Kitten Kaboodle (18 page)

Freaky! She had never talked in her sleep before! I stuffed my hand into my mouth to stop myself from laughing, and then whispered, ‘It’s OK, Jazz. Go back to sleep.’

Thankfully she did, so I crept over to the window and let a very bedraggled and unhappy kitten into the room. His fur was spiky and matted against his tiny skinny body and his whiskers were
drooping. He shook each paw delicately and disgustedly as he crossed the windowsill and I realized that he was dripping wet.

‘Kaboodle! Are you all right? What’s happened to you?’ I tried to pick him up and comfort him, but of course he didn’t want that. He gave himself a shake and then set
about washing his ears slowly, as if to cover up his embarrassment at arriving in such a state.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?’ I persisted, fetching my flannel from my overnight bag. I made as if to wipe him down, but he gently backed away from me, opened
his mouth and gave a huge yawn, showing off all his needle-sharp teeth and his small pink tongue.

‘I had a bit of an accident while doing your dirty work,’ he said, sounding as if the whole thing left him bored to tears. He set about grooming his back so that he didn’t have
to catch my eye.

‘Oh, come on, Kaboodle!’ I cried. ‘What happened?’

Kaboodle sat up straight and fixed me with his round yellow eyes. ‘Promise you won’t laugh,’ he said.

‘Promise,’ I said. With his permission I picked him up and we climbed to the top bunk and snuggled down together. It wasn’t the greatest of kitty snuggles, what with his fur
being wet and everything, but my heart still fluttered happily having that little cat all to myself again.

Kaboodle’s voice settled into a low purr as he quietly explained what had happened.

‘I thought I would get a good view into the room from the tree outside your bedroom window,’ he explained. ‘Unfortunately . . . ’ He stopped purring and gave an
embarrassed sort of cough. ‘I – er – aimed rather too high.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

Kaboodle flattened his ears impatiently. ‘I couldn’t see properly when I was at the same level as the kitchen, which is where they were, so I thought I would climb further up and
look down on them instead. The trouble is, the best branches we re a little higher than I thought . . . ’

I smirked. ‘You got stuck,’ I said.

‘Excuse
me
,’ said Kaboodle irritably. ‘You promised you wouldn’t laugh.’

I bit the insides of my cheeks and nodded.

‘So, I got stuck,’ Kaboodle went on in a tight-lipped way, ‘and I, well, I suppose I panicked. In fact, I cried out for help, if you must know.’ he added.

‘And?’ I prompted, digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands.

‘Ms P heard me, of course,’ he said, gritting his teeth. ‘She would recognize my voice from a mile away. She came out, flapping and wailing and protesting that I would never be
able to get down. Nonsense, naturally. We felines always get out of scrapes of our own accord in the end – it just takes a little time. A nyway, Ms P got your father to come out and try to
save me – all well and good, except, of course, your father is about as much use as a kipper in a kettle when it comes to saving anyone. He doesn’t like heights, does he? So he
wasn’t about to climb up a ladder and try and get me the conventional way. Oh no. Especially as apparently it was “too dark” for that. He decided it would be a good idea to go to
the upstairs window, lean out and tie a length of rope to the branch I was hanging from, because apparently it would be simple for me to walk to the edge of the branch and in through the open
window.’

‘Sounds brilliant,’ I said.

‘Yes, he’s quite the genius, isn’the, your dad?’ asked Kaboodle, his voice drenched in sarcasm. ‘And I’m sure his amazing brainwave would have worked too,
except that Ms P distracted him, didn’t she? She was frightened your father was about to fall out of the upstairs window, so she made a lunge for his legs and yelled to him not to lean out
too far. He promptly lost his footing and let go of the rope; the branch pinged back, and I went flying over the wall, crashed into the washing that your next-door neighbour had stupidly left out
overnight and ended up in the fish pond with a pair of outsized lacy knickers wrapped around my head,’ Kaboodle ended grumpily.

As Kaboodle’s description reached its conclusion, I bit down on my lip and tried hard to focus on breathing, so that the tidal wave of laughter forcing its way up inside me would not
explode and wake Jazz. But as soon as Kaboodle mentioned the word ‘knickers’, I lost control and couldn’t hold it in any longer. I collapsed into hysterics, clutching my sides and
hooting until I couldn’t breathe.

‘Oh! Oh! That is just too hilarious!’ I eventually managed to squawk.

There was a thump from under me as I realized too late that Jazz was stirring.

Kaboodle shot me a look of pure disgust and leaped back on to the windowsill.

‘Hey, come back!’ I hissed. ‘What about Dad? Did you see what he and Ms P were up to?’

Kaboodle was already halfway out of the top window, his front paws gripping on to the opening, his back legs dangling and scrabbling to get himself free. He glanced back at me and spat,
‘As if I’m going to tell you now! I don’t appreciate being laughed at, you know.’

‘Hey, what’s up?’ came a blurry voice from below.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said quietly. ‘I just had a nightmare. I’m OK now . Go back to sleep.’

‘
You
had a nightmare?’ Kaboodle sneered, as he finally managed to get a grip and flipped himself out of the top of the window. ‘The nightmare’s only just begun, my
dear,’ he mewed as he disappeared from sight.

What did that mean?

‘Don’t go!’ I called.

Too late. He’d gone.

Suddenly Jazz was out of bed and peering at the window in the gloom. ‘I heard a noise. Did you hear a noise? What if it’s a burglar?’

‘A cat burglar more like,’ I muttered.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Really, it’s nothing, Jazz. I told you – I had a nightmare. I couldn’t sleep so I went over to the window to look at the moon and stuff.’

Jazz was still only half awake, luckily for me, so she padded back to her bed and mumbled something about it being freezing. Within seconds snoring wafted up again from the bunk below. I crept
down the ladder again and tiptoed over to the window. ‘Kaboodle?’ I whispered.

Nothing.

I tried again, but I didn’t want to risk waking Jazz, so I couldn’t raise my voice enough to make myself heard.

I sadly turned from the window and started back to bed, when I heard a tiny mew from behind one curtain and Kaboodle stuck his head out.

‘Thank goodness!’ I whispered, turning round. ‘I thought you’d left.’

‘Oh, sorry? Did you want to
talk
to me? I thought I was only good for a bit of fun – an hilarious event to be LAUGHED at,’ Kaboodle spat.

I bit back a hasty retort. I didn’t want to start another argument.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’ Then, because I really needed to get back to the matter in hand, ‘So, where were we?’

Kaboodle purred to acknowledge my apology.

I let him walk into my arms and carried him gently back to bed. We snuggled into the comfy position we’d been in before and Kaboodle quietly said, ‘I’m afraid you are not going
to like this, Bertie, so please don’t get cross with me like you did last time.’

I gulped. My throat was dry. I wished I had got that glass of water after all. ‘OK,’ I muttered.

Kaboodle’s tail twitched and he looked up at me, fixing me with those deep pools of honey. ‘I’m sorry, Bertie, but I think you were definitely right to be worried.’

My eyes prickled and I swallowed hard.

Kaboodle went on hastily. ‘And I think it’s serious – I heard them talking about spending more time together and how important it was to “see this thing
through”.’

‘Who said that?’ I rasped.

‘Your dad. He said once he’d started something he liked to see it through to its conclusion and that he needed Ms P’s commitment, one hundred per cent.’

I blinked hard.
Commitment!
This was bad. Seriously bad.

Kaboodle went on, ‘Then she said that he was absolutely wonderful and the answer to all her dreams, and he said, “No, no Fenella, it’s you who are the wonderful
one”—’

‘Stop,’ I croaked. My hands were clammy.

Kaboodle licked me gently. ‘You don’t want me to tell you any more?’ he asked.

‘There’s more?’ I asked.

‘Well, your dad did say, “Fenella, I don’t know how to thank you. Meeting you has changed my life. Nothing so exciting has happened to me in years.”’

I stared at him in silence. Well, what on earth was there to say?

T
he next morning, I was up and dressed as soon as the light had crept in around the edges of the curtains.

‘Bertie?’Jazz had woken up and was yawning widely and stretching. She looked a bit like a crumpled version of Kaboodle after one of his catnaps, except that her braids were tangled
and some had flopped over her face. ‘Why are you pacing up and down like that? What’s the time?’

‘I – I’ve got to get home, Jazz,’ I mumbled, and started stuffing my PJs and things into the bag I’d brought with me.

‘Hey, slow down!’Jazz cried, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes. ‘I’ve only just woken up. Don’t you want to make breakfast?’

Jazz’s parents liked to take things easy most weekends, so Jazz and I were allowed to put ourselves in charge of breakfast and made yummy stuff like pancakes or waffles or bacon and
eggs.

‘Not hungry,’ I said sulkily.

Jazz sighed. ‘You still worried about your dad?’ she asked, swinging her legs out of bed. She came over and put her arm around me. She smelt warm and sleepy. I put my head on her
shoulder and gave a shuddery sigh. ‘Hey, don’t worry. We ’ll find out exactly what’s going on and then we’ll come right out with it and ask your dad about it and tell
him you’re upset.’

I jerked my head up and stared at her, horrified. ‘I can’t do that!’ I protested. ‘I mean, I want to know what’s going on, but I really, really do not want to talk
to Dad about his love life!’

‘I know.’ Jazz said soothingly, as though she was trying to calm a frightened puppy, ‘But maybe you’ll discover you’ve got the wrong end of the stick and then you
won’t have to talk to your dad about anything after all.’

I bristled when she said this. What did
she
know? Dad had talked about
commitment
to Pinkella! He’d said ‘nothing this exciting had happened to him for years’! If
that didn’t mean they were in love, I didn’t know what did. But I couldn’t tell Jazz any of this. She’d want to know how I knew.

Jazz was right about one thing, though. I did need to find out more, and I needed to find out a way of surprising Dad and Pinkella when they were together so that I could confront them. But Jazz
was going to be as much use as a firework in a wheelie bin when it came to spying on Dad. She always got so overexcited and carried away. She wouldn’t be able to creep around and act
invisible to find out the information we needed.

Only a cat could do that.

I agreed to make the pancakes anyway as it was only half past eight, and it was not as though I could achieve much in the way of spying at that time on a Saturday morning.