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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: Holly Webb Animal Stories
- Sprache: Englisch
Sophia loves cats but her parents think she and her sister are too young to have one of their own. So when a tiny kitten creeps through the fence from next door's garden, Sophia immediately falls in love with her.Then Sophia hears that her neighbours are moving away. She won't get to see Willow any more! To her surprise, though, the little kitten is left behind. Can Sophia convince Mum and Dad to give Willow a new home?A new story from best-selling author Holly Webb, perfect for animal-loving children, and fans of ZOE'S RESCUE ZOO and MAGIC ANIMAL FRIENDS.
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Seitenzahl: 66
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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3
For Amelia
Contents
Chapter One
“Did you get Christmas presents for Oliver and Tiggy?” Sophia asked, tickling Oliver under his chin. It was the black cat’s favourite place for scratches and he was sitting on the sofa with his nose pointed at the ceiling, purring happily.
Zara giggled. “Look – Tiggy’s jealous. She wants you to fuss over her too.” 6
Tiggy had been sitting on Zara’s lap but now she’d noticed how much attention Oliver was getting from Sophia. She got up and marched across the sofa to headbutt Sophia’s arm and demand her own chin scratches.
“Awww. It’s OK, Tiggy, look – you can have right-handed scratches.” Sophia stroked and tickled both beautiful black cats, laughing at how jealous they were of each other.
7“Sometimes I think they love you more than they love me.” Zara rolled her eyes. “And yes, we did get them Christmas presents. Mum found these amazing catnip fish toys online – they look just like real fish. Tiggy got a sardine and Oliver got a trout. Then Tiggy left hers in the middle of the hall floor and my gran thought it was an actual dead fish. She was worried the cats had stolen someone’s lunch. Which isn’t that silly because Oliver did once come through the cat flap with a cooked sausage in his mouth that he’d nicked from somewhere.”
“You’re so naughty!” Sophia told Oliver, but he only closed his eyes and purred louder.
Sophia smiled down at her lap full 8of cats and tried not to sigh. Zara was so lucky to have two cats, especially when they were both so friendly and sweet. Sophia would give anything to have just one cat of her own. Her mum and dad liked animals but Mum said they were too busy looking after Sophia and her little sister Leah to have pets as well.
“We’ll think about it when Leah’s bigger, maybe four or five,” she’d promised Sophia, but Leah was only two and it seemed an awfully long time to wait. Until then Sophia had to make do with loving Oliver and Tiggy – Zara was very kind about sharing them – and stopping to fuss over every cat and kitten she met in the street. She knew the names of all the cats on her 9walk to school.
“Oh, I can see your mum and Leah coming up the road,” Zara said, as she peered out of the window. “I thought you were going to stay longer.”
“Me too.” Sophia sighed. “I love the beginning of the Christmas holidays but the bit after Christmas really drags, especially when it won’t stop raining. There’s nothing to do at home!” She rubbed her cheek on the top of Oliver’s soft head. “I’d better go and get my coat on.”
The doorbell rang and Oliver and Tiggy leaped off Sophia’s lap to see who it was – they were very nosy cats. The girls followed them more reluctantly. Sophia put on her shoes while her mum and Zara’s chatted 10about Christmas, and Leah tried to reach out of her pushchair and stroke Oliver and Tiggy.
“Your little sister likes cats just as much as you do!” Zara said, laughing as Tiggy put her front paws up on the seat of the pushchair and let Leah pull her ears.
11“Oh, Leah, be gentle!” Sophia’s mum said anxiously.
“Don’t worry. Tiggy won’t bite,” Zara’s mum promised. “She’s very friendly. And if she minded Leah, she’d soon disappear. I’m surprised she hasn’t tried to climb in the pushchair with her, actually.”
“I’m ready, Mum,” Sophia said, leaning down to stroke the two cats and say goodbye. “Thank you for having me,” she remembered to say to Zara’s mum. “See you, Zara. Can Zara come over to ours soon, Mum?”
“Definitely. But come now, Soph, I want to get home – it’s starting to rain again. I think it’s going to pour down.”
Sophia and Mum dashed down the road. They lived in the same street as Zara but at the opposite end, just far enough away to get soaked as they hurried home. 12
“Oh, come on, come on, where is it?” Mum muttered as she searched in her bag for the front door key while Sophia bounced up and down to keep warm and jiggled Leah’s pushchair. Leah was chilly and had started to grizzle so Sophia turned the pushchair round and tried to cheer her up.
“Look at those big puddles! Ooooh, Leah, look – that car’s going to make a wave as it goes through. Did you see it splash?”
Sophia turned her head to see if the car went through any more puddles, and caught a glimpse of something pale in next door’s garden. At first she thought it was a plastic bag caught in the hedge, but then the pale shape lifted up its paws and shivered.
“Oh, Mum, look! A cat! There’s a cat in next door’s garden! Actually, I think it’s a kitten!” 13
The kitten obviously heard Sophia call out. Its ears flattened and it looked around frantically. Then, unnoticed, it darted from the hedge it had been sheltering under and shot down the side passage that led to the back garden.
14Mum had finally found the door key in her coat pocket and was trying to get the pushchair inside. “Can you help me lift it over the step, Sophia?”
“Did you see the kitten?” Sophia asked, bumping the pushchair up while craning her neck round to see if it had come out from the hedge. “It was really tiny, Mum, and so sweet. It was all the colours! Orange and black and white in patches.”
“Oh! No, I didn’t. That’s a calico I think,” Mum said. “Come in out of the wet, Soph. If it’s got any sense, the kitten will have gone home now.”
15But the kitten hadn’t gone home. She didn’t have a home to go to.
Instead, she was huddled underneath a bush in the back garden next door, trying to stay out of the rain. It wasn’t working very well. She was thin even when she was dry and now she was so wet that all her bones were showing through her slicked-down fur.
The kitten peered miserably at the heavy drops, shivering as more rain dribbled down the branches and soaked into her fur. Another huge drop splashed on to her back and she mewed faintly.
Perhaps she should go back to that big old shed… At least there she had been mostly dry. But what if people were in it again, with the boxes and 16the noise? She had hidden herself behind a stack of paving slabs, but when she’d finally been brave enough to peep out again, everyone had gone.
Her mother, the other kittens, everyone.
The kitten had stumbled about the shed and the abandoned builder’s yard for hours, searching anxiously for her family. They had to be coming back.
When it got dark, she had returned to their nest – a pile of ragged dust sheets in the corner of the shed – but it had been so hard to sleep without her brothers and sisters and her mother to snuggle up with. The shed seemed to be full of noises that she’d never noticed before – the rain drummed heavily on the roof and the wind shrieked through the cracks 17in the walls. The dust sheets were chilly and damp now she was all on her own.
