Kitten Kaboodle (4 page)

I slouched in my seat and rolled my eyes. ( No wonder he worked on the
Daily Ranter
, I thought. He
was
the daily ranter. No, make that the
hourly
ranter.)

‘Yes, Dad,’ I said wearily. ‘I mean, no, Dad. I mean . . . ’

I was not really listening to him as I was surreptitiously saving Pinkella’s number so that I could call her back later. Meanwhile my brain continued whirring into a head-spin. What would
I say? I had been quite rude, cutting her off like that.

I know! I had a flash of inspiration. I’d tell Pinkella it was
Jazz
who had answered the call because she had taken my phone home instead of hers by mistake.

Dad parked the car, and I scuttled inside and up to my bedroom for some privacy.

‘Don’t you want a snack?’ Dad called after me.

‘In a minute – need the loo!’ I called back, and veered into the bathroom to put Dad off my scent. I needn’t have worried though – Dad was already disappearing into
his study to get on with yet more work.

But for once, I didn’t care.

I shut the bathroom door and locked it just in case and then sat down on the edge of the bath. I took a deep breath and then turned my phone back on. I called up Pinkella’s number on my
screen and pressed the green dial button. She answered on the second ring.

‘Hello?’

‘Er, yes, hello – erm, it’s Bertie Fletcher.’

‘Oh, hello, Roberta,’ said Pinkella, sounding puzzled. ‘That’s funny. I tried ringing you a few minutes ago and the person who answered told me I’d got the wrong
number.’

‘Ye-es,’ I faltered. ‘That was my, er, my assistant, er, Jasmeena.’ I used her full name as it sounded more serious than ‘Jazz’. ‘Well, she’s more
of a friend than an assistant, but she assists me, you see,’ I warbled, wincing and thinking what an utter nut-brain I sounded.

‘Oh dear, sweetie! If you take my advice, you’ll get yourself a new assistant – one who knows a thing or two about assisting! Heeeheeeheee!’ she twittered in that
tinkling titter of hers. Even her voice sounds pink, I thought.

‘Yes, I – I’m thinking of doing just that,’ I said, feeling a bit of confidence return, and putting on the most professional voice I could under the circumstances.
‘So, how can I help you, Pin— Ms Pinkington? I hear that you received one of my leaflets?’ I hoped my more businesslike tone would stop her from thinking I was actually a bonkers
person who could not be trusted with looking after a used tea bag, let alone her beloved cat.

‘Please, call me Fenella, sweetie,’ she tinkled. ‘Yes,I was simply
thrilled
to get your leaflet – it came absolutely in the nick of time. You see, I’m due to
go away for a couple of weeks and I was starting to get into a teensy bit of a panic about poor little Kaboodle here. Isn’t that right, Kaboodle?’

At that point I heard a very loud purring noise right in my ear. I nearly dropped the phone.

‘There! Did you hear that, sweetie? Kaboodle agrees with me!’ said the worryingly insane woman on the other end of the phone. ‘You see,’ she continued, as I shook my head
sadly, ‘my previous cat, Pusskins, God rest his soul, used to have a room at the gorgeous cat hotel in town – do you know it?’ She broke off to blow her nose.

Oh no. She’s going to start blubbing down the phone about her old dead cat, I panicked. ‘Er, no, no I don’t,’ I said, hastily adding, ‘but I’m sure it’s
lovely.’

‘Yes,’ sniffed Pinkella. ‘“Purrfect Heaven” it’s called. It’s just off the high street, behind that hairdresser’s with the lovely fuchsia
curtains. Of course, poor Pusskins has gone to the real purrfect heaven in the sky now . . . Anyway, I’m getting off the point,’ she sighed and blew her nose again.

We re you ever on it? I wondered.

‘I was
so
desperate for darling little Kaboodle here to go to the same cat hotel, where I
know
they would treat him most royally, but to my
utter
despair, when I
phoned them this morning, they told me they were fully booked! Well, I simply
cannot
cancel this trip. I’m auditioning for the leading role in a new romantic comedy by that gorgeous
man Richard Elton –
Love, Don’t You Know?
, I think they’re calling it – and the auditions are in
Scotland
of all places.’ She made a noise that sounded
rather like a shudder. ‘So,’ she continued, ‘how much do you charge?’

It took me a moment to realize that Pinkella had stopped wibbling and that she had asked me a question, and then it took me another moment to realize that she was offering me actual, real
money.

‘I – er . . .’ I hadn’t given one single thought to how much I would charge for this Pet-Sitting Service – what an idiot! Some Business Wo man of the Year I was
turning out to be. I could just see the angry potato man saying, ‘YOU’RE FIRED!’ in a booming voice, and it was not a picture that did much for my self-confidence or ability to
think clearly under pressure.

‘Erm – sort of a pound a day?’ I said.

‘My goodness, you do come cheap!’ she trilled. ‘Well, I think you’d better come round and be formally introduced to Kaboodle as soon as possible. He can’t wait to
meet you, can you, little kitty-kins?’

‘I’ll have to check with my dad,’ I said, my head still spinning, even though I actually had no intention whatsoever of checking with Dad.

‘Good girl,’ said Pinkella. ‘You can pop by any time. I’ll be in – I’ve still not packed my suitcases yet and I must practise my lines. Toodle-oo!’

Toodle-what?

I said goodbye and pressed the red button on my phone.

‘Yes, yes!’ I cried, thumping the air, and doing a little victory dance. My first customer! I had to tell Jazz.

The doorbell rang, jolting me out of my cheery prancing. I jumped and dropped my phone, narrowly missing the loo.

‘Ber-tie!’ Dad was calling me.

I unlocked the bathroom door, opened it and peered out. ‘Ye-es?’ I said, feeling a bit sick. What if it was Pinkella, come round right away to talk to me in person?

‘Are you still on the loo?’ Dad yelled. This immediately made my sick feeling turn into a grumpy one. That man has made being an embarrassment into an Olympic sport, I thought.

‘Hey, Bertie!’

Phew! That didn’t sound like Pinkella.

‘Jazz?’ I said, coming down the stairs.

‘Mum thought you might like to come round to ours for tea.’

‘Yay! Dad – can I?’ I looked at him with my most pleading face. This would solve all my problems at once! I could say I was going to Jazz’s, but just pop in on Pinkella
on the way. Plus I loved going for tea at Jazz’s. It was so full-on and noisy, with her little brother, Ty son, zooming round the place making aeroplane noises and the rest of the family all
talking at once. Quite a lot different from my silent-as-the-tomb-type house.

Dad didn’t look as though he would even be able to say what day it was, let alone take much notice whose house I was at, I realized as I inspected his face. He had his Deadline Head on,
which meant he had an article that needed to be handed in to the
Daily Ranter
very soon and it was stressing him out. Poor Dad. He looked terrible – as if he had not slept for more
than about ten minutes all week. Why hadn’t I noticed this when he picked me up from school? I thought guiltily. I had been too wrapped up in my own thoughts about pet-sitting and
money-making. I chewed my lip.

His hair (which is curly like mine, a lthough there’s not as much of it) was sticking up on end in a rather woolly sheep-type fashion, which is what it does when he runs his hands through
it a lot, and his eyes had sunk further into his head than is normal for a human being. The skin around his eyes was also quite dark. Actually, he looked more like a slightly baffled owl than a
sheep.

Come to think of it, I should have realized something was up that morning as he had drunk fifteen cups of coffee one after the other while muttering, ‘What am I going to write? What am I
going to write?’ These are the usual signs that a deadline is on the horizon, or indeed is charging towards Dad from the horizon at about one hundred miles an hour.

‘Sure. Be back by seven,’ he said finally, distractedly running his hands through his hair.

‘What’s up?’ said Jazz, as we closed the front door behind us. ‘When I arrived you looked like you’d just won a year’s supply of chocolate and now you look as
if you wish you hadn’t eaten it all in one go!’

‘Oh, yeah. Just a bit worried about Dad,’ I muttered. But I fixed a grin back on my face and said brightly, ‘But listen. This is a zillion times more interesting!’ I told
her about Pinkella and Kaboodle.

‘Kaboodle? What kind of weirdo name is that?’ she said, curling her top lip in her you’ve-just-said-something-random expression.

‘I know – not the coolest—’ I agreed.

‘And you didn’t ask for a POUND a day, did you?’ Jazz interrupted.

‘Ye-es.’

‘You doofus! A poxy pound a day! No wonder she wants you to look after her dear little pussy-cat. You should have said a fiver –
and
you should have asked for a deposit!
Don’t you know anything about business?’

‘But I don’t care about the money, Jazz!’ I exclaimed. ‘Don’t you get it? I’m finally going to have a pet to look after I’m going to get to feed him and
cuddle him and play with him! YAY!’ I cried, dancing round and round.

‘No need to be freaky about it,’ said Jazz, but she was grinning. ‘So can I be your
business partner
then?’ she asked, putting on a posh voice.

‘You can be my official assistant,’ I said, hugging her ‘I told Pinkella I needed a new one.’

‘Eh?’

‘Never mind – come on, let’s go round there now Kitten-sitters R Us!’

Y
ou would have thought Jazz and I were celebrities the way Pinkella welcomed us.

‘Roberta!’ she cooed, opening her arms wide.

Please don’t hug me, I cringed.

She hugged me Tight. Urgh. My face was pressed into her pongy pinkness and I nearly gagged on her overpoweringly sick-making flowery perfume.

‘Ro-
who
?’ said Jazz.

I wriggled away as politely as it is possible to wriggle away from someone you don’t know that well, and scowled at Jazz warningly

‘And the beautiful Jasmeena!’ said Pinkella, reaching out and cupping Jazz’s chin in her spiky, jewel-covered fingers. ‘What gorgeous eyes you have, sweetie!’

It’s true, Jazz does have gorgeous eyes. They’re like those shiny chocolate drops in the sugar casing, and they’re huge. She’s got mega eye – lashes too. If I
didn’t know better I’d say she had false ones, but they’re not – her whole family’s got them. I’ve always been really jealous of the way Jazz can use her
chocolate-drop eyes to get pretty much whatever she wants from people.

It seemed she wasn’t going to use them on Pinkella though: she scowled and her smooth brown cheeks darkened as she squirmed out of Pinkella’s clutches. ‘I prefer
“Jazz”,’ she said sourly. ‘So where is Noodle?’

Pinkella dissolved into fits of hysterics about nothing in particular, as far as I could see. ‘Oooh! You are cute! Follow me – I think
Kaboodle
is having a little nap on his
cushion.’

Jazz raised her eye brows at me, a definite sign that her already unenthusiastic opinion of Pinkella was not improving by the minute. She held up one hand to me and splayed out the fingers,
mouthing, ‘A fiver!’

I put a finger to my lips and frowned at her.

Pinkella came back out into the hall with a small soft bundle of gorgeous black and white fur. ‘Here he is, the little
darling
,’ she said, nuzzling her powdery face into the
kitten’s coat. ‘You were sleeping, weren’t you, my little koochy-koo? But you must wake up and meet these lovely girlies who are going to be looking after you while Mummsie is
away.’

Kaboodle raised his small, neat head and stared at us, his ears alert and his yellow eyes widening into deep pools of cuteness. That shivery feeling overtook me again. It was almost like static
electricity, like when you walk on a nylony carpet and then touch something metal; and once again I was absolutely convinced that Kaboodle was trying to tell me something. But what?