Kitten Smitten (21 page)

If you’ve read
Kitten Kaboodle
you will already know about my pets: a gorgeous black Labrador called Kenna and two equally cute black cats
called Inky and Jet. All three have provided inspiration for my writing over the years, but it was Jet alone who was the basis for
Kitten Smitten
and here’s how . . .

Inky and Jet are sisters. They were tiny little kittens when they came to live with us; only twelve weeks old. Their mother was a stray who was taken in by the RSPCA, and when she had her litter
the kittens were taken to stay with a lady who looked after hundreds of cats until they found permanent homes. She was completely crazy about moggies: she had about twenty of her own who lived in
her house with her, and her garden was teeming with foster cats.

I took my children to look at the new litter of kittens, thinking we would bring home only one with us. But when we peeked into the cardboard box the two sisters were living in and saw their
minuscule, rather worried soft black faces looking up at us, we just couldn’t bear to choose between them.

When Inky and Jet were small, they played together all the time and when they weren’t playing, they slept curled around each other Sometimes they were snuggled so tightly together that you
couldn’t tell where one cat ended and the other cat began! People who came to the house could not tell the sisters apart. But we soon noticed differences in the way they behaved: they each
have their own distinctive walk and purr! Now I can tell even from a distance which cat is which: their personalities are so dissimilar.

Inky is fatter – she was always the greedier cat – and she is
very
lazy. She likes nothing better than to sleep all day. She only gets up for meals! She reminds me of a black
version of Garfield, the ever-hungry cartoon cat.

Jet has softer fur than Inky, she has round, kind eyes, and likes going out and about so that she can hunt. She is a fantastic mouser, which is good news for us, as living in the country we have
far too many mice scuttling around our house and garden.

Jet’s hunting habits sometimes take her quite far afield, and it was while I was writing
Kitten Kaboodle
that Jet took it into her head to go further than she’d ever gone
before.We were used to her going off for a couple of days at a time, so we didn’t always panic when she wasn’t home at teatime. But one day we realized we hadn’t seen her for a
whole week and began asking around to see if anyone had spotted her. That was when a neighbour told us that Jet had been taken in by a family who lived up the hill from us. The cheeky little cat
had been coming in through their cat flap and mewing, so they had assumed she was hungry! Once these people found out Jet was our cat, they brought her back to us, but unfortunately, by this time,
Jet had grown rather attached to her new-found home and she kept going back there. It seemed as though she had decided she did not want to live with us any more . . .

Of course, we were heartbroken.Who wouldn’t be? We tried everything to tempt her back: special treats, plates of tuna, lots of cuddles and kisses whenever we saw her. We even put her in
her own room to keep her away from Kenna and Inky, because we thought maybe the reason she preferred the other family was because she didn’t have to share anything with any other animals in
that house.

This went on for months and months until we had almost completely given up hope of ever persuading her to come back to us. And then one day the other family decided to move away. Jet was
suddenly left with an empty house to visit – no more cuddles or treats. So she had to make a decision: to wait and see if anyone else came to live in that house, or to come back to us.
Thankfully she made the right decision, and she’s been back with us for nearly a year now.

Kitten Smitten
is only loosely based on what happened with Jet. The family she was ‘adopted’ by were nothing like the Meerleys, for starters! And of course Jet is black, not
ginger, and she’s a fully grown adult cat, not a kitten. Oh, and she can’t talk . . .

‘That’s what you think, Anna!’

Wha— ?! Who said that?

Do you have pets that do crazy things or are just plain cute? If so I’d love to hear from you! Write to me at:

Love

Anna

xxx

PS Remember to enclose your full name and address (not email addresses!) so that I know where to write back to! And please do not send me any photos
unless you are happy for me to keep them.

A Message from the Illustrator

If you love drawing, I hope that one day you’ll be as lucky as I am, and get to illustrate a book for Anna Wilson. Here’s what she wrote when she saw my little
kitten drawings: ‘Oh oh oh ooooohhhhhh! They are GORGEOOOOOOUUUUUUS!’ and ‘Scrum-diddly-umptious!’ I think Anna Wilson is actually Mary Poppins in disguise.