But after they’d played for a little while, Darcy disappeared upstairs and came down in different clothes. She was going into the garden, Charlie realized, and he hurried out of the door after her. He loved being outside. There were so many good hiding places and interesting smells in the garden. Sometimes there were bees too, and butterflies. Charlie was desperate to catch a fat furry bumblebee. They blundered about just in front of his nose but somehow he’d never managed to nab one.
Whatever Darcy was doing was probably even more interesting than a bee, though. He followed her down the lawn and sprang delightedly on the football when she tapped it with her foot and it rolled across the grass. She laughed and tapped it again and he raced after the ball, flinging himself on top of it and then rolling off on to the grass. He sprang up and lunged again as Darcy shimmied the ball across the grass, and this time as the ball rolled he went with it, nosediving to the ground.
Darcy crouched down next to him. She looked at him worriedly as he shook his whiskers. “Sorry, Charlie. Did it squish you? Are you OK? Maybe I’d better take you inside, kitten. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She scooped him up and slipped him back inside the kitchen door, and then she flipped the switch on the cat flap so he couldn’t follow her back out again.
Charlie glared indignantly at the cat flap. Darcy had been away all day and now he wasn’t allowed out to play with her! He stalked across the kitchen and sat down grumpily in his basket. Why had Darcy stopped him playing? He’d only wanted to be with her. What had he done wrong?
Charlie could see the children were going to disappear the next day too – they had bags and coats and everything was a rush. When he tried to get on the table to drink the milk out of Will’s cereal bowl, Mum scooped him back down with a firm, “No!” and then she added, “Oh no, he’s lost his collar again! I’ll have to get him another one.”
Darcy made a fuss of him when she gave him his breakfast but she was dashing about and didn’t want to play. Charlie went to sit a little way up the stairs and watched as the children pulled on their shoes. Why were they going off again?
When Will ran back into the kitchen to fetch his forgotten lunch box, Charlie padded softly down the stairs and sniffed at his backpack, trying to work out what was happening. The zip was open and the bag smelled strange – musty, like leftover packed lunches. It was interesting… Charlie put one paw in, and then the other, and sniffed at the grubby crumbs at the bottom of the bag. Then he sneezed.
“Look at Charlie! He’s in my bag!”
Charlie looked up to see Will crouching over him, laughing.
“I think he wants to come to school!”
“Poor Charlie – he’s missing you,” Mum said. “You’d better get him out, Will. We need to go.”
Charlie wriggled as Will gently reached under his front legs and lifted him out of the bag. Taking him out only made him think that the bag was exciting…
He watched gloomily as the front door slammed behind them, and then stalked back into the kitchen to his basket.
Perhaps they’d play with him when they got home?
Darcy and Will did their best to fit in looking after Charlie with all their school stuff. But Darcy was really excited about being in the football team. She’d always loved kicking a ball about but now she was seriously trying to practise her football skills. And it wasn’t just practising – she got Dad to take her to the library to find football books too. If she wasn’t outside playing football, she was curled up on the sofa reading about it.
A couple of weeks after term had started, Charlie padded into the living room to see if Darcy would play with him. She and Will had just got back from school and he was so pleased to see them. He snuggled up between Darcy and the cushions for a while, but he’d been dozing for most of the day and he wanted to dash about and chase things, not help her read. He tried patting at the pages and even sitting on the book, but she just kept moving him. In the end he jumped down from the sofa and went to see what Will was doing.
Charlie could hear him growling as he came into the kitchen. Will was glaring at a worksheet on the table – then he started to rub out what he’d just written and ended up throwing the rubber halfway across the table so it bounced on to the floor.
A game! At last!
Charlie sprang at it, batting the rubber with his paw and enjoying the way his claws caught in it.
“Hey! I need that!” Will reached down and grabbed it back. “Sorry, Charlie. I hate homework, it’s the worst thing about Year Two.” He looked at Charlie again. “You’ve lost another collar! I’d better tell Mum.”
Charlie sat under Will’s chair, hoping that he might throw the rubber again, but he didn’t. In the end the little kitten gave up on him and popped through the cat flap out into the garden. Perhaps today would be the day he caught a bumblebee?
He padded across the grass, twitching happily as he felt the hot sun on his fur. He sat down in the middle of the lawn and washed his ears for a bit – and then all of a sudden, there was a bee!
It zoomed wildly across the grass in front of him, swooping down to a patch of clover. Charlie went into a hunting crouch and tried to stalk it, but the bee lumbered away before he even got close. He hurried after it, chasing it over to the lavender bush by the wall until it disappeared over into next-door’s garden, buzzing happily.
Charlie stared after it, his tail twitching. He could still hear the buzzing. He’d been so close! Suddenly determined, he jumped up on to the garden bench and then made a wobbly leap on to the wooden back. He teetered there for a moment and then sprang for the wall, scrabbling hard and digging his claws into the branches of ivy. Then he was on the top of the wall, with the bee buzzing lazily across the flower beds below him.
Charlie made a rushing, scrambling climb down the other side of the wall and looked around for the bee. The fur on his back was rumpled up with the wild scramble down the wall and a little bit with fright. He hadn’t expected it to be quite so high. But now, surely, he’d catch that bee?
Except it had disappeared. It had completely, utterly gone. Charlie looked around in disbelief. It wasn’t fair!
A soft murmuring noise made his ears twitch – but it wasn’t a bee. It was someone talking. Whoever it was had a pleasant, gentle sort of voice, a bit like Darcy when she was stroking him.
Curiously, Charlie padded down to the fence at the end of next-door’s garden and saw that there were gaps along the bottom of it – quite big gaps. He could get through there easily, no scrambling needed. He wriggled through and hesitated in the bushes, watching an old lady watering her flowerpots. She was murmuring to herself about the weather, which was warm and dry now after the wet summer.
The water drops glinted and sparkled in the sunshine and he padded a little closer. The old lady didn’t see him, she just kept watering, and Charlie couldn’t resist the pattering of the drops any longer. He pounced, springing at the glittering water, trying to catch the drops with his white paws.
“Oh! Where did you come from?” the old lady gasped. “Oh dear, are you all wet now?”