the care assistant through the lounge. She hadn’t realized that Mrs Bell had moved into a care home, but then Lilly had said she was very fragile.
The care assistant crouched down beside an elderly lady in an armchair and gently patted her arm.“Mrs Bell? I’ve brought Mr Parsons and his daughters to see you.”
“Oh!” Mrs Bell blinked as if she’d been half asleep and peered up at Dad and the girls. “Oh, thank you for coming. Do bring some chairs round, sit down.”
Dad pulled some chairs over and they sat down, looking rather uncomfortably at the old lady. No one knew quite what to say. Elsa was a bit shocked that Mrs Bell seemed so shaky and ill. How had she coped, living in their house– it really was starting to feel like properly their house now – with all the stairs? Maybe that was why she had left Pepper behind? She just hadn’t been well enough to look after him? But still…
“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.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_35]
“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 shehad 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 tohave 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.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_36]
“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?
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
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.