Kitten Wars (16 page)

Fiona sighed. ‘Fergus told me that Barnie wanted to try and get you an audition – against all the odds, I might add. If he hadn’t come to talk to me about that, and if
I’d never met that gorgeous little kitten, I never would have thought of the pet show.’

‘Is this true?’ Jazz whispered hoarsely.

Fergus nodded silently.

Jazz gawped at us.

‘So, can we be friends again?’ My mouth blurted it out before my brain had a chance to put the brakes on.

‘Oh, Bertie. I’m sorry.’ Jazz ran and threw her arms around me. I felt a tidal wave of relief engulf me. ‘I’ve been a total numpty,’ she mumbled into my
shoulder. ‘I was so cross, I didn’t know what I was saying the other day. Forgive me? I have missed you, you know.’

‘Me too,’ I admitted.

We drew back from each other’s embrace and grinned sheepishly.

Fergus was smiling at us shyly. Without thinking I rushed at him and crushed him in a bear hug. ‘THANK YOU!’ I yelled.

‘Hey!’ Jazz sounded mildly indignant. I peeled myself away from Fergus, struggling hard to keep my personal temperature gauge at ‘normal’. I grimaced as if to say,
‘Don’t know what came over me there!’ but I needn’t have worried, as Jazz then hurled herself at Fergus and squeezed the life out of him too.

Dad came home in the middle of it all, and soon Jazz and Fiona were both filling him in on the plans in high-pitched excitable voices.

‘Is Bertie pleased with Jaffsie?’ my kitten mewed, coming between me and the others.

I bent down to stroke her, and taking advantage of all the noise and mayhem surrounding me said, ‘You bet, little Jaffa Cake. You bet’

The Dream Team was back together and we were unstoppable.

J
azz was the most hyper I had ever seen her. And that is saying something about the girl who whoops and screams at most things in life like a
monkey who’s got the best banana. Still, she might have been bouncing like a kangaroo on hot tarmac but, boy, it was good to have my best mate around again!

‘I can’t belieeeeeeve it!’ she said for the millionth time that day. ‘I’m going to meet Simon – and Danni! I think I’m going to dieeee! This is real,
isn’t it? Pinch me, Bertie, so I know it’s real!’

I chuckled. Jazz was already referring to the celebrity
WGT?
judges by their first names, even though we were a long way off being introduced.

‘What are they like?’ she quizzed Fergus. The three of us were round at my place just as we’d been every day for the past week, planning the pet show, brainstorming ideas, and
making endless lists of the kind of animals we’d like to enter.

Fergus shrugged and drew a doodle on a piece of paper. ‘I dunno. Simon’s like he is on the telly – grumpy and rude. Danni’s – er . . . well, she’s pretty, I
guess. Not as pretty as some people, though,’ he said, shooting me a shy smile.

I made a big deal out of scribbling hard on my notepad so that Jazz wouldn’t see me blush.

But Jazz wouldn’t have noticed if Fergus had jumped up and snogged me there and then: she had her sights set on far starrier things. ‘I bet Simon’s a real pussycat once you get
to know him,’ she simpered, staring at the ceiling, her hands clasped together like some lame Disney princess. ‘I’m going to make sure I get a chance to sing to him.’ And
she broke into a screechy version of her favourite song of the moment.

‘Oh no! Make the Jazzer stop!’ Jaffa mewled in horror from the beanbag where she’d been snoozing. ‘Her singing badder even than Uncle Kaboodle’s.’

I sniggered behind my hand.

‘What’re you laughing at?’ Jazz spat, whirling on me.

‘Hey, so how’re we doing with the list of people we’re going to ask?’ Fergus jumped in.

He’d been like this ever since Jazz and I had made up, acting the go-between at the slightest sign of trouble.

‘Oh, right. Let’s see . . . Bertie, you were going to talk to Mr Smythe?’ Jazz immediately seemed to forget what she’d been cross about and shook her papers
authoritatively.

Fergus had an amazingly soothing effect on Jazz now that her dream was on the verge of coming true. I grinned at him gratefully, making a mental note to be more careful how I reacted to my
kitten’s interjections. I did not want to run the risk of falling out with Jazz like that again. Ever.

While Fiona went into action with Simon Cow and Danni Minnow and all the telly people, Jazz, Fergus and I got busy recruiting pets for the show. Fiona had said she had many
contacts who would help her find willing contestants, ‘Although it would be rather sweet to involve a few friends and neighbours,’ she added.

I went to see Mr Smythe first of all. He had been my only other customer when I was running my Pet-Sitting Service, so I felt I owed it to him to ask if he wanted to enter his hamsters.

He was thrilled, twitching his little nose, fiddling with his moustache, his eyes crinkling in delight.

‘My, my! I say, what a terrific idea. Just wait till I tell the little chaps about this!’ he twittered. ‘Perhaps they could be persuaded to do some tricks for the cameras? Mr
Nibbles has developed the most remarkable gift of being able to cram quite an astounding number of sunflower seeds into his pouches at any one time. And as for Houdini – well, his gift of
escapology needs to be seen to be believed.’

I swallowed hard and tried not to react to this last bit – I remembered Houdini’s escape act far too well. The last time I’d found him out of his cage he had been lucky not to
end up as a hamster sandwich for dear old Kaboodle.

‘I – er – I’m not sure we could cope with escaping hamsters in front of the TV cameras,’ I said hesitantly. ‘Especially with other larger animals
around.’

Mr Smythe chuckled in that dry, high-pitched way of his and blinked hard at me. ‘You are a funny girl, Roberta,’ he said. ‘I won’t let Houdini out of the
cage
– don’t worry. He can do his tricks
in
the cage, escaping from an old loo roll or margarine box – that kind of thing.’

I smiled stiffly. I could just imagine Fiona’s reaction to this idea . . . The man really was a loop-the-loop fruit-loop loony. ‘Sounds fun,’ I said and quickly made my
excuses.

When I told Fergus and Jazz about Mr Smythe later that week, Fergus roared with laughter. ‘Man! He sounds bonkers! That’s just the kind of thing that makes good telly, though.
Bertie, you’re a genius.’

Jazz bristled. ‘Yeah, well, I just think he’s weird. OK, who’s next?’

‘Mr Bruce?’ I suggested. ‘He’s got those two King Charles spaniels.’

‘Oh. My. Goodness,’ Jazz breathed, her hands flung up in mock horror. ‘You cannot
seriously
be thinking of letting that muppet enter with those Hounds of the Basketcase,
can you?’

I shrugged. ‘Might liven things up a bit,’ I said weakly.

Fergus chuckled. ‘Cool!’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see him right away.’

As we walked up to Mr Bruce’s front door, I felt suddenly sick with nerves. What if he slammed the door in my face? So far the only animals I had definitely managed to round up for Fergus
and his mum were Jaffa, the hamsters, Huckleberry and Sparky from the pet shop. (I had swallowed my pride and asked Dad to call ‘Bex’. Unsurprisingly, he’d been thrilled about
that.)

The second my hand touched the doorbell a riot of barking and scrabbling paws rocketed towards the front door. I took a nervous step back as I heard footsteps and a man’s deep voice
saying, ‘Down, Digby! Down, Buzz!’

Jazz rolled her eyes and stuck out one hip, shooting me a withering I-told-you-so look.

Fergus grimaced and held up crossed fingers.

The door opened slightly as Mr Bruce tried to restrain his two over-eager dogs.

‘Be with you in a minute!’ he shouted over the noise. ‘Down, boys!’ he yelled at the dogs, then opened the door a fraction more. ‘Just let me get these two on
leads,’ he said, peering out at me. He let the door swing to and was back in an instant, having clipped leads to the spaniels’ collars. When he opened the door properly I noticed he
looked rather hot and bothered. His forehead was shiny with sweat and he was a bit out of breath.

‘Sorry about that,’ he grunted, yanking back sharply on the leads to prevent the dogs from pulling him over. ‘Always get overexcited when the bell goes. Must train it out of
them,’ he muttered. Then he seemed to remember that I hadn’t said hello or anything yet and beamed at me, showing a set of rather vicious-looking teeth.

‘Ah, Roberta and Jasmeena,’ he said.

Jazz let out a loud sigh.

I frowned at her and said, ‘Yeah. Well, Bertie and Jazz actually.’

‘And—?’ he asked, nodding at Fergus.

I introduced him and was about to launch into an explanation of why we’d come round when Mr Bruce cut in abruptly. ‘Very well, very well—Heeeeeeel!’ he barked, yanking
his dogs’ leads fiercely.

The spaniels were straining harder than ever on their leads, practically choking themselves in their effort to get closer to me. I tried to take a good look at them, but they were panting and
jumping and pulling so much all I really took in was two long pink tongues and a lot of gross slobbery stuff coming out of the corners of their mouths.

Jazz had started muttering about having a lot to do and turned to leave, but Fergus restrained her and nodded at me encouragingly.

‘Er, how old are your dogs?’ I asked.

‘Only two,’ Mr Bruce said. ‘Bouncy brutes, aren’t they?’ He seemed very pleased with this comment, and gave a wheezy laugh.

‘Right. Well, the reason I’m here is that we’re organizing a pet show, but . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Erm, I’m not sure that you’d be interested
actually,’ I said hastily, suddenly making up my mind that this was not a good idea, and backing away from the two slavering beasts. But Mr Bruce had caught sight of one of the posters that
Fergus was carrying and he started reading it, peering through his glasses awkwardly while still pulling hard on the dog leads.

‘Oh, my two boys will love this!’ he cried, when he’d finished reading.

‘I didn’t know you had children,’ I said, puzzled.

Mr Bruce squinted at me and then let out another creaky chuckle. ‘I meant these boys!’ he said, gesturing to the dogs. ‘It’s just the thing they need actually – bit
of an incentive to work harder on the training. Could do a little agility display for you, eh?’

I grabbed the poster from Fergus and mumbled something about leaving him time to think about it. Then quickly making our excuses, we ran off. Fergus and I were barely able to wait until
we’d reached the corner before a fit of hiccuppy giggles overtook us.

‘Oh, my two little fellas are simply spiffing!’ Fergus squawked, in an exaggerated impression of Mr Bruce.

‘Yes, yes, all tip-top and shipshape!’ I howled.

‘What is he
like
?’ Fergus cried, clutching his stomach and whooping as he tried to get his breath back.

Jazz was seriously unamused. ‘When you two have finished behaving like a couple of nursery school kids, perhaps we could get on with finding some more
suitable
entrants for this
competition?’ she said scathingly, wobbling her head at us.

That shut me up. I gulped, realizing the truth of what Jazz had just said. Mr Bruce was a loser, Mr Smythe was a nutcase . . . How had I ever believed this was going to work? I was silent all
the way home, wondering what mayhem I had unleashed.

T
he show came round far too quickly. A crippling sensation of unease seized me whenever I thought about it. The way things had been going for me
recently, I was convinced the whole thing had ‘MASSIVE DISASTER AREA’ written all over it in ten-foot-high capital letters. Even Fergus’s repeated assurances that it would all be
‘all right on the night’ were doing nothing to steady my nerves.

‘Thing is,’ I told him the day before the show, ‘if it all goes wrong, it’s going to be my fault.’

He shook his head at me affectionately, his russet fringe flopping over his face. ‘Don’t be so down on yourself, Bertie. It’s going to be brilliant. Mum will make sure it runs
like clockwork, Jazz will keep Simon and Danni happy just by being there and loving everything they say and do, and you and I – ’ he glanced away, running his hand through his hair and
grinning – ‘we’ll keep the animals under control. We’re a great team,’ he added bashfully.

That night, Jaffa jumped up on to my bed and curled into the crook of my arm. She fell into a deep sleep immediately, whereas I could not settle at all. No matter what Fergus said, my stomach
was churning and my mind was torturing me with images of Mr Bruce’s dogs trying to eat Huckleberry, or the hamsters, or Jaffa – or all three.

At least we’d got a few more entrants together. Dad had proudly told me ‘Bex’ had come up with a list of twenty other customers who she thought would bring their pets along, so
altogether it looked as though we had twenty-five entrants to tell Fiona about, including Sparky and Jaffa. At least something good had come out of Dad batting his eyelashes at that woman, I
thought with a sigh.

I hoped Fiona had been able to get more entrants through her contacts. She hadn’t been very communicative. And I wasn’t sure that in reality Simon Cow and Danni Minnow were going to
be the slightest bit interested either. Who was I kidding? They were coming to our town for the
WGT?
auditions, not some schoolgirl’s pet show.

I tossed and turned while my kitten snuffled softly on my duvet.

‘Jaffa?’ I whispered. ‘Can I talk to you?’

The tiny kitten snuffled in her sleep and put her paw over her face. My chest tightened at the sight of her. Whatever else happened, at least I had my Jaffa. She hadn’t run off at all
since we’d started planning the pet show. She seemed completely at home with me. And she had totally stolen my heart.

‘Jaffsie?’ I tried again.

‘Mmmm?’ she purred, opening one eye cautiously, and then stretched and yawned. ‘Me sleeping,’ she said grumpily.

‘I know,’ I said, stroking her downy fur, ‘but I can’t sleep at all tonight.’