The Kitten Hunt (14 page)

I was left staring at Dad with my hands on my hips. ‘So?’ I demanded, once the Vision of Pink had disappeared in a cloud of fuchsia froth.

‘Tone of Voice!’ Dad said, scowling, which I couldn’t help thinking was a convenient way of avoiding answering me.

I huffed loudly and made as if to flounce out of the room, but Dad caught me by the elbow and said, ‘You have got some serious thinking to do, yo ung lady, if you don’t want to find
yourself grounded for a week. You have lied to me and put me in a very difficult and embarrassing position. You are lucky Fenella is such a kind and generous person –’What do you know
about
Fenella
? I thought. – ‘and now you should go to your room. Surely you’ve got some homework to do or some reading or something?’

Dad needn’t have worried. I was already on my way up the stairs. It was pretty clear he had not listened to a word I’d said in the past twenty-four hours. He didn’t care
whether I wanted a pet or not, he didn’t care I had no one to talk to at home, he didn’t care that I was fed up with him never being around, and now he was agreeing to spend his spare
time with Pinkella the Poodle instead of with me – HIS ONE AND ONLY DAUGHTER!

Why had they agreed to meet on Friday – without me around?

And more importantly, why did she and Dad jump apart as though they’d been electrocuted when I walked into the room? They’d only just met, for goodness sake.

Surely my dad wasn’t . . . No.

I shook my head rapidly to try and make the idea go away. But it wouldn’t. It had well and truly lodged itself in my mind.

Was Dad going on a DATE with theVision of Pinkness?

A searingly bright image filled my head of Pinkella and my dad walking into the sunset together with romantic music in the background and little bluebirds twittering around their heads as they
gazed deeply into each other’s eyes.

I wished the house would fall down on top of me and squash me flat.

T
he only way I could find out what Dad and Pinkella had planned for Friday night was to enlist the help of someone who could listen in without
being noticed. And I figured that after the hamster incident, not to mention the many dead rodent incidents, Kitten Kaboodle owed me one.

So I went to the window and called for him, hoping that he might hear me from across the road and come running. (And very much hoping that he would still want to talk to me now that Pinkella was
back.) And then I climbed up on to my bed, lay on my front with my feet at the pillow end and waited. I watched the last wisps of the October evening light leak out of the sky and stared at the
trees as they turned into shadows of their former selves. My mind wandered over the events of the past few days and I let my mind drift as I waited.

Thud.

A soft dark shape appeared on the ledge outside my window.

I grinned and clambered down my ladder to let him in.

‘It was a little difficult to get away,’ Kaboodle murmured, rubbing his head against my arm. ‘Ms P was still quite upset about that dreadful director being so rude to her, so
she needed a few more hugs than usual, and a friendly shoulder to cry on, so to speak. Howeve r, I heard you call – so, what’s the matter?’

‘We’re going to have to stop them.’

‘Stop who? From doing what?You’re going to have to be more precise,’ Kaboodle said.

I tutted. ‘Dad and Pinkella – they’ve got a date on Friday night, haven’t they?’ ‘They have?’ Kaboodle asked. ‘You know they have! You were in the
room when they were arranging it!’ ‘I told you, I was sleeping—’ ‘No. I don’t buy that. I know “you cats” only ever sleep with one eyeshut,’I
said, my voice edged with sarcasm.

‘Ah,’ Kaboodle said. He washed a paw infuriatingly slowly and then said, at last, ‘Still, I don’t see how I can be of any help.’

‘Well, I do! You are in the perfect position to spy on them on Friday night. I want you to watch everything that they say and do and come and tell me about it. I don’t care if you
have to come and tell me at Jazz’s. I don’t care if she thinks I’ve gone mad having a conversation with a cat. I need to know what’s going on and I need to be able to stop
it. I cannot have Pinkella Deville going out with my dad!’

‘Why ever not?’ Kaboodle asked, puzzled. ‘She’s a lovely woman. Could do with a few tips on improving my diet, I’ll grant you, but other than that she’s kind,
cuddly, concerned—’

‘And a complete nut-head!’

Kaboodle tilted his little head to one side and flicked his ears forward. I could have sworn he was frowning at me. ‘Bertie Fletcher, I do not understand you.’

Join the queue, I thought.

‘You say your dad’s lonely and all he ever does is work—’

‘I never told you that!’ I cut in.

Kaboodle raised a paw as if to stop me. ‘You didn’t have to,’ he said. ‘It’s obvious.’

‘Don’t tell me – body language,’ I huffed.

‘That and my extraordinary powers of feline perception,’ Kaboodle agreed. ‘So, as I say, it’s pretty obvious you’re worried about your father, and now that he is
showing interest in a perfectly lovely lady—’

‘Listen,’ I said sharply, not wanting to hear another word. ‘Pinkella may be
lovely
, but she is just not the sort of person I want hanging around my dad, OK? She’s
fussy, and la-di-dah, and – oh, can’t you see it would be mortifying to have her turn into a permanent fixture in my life, floating around the place in all that fluffy pink rubbish and
going on about everything being “gorrrrgeous” and calling me Roberta . . . .’ I tailed off angrily .

Kaboodle eyed me carefully. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll report back on your father’s meeting with Ms P. But just do me one little favour – try not to get
things out of proportion. There’s bound to be a simple explanation for all this.’

Friday took its time coming. Friday usually does, of course, because it is the best day of the week – no homework to do in the evening, great telly, no alarm clock the
next morning, and the whole weekend to look forward to. But this Friday was different. I was seriously concerned about my dad spending any time at all with that Profusion of Pinkness, let alone on
a Friday night, which any idiot could tell you was a night for dating and going out with girlfriends and boyfriends.

There had been a lot of worrying developments that week. Dad had been acting like a total weirdo – or, should I say, even more of a weirdo than usual. He had become ultra-dreamy,
that’s the only way to describe it. He hadn’t even hassled me once about my homework,or checked my spellings or anything. Normally I would not complain about this, of course, but he was
being just so . . . un-Dad-like. He would sit down to eat supper with me, for example, and he’d take up his fork to start twirling his spaghetti, and then it was as if he’d completely
forgotten where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. He would sit there, the forkful of pasta hovering in front of his mouth, and he’d stare off into the distance. It would take quite
a lot of me saying ‘Dad – Da-a-ad! Is there anyone there?’ and flapping my arms around in front of his face to get his attention.

I was convinced all this dippy behaviour was because Dad’s mind was on other things. Other
pink
things.

After school that day, I finally plucked up the courage to tell Jazz about my horrifying suspicions.

‘Jazz . . . I think . . . I cannot believe I am saying this . . . I ’m really worried Dad might have fallen in
love
!’ I spoke in hushed tones. ‘With . . . Ms
P!’

‘Oh good grief alive, I hope not! She is one spooky lady!’ Jazz shrieked. ‘I reckon she is either completely off her rocker or she is an undercover agent for a secret
organization and is posing as someone who is completely off her rocker. For a start, no one who is sane wears that much pink unless they’re two years old and still believe in fairies. And for
a finish, that perfume is so strong I suspect it might actually be some kind of poisonous fumigation weapon that deals a slow but deathly blow to whoever comes near it.’

I curled my lip and tutted. Jazz loves a good conspiracy theory. She was always going on about undercover agents and secret organizations and deathly weapons. She was convinced that half of the
teachers at our school were spies. I kept telling her that they were all too boring and badly dressed to be super-slick double agents, but she wasn’t having any of it. She said that was the
whole point and she said it again now.

‘You always think that spies are like the people in films and on the telly – that they’re all good-looking and dress in really posh clothes and raise their eye brows a
lot,’ she went on accusingly. ‘But they are absolutely
not
like that. If they were, then everyone would know that they were spies and there’d be no point in them trying to
go undercover. No, real spies are exactly like Pinkella – the most useless person in the world that you can think of on the surface, but underneath, they can speak thirty-two languages and
are pretty mean with their fists.’

My mind boggled a bit at the idea of Pinkella being pretty mean with her fists.

‘It’s like Mr Smythe,’ she went on, warming to her theme. ‘He has to be a spy . All that acting-like-his-hamsters thing that he does is just a front. He’s probably
super-brainy at maths and goes round the world cracking codes and solving mysteries. He looks enough of a geek. And those hamsters are probably trained to carry ultra-teeny computer chips around in
their pouches for him. I bet that’s why Houdini is such a brilliant escapologist. And another thing, I don’t even believe that Mr S was at his daughter’s. Did you notice he
changed his story when we went round to say “sorry” for taking his money –’ her voice had turned very sour at the memory – ‘and said he’d been to an
art
exhibition
?’

‘That’s not changing his story!’ I cried. ‘He could easily have gone to an art exhibition
with
his daughter. A nyway,’ I said, feeling quite exas-perated,
‘you are not taking my problems seriously. There’s a lot more worrying me than the idea of Ms P as a weird pink super-spy or Mr S as a brainy geekoid-hamster-head. What if my dad
has
fallen for Pinkella?’

Jazz shuddered. ‘We will have to do some investigation,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you are wrong. I know your dad is a bit bonkers, but even he could not possibly fancy someone
who thinks chiffon is acceptable daywear . . .’

I stopped Jazz before she could develop her conspiracy theory any further. ‘Listen, I’ll see you in a bit,’ I said. ‘I’m just going to whizz home to grab a few
things for our sleepover and get changed.’

I needed space to think before that night.

I hadn’t seen Kaboodle to talk to that week. It had made me pretty sad and actually a bit annoyed too. He could have come round if he’d wanted to, even if it was just to curl up on
my bed at night. But now that Pinkella was back, he was spending all his time at hers, probably being hand-fed prawns and tuna and snoozing all day on a velvet cushion while Pinkella stroked him
and told him how she couldn’t live without him. An unpleasant image exploded into my brain of my dad being hand-fed by Pinkella while he lazed around on a velvet cushion. A wave of disgust
rolled over me, and with it came a sudden, worrying thought: what if Pinkella could understand Kaboodle as well as I could? What if Kaboodle had told her all about me and was right now sharing all
my deepest darkest secrets? What if they were both laughing at me, while Pinkella hatched a wicked plan to steal my dad away from me with Kaboodle’s help?

No doubt about it, I was going crazy. I had to talk to Kaboodle before he went undercover that evening as Super Spy Cat.

I rang Pinkella’s doorbell.

‘Oh, hello sweetie! What are you doing here? Is there a problem about tonight?’

I grimaced and then quickly tried to grin instead. ‘No, no. I was just, er, wondering if I could see Kaboodle?’

Pinkella clasped her hands together in front of her and cooed, ‘Oooooh, that is sooooo adorable! Do you miss him, darling?’

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak in case I said something rude.

‘Of course you can see him! The little puss-cat is snoozing in the sitting room on his favourite chair. In you go. I’ll leave you to it, if you don’t mind. I was just about to
get ready.’

I nodded again and muttered, ‘Thank you.’ Get ready? I wondered how long it would take her to choose her outfit. ‘Now let me see, s hall I wear the pink or the, er,
pink?’ It would be funny if it wasn’t actually so tragic.

I went into the sitting room and sure enough, Kaboodle was asleep, folded in on himself in a neat little parcel, his tail wrapped securely around his tiny fluffy body, his eyes shut tight. At
first glance he could have been a black velvet scarf or a black jumper, thrown on the chair in a heap. It was only when he opened one amber eye that I could make out where his body ended and his
head began.

‘Hello!’ he drawled, raising his head very slightly and blinking slowly. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s not my fault,’ I said, sounding crosser than I’d planned.

Kaboodle stared back at me in silence. I shifted uncomfortably,regretting my outburst. I tried again. ‘What I mean is, I’ve kind of missed you, I guess.’

Kaboodle let out one of his jet-propelled purrs, and I’m sure he smiled too. ‘Well, that’s funny, because, in a strange way, I suppose I’ve missed you too.’

‘Why haven’t you been to see me then?’ I demanded, the stress rising in my voice and catching.

Kaboodle stood up and arched his back in an exaggerated stretch as though he had been asleep for years. ‘Aaah, that’s better,’ he said. ‘Hmm, what did you say?’ He
must have caught a look in my eye that stopped him from procrastinating further and quickly sat down, saying, ‘Yes, I’m sorry I haven’t been round since Ms P came home. You see,
it’s rather difficult; she keeps quite a tight rein on me. If I slipped over to your place for any length of time, she would worry terribly.’

‘Poor Ms P,’ I said, a flash of steel in my voice.

‘Yes,’ said Kaboodle mildly. ‘So, what was it you wanted to see me about?’