Kitten Wars (2 page)

Jaffa, on the other hand, seemed to love cuddles and attention and couldn’t get enough of us – especially Dad. He seemed so besotted, I thought I had better take charge of
practicalities, so I brought up the question of Jaffa’s food. ‘I’ll have to go and buy some,’ I told him. ‘But I’ve no idea what to get.’

Dad fished in his pocket, took out a tenner and looked at it. ‘Wonder how much cat food you get for ten pounds?’ He sighed and a flutter of nerves caught in my throat. What if
reality was about to sink in? What if Dad was going to say a cat was too expensive to keep or something and tell me to take Jaffa to the Cats’ Home?

I needn’t have worried. ‘Tell you what, I’m not going to get anything done now workwise, so why don’t we pop into town to the pet shop and pick up some kitten
stuff?’

Yay! My heart surged and my eyes sparkled. A huge grin split my face in two. It looked as though I was a fully fledged pet owner at last.

I
t wasn’t until we were driving out of our road that I realized I didn’t know if it was OK to leave a small kitten on its own.

‘Dad, I think you should take me back and I’ll stay with Jaffa while you go and get the food and stuff,’ I said.

‘Come on, what could possibly happen to her?’ Dad said. ‘We haven’t even got a cat flap yet, so she can’t exactly go anywhere. And she’s far too small to
cause any mischief.’

‘S’pose so,’ I said reluctantly, but somewhere deep in my head a little voice was niggling. After all, Dad and I knew absolutely zilch about kittens. Jaffa was much smaller
than Kaboodle had been when I first met him. Pinkella had told Dad that it looked as though Jaffa’s mum had only just weaned her, she was so tiny. And I knew that was true because of what
Kaboodle had told me before he left. ‘She’s too young to go outside on her own,’ he had warned me. ‘You will have to keep her in for a few more days – a couple of
weeks if you can. She needs to get used to her new home.’

‘Don’t look so worried,’ Dad said, glancing across at me while we stopped at some traffic lights. ‘I’ll find out about a local vet and we’ll get her booked in
as soon as possible. They’ll be bound to have some helpful hints about how to look after such a tiny cat.’

I smiled weakly. Dad was right. And there was always the internet – I’d googled stuff about cats before when I was looking after Kaboodle. Still, I wished I had stayed behind with
the kitten. I could have got Jazz to come round to help.

Jazz! My hand flew to my mouth. She would be mad when she discovered I’d been the owner of a brand new kitten for
four whole hours
without calling her. Jazz and I told each other
everything. Well, she was my best mate.

I could text her, I decided . . . but then I remembered I’d left my phone on charge in my bedroom.

Dad was concentrating on the road and hadn’t noticed my panicky behaviour. He was still talking about finding a vet. ‘Fenella didn’t mention whether the little thing has had
any jabs or been wormed or anything,’ he was saying.

‘Jabs?’ I said anxiously. I was not sure I liked the sound of that. Jabs meant needles. Jaffa was too small to have needles stuck in her! And ‘worming’, whatever that
was, sounded one hundred per cent totally gross.

Dad shot me a kind smile. ‘Don’t worry. All animals have jabs.’

That did
not
make me feel any better.

‘Listen, have you got a pen and paper? Why don’t you make a list of things we need to get,’ Dad said, thankfully changing the subject.

I rummaged in my bag and in amongst the screwed-up sweet papers, iPod headphones and other random stuff that I never got round to sorting out, I found a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper.

‘Erm, “Things to Ask Pet Shop Person”,’ I muttered. Then I scribbled down some questions:

I was soon so absorbed in thinking up things to buy or ask about that I forgot to worry about the vet.

We parked right outside the pet shop, Paws for Thought – cheesy name, I know, but what a place! I’d often wished I had an excuse to go in there, as I could see
through the window that it was full of wonderful things to buy for the pet I’d never had. (Till now, that is!) Whenever the shop was open the owner put a cute wooden kennel outside, sometimes
with a toy puppy in it. The kennel was painted green with pink pawprints all over it and it had this funny little sign beside it which said:

It was a bit like the parking signs the town council puts up everywhere to stop people from leaving their cars parked by the side of the road for too long.

From the street you could see into the shop, where there were shelves and shelves of pretty cat and dog bowls, beds, toys, collars and leads (yes, even for cats!), and there was a separate area
for food and accessories for smaller pets like rabbits and hamsters. The hamster homes looked more like fairground rides with their brightly coloured tubes and wheels. This place was more enticing
to me than any sweet shop. And now I had a real reason to go in to buy something for
my
new and gorgeous kitten!

The moment Dad and I walked in, we were greeted by a small brown dog with a scruffy cheeky face, wagging his tail so enthusiastically that his bottom was wagging too and I wondered with a smile
whether he might take off like a small furry helicopter.

‘Hello!’ said a twinkly-eyed woman standing behind a surface that was covered in pet treats of every size, shape and colour. ‘Hey, Sparky! Basket!’ she added for the
dog’s benefit, and pointed at his bed which was pushed up against the cash desk. The dog immediately did as he was told and went to lie down. ‘Sorry about that,’ the woman said,
her grin widening, showing ultra-white shiny teeth. ‘He likes to say hello.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Dad before I had a chance to say, ‘Sorry, my dad’s not a dog fan.’

WHAT? Dad normally
freaked
if a dog came and snuffled around his legs. But now he was grinning back and being charming and polite and asking what breed Sparky was (Border terrier,
apparently) and looking, bizarrely, a bit pink in the face. What with the way he was behaving with Jaffa and now this sudden interest in dogs, I was beginning to wonder if I was living in a fantasy
dreamworld of my own invention. I pinched myself hard and blinked.

No change: it appeared that everything I was witnessing was actually real.

‘We’ve just acquired a small kitten – a stray,’ Dad was saying. ‘And, er, this might sound rather silly, but we don’t know what sort of equipment we need or
what to feed her.’

We? What was all this about ‘we’? I stared at Dad suspiciously. And what was wrong with his voice? He sounded all sparkly and chatty. Dad didn’t do chatty, unless it was about
work. I was about to say something, but then I realized he was very definitely getting his money out, so I quietly pocketed the list I’d made earlier and kept my mouth shut. I would just have
to put up with the weird voice and ultra-toothy smiles.

‘You could try one of these specialist kitten foods,’ the shop owner was saying. ‘Tiny kittens need something that’s easy to digest.’

I smiled to myself as I remembered Pinkella’s ridiculously long list of dos and don’ts for Kaboodle and how he could only have Feline Good, the posh gourmet cat food in sachets.

Dad let out the most ridiculous fake laugh. ‘Hahahaha! I know how they feel – get a bit of a gippy tummy myself sometimes!’

I let my face fall into my hands. Oh. My. Word. What on earth was making Dad talk such a load of loony-bin twaddle?

Then I heard another laugh – this time from the pet shop lady. ‘Tee hee hee! Yes, it’s awful what happens to your indigestion as you get older, isn’t it?’

I rolled my eyes and slid away from the two excruciatingly embarrassing adults so that I could take a look around the shop and not have to listen to any more of their weirdo ramblings. I flicked
through the leaflets on ‘How to house-train your new kitten’, and made a mental note to get Dad to buy something called ‘litter’. Then I realized there were a couple of
hamsters in one of the multicoloured cages in the corner, stuffing their little cheek pouches full of muesli flakes and nuts. I remembered the time Kaboodle had got a taste for Houdini, one of my
neighbour’s hamsters, and was soon lost in reminiscing and dreaming about what kind of chaos Jaffa might cause.

Then the pet-shop owner’s voice cut into my thoughts. ‘You do need to think about house-training this little cat of yours.’

I glanced up sharply to see Dad’s face cloud in horror. The woman laughed. ‘Don’t panic! It’s not as bad as having a dog, is it, Sparky?’

The dog looked up on hearing his name and his tail was off again, banging against the side of his basket.

‘Cats leave their mums pretty well-trained,’ she went on. ‘But they do get a bit confused when they first arrive in a new place, so she’ll need a bit of a helping
hand.’ She paused. Dad’s face went a darker shade of pink. ‘Oh, do you mean—?’

The pet-shop lady blushed too. ‘Well, I, er – I could pop round and show you – if you like, that is – tee hee hee!’

What?! I scooted back to Dad’s side. ‘It’s fine,’ I said firmly, fixing her with a glare. ‘We know about that – we need cat litter, right?’ Dad and this
woman were getting far too friendly for my liking.

Dad stammered, ‘Y-yeah. Do we?’

‘It says so here,’ I tutted, shoving one of the leaflets at him. ‘Honestly.’ I just wanted to get out of there before Dad asked the woman out or something gross.

The pet-shop lady hurriedly grabbed a large bag of cat litter from a shelf behind her and heaved it on to the counter. From the picture on the packaging it looked like it contained a load of
gravel.

‘You’re quite right,’ she said to me, her face tight as though she’d just tasted something nasty. ‘Your kitten will probably know how to use this straight away.
Very clean animals, cats. Take the leaflet – it explains everything.’

I felt my shoulders relax a bit.

‘Of course,’ she went on, raising an eyebrow at me, ‘once the kitten’s big enough to go outside, she’ll look for somewhere to do her business where she can scratch
something over the mess – say, soil in a flower bed—’

Nooooo! Just what Dad did
not
need reminding of – cats peeing in his plant pots! I started pulling at his sleeve to get him to just pay for everything and leave. But he was still
listening to Miss Flirty-pants, who was going into far too much detail. ‘You’ll know if the kitten has peed as the litter will be a darker colour where she’s gone, and of course
you’ll see if she’s pooed.’

Whoa! Information overload! I shot a panicked glance at Dad. He was going to freak, wasn’t he?

But he didn’t seem fazed at all. He was nodding all the time the woman was speaking, and just staring at her. In fact, I had the strongest suspicion that he hadn’t taken in a word of
what she’d said.

But
I
had. And now a horrible thought had started to form in my mind: what with all the over-friendly chit-chat between Dad and the pet-shop lady, I realized we had left Jaffa on her own
for quite a bit longer than planned. What if she’d had an accident while we were out? I prodded Dad hard in the ribs and finally managed to drag him away.

‘J
affa! Jaff-aaa!’ I called as we walked in, lugging sacks of litter and bags of kitten food down the hall. ‘Quick, Dad –
shut the door! We don’t want her to run out into the road.’

Dad closed the front door carefully with one foot, his arms full to overflowing with shopping, and looked around. ‘I wonder where she is?’ he said. ‘I suppose we should have
thought of this – the house must be huge to her. We should have kept her in one room while we were out. Like Bex said.’

‘Bex?’

‘The – er – the pet shop woman. She was called Bex.’

When had he found out
that
little bit of information?

But a rustling noise from the kitchen distracted me from asking. There was a thud and a scrabbling sound. I dumped my share of the shopping and rushed in to see Jaffa on the floor, looking very
dolefully and, if I wasn’t mistaken, accusingly, at me. Then my eyes were drawn to the kitchen table. The scene didn’t make sense at first. There were little scatterings of some white
grainy stuff on the table and a trail of wet pawprints going in and out of it. The only other items on the table were two dirty mugs, which Dad and I had left there before going out, and the sugar
bowl. It was the sugar bowl that was puzzling me the most. I was certain it had been full of sugar earlier because I remembered Dad heaping a spoon and stirring it into his coffee that morning, but
now it seemed to be full to overflowing with a strange yellowish liquid that, in my confused state, I thought might possibly have been washing-up liquid.