“I want toknow,” her little brother muttered crossly. “I don’t like surprises.”
“Five minutes,” Dad promised from the driver’s seat.
Darcy and Will peered eagerly out of the car windows, trying to think where they might be going– Darcy thought they were quite close to where her friend Emma lived. Then a few minutes later Dad pulled up outside a long low building.
Darcy read the sign outside: Haven Animal Rescue. She unclipped her seat belt and reached over to grab Dad’s shoulder. “Are we … do you mean … are we really—” She swallowed hard and started again.
“Are we going to get a cat?”
“A cat!” Will squeaked.
Darcy had been trying to persuade her parents to get a pet for ages. She hadn’t been sure whether they should get a cat or a dog.
Emma had a dog and she kept telling Darcy about all the naughty things he had done. Buster had eaten two of Emma’s lunch boxes (not what was inside them, the actual box!) and her favourite flip-flops. Emma still loved him loads, but he was a menace.
Darcy and Will’s gran loved cats and she had two beautiful ones. When they went to see Gran, if Darcy was very lucky, Pippin or Smudge might get on her knee. Darcy loved it when they sat there and let her stroke them. It would be amazing to have a cat to make a fuss of all the time. A cat of their own might even decide to sleep on Darcy’s bed.
Mum loved cats too, but Dad wasn’t so keen – he said they would need a lot of looking after.
“I thought you’d said no!” Darcy wrapped her arms round Dad’s neck and hugged him.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
“Well, I realized it’s Mum who’s at home most of the time,” Dad pointed out. “She’ll end up looking after it, so she should be the one to make the decision.”
Dad was right, Darcy thought. Her mum worked from home in a little office under their stairs.
“But we’ll help,” she said eagerly. “We can feed the cat. And I can vacuum up the fur.” Cat hair all over the carpets had been one of the things Dad was concerned about. “I like vacuuming,” she assured him.
“Can we go and see the catnow?” Will begged and Dad laughed and opened the car door.
“Come on then!”
“We made an appointment to see a litter of kittens,” Mum explained as they went into the building. “There are four of them, and they’re old enough to be rehomed now. When you went round to Gran’s the other day, a lady from the shelter came to check the house to make sure we weren’t too close to any busy roads or anything like that. They rang me yesterday to say we can definitely have a kitten! But –” she gave Darcy and Will a serious look – “they only rehome pets to people who have older children, because you need to be sensible to be around a cat or a dog. So you must show them how sensible you can be. No arguing!”
Will’s eyes widened and he nodded seriously.
“We’ll be good,” Darcy promised. She and Will had got into a fight at Gran’s house once, because Will wouldn’t stop tickling her. She’d been really cross and yelled at him, and Pippin had run away and hidden under Gran’s bed. It was ages until she would come out and Darcy had felt so guilty. She couldn’t help arguing with Will sometimes, but she definitely didn’t want to upset a kitten.
“Hi, I’m Lucy Adams.” Mum smiled at the woman behind the reception desk. “We’re here to see some kittens.”
“That’s right, we’re expecting you. Wait here for a minute and Jesse will come and collect you – he’s one of our staff. We have a meeting room where you can get to know the kittens before you choose.”
Choose! Darcy looked around the reception area at the photos of cats and dogs on the walls. They were beautiful and all of them were staring hopefully out of the picture, as if begging to be taken home.
How were they going to choose which kitten should be theirs?
A young man in a green fleece with the Haven logo came in and grinned at Darcy and Will.“Hi – you’re here to meet the kittens?”
“That’s right.” Mum squeezed Darcy’s hand. “We’re really excited.”
“Great. They’re in our meeting room down here.” Jesse led them along a corridor lined with more gorgeous photos and opened a door. “It’s OK, they’re shut in,” he explained as Dad peered in, looking a bit worried. “They aren’t going to make a run for it.”
“Oh, look…” Mum said softly as she went in. “Aren’t they sweet, Darcy?”
But Darcy didn’t say anything. She was too busy watching. Jesse was unlatching a wire crate and three tiny kittens were starting to nose curiously at the door. They climbed and wriggled and stomped all over each other, trying to get out and see what was going on.
“Look at the ginger one!” Will gasped as a ginger kitten launched itself over the top of two tabbies, bouncing on to the floor. It sniffed nosily at Dad’s trainers and then batted one paw at the dangling laces.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_5]
The tabby kittens stumbled out behind the ginger one and gazed thoughtfully up at Mum and Darcy.
“Do they know we want to take one of them home?” Darcy whispered to her mum.
“You’re actually the first family these kittens have met,” Jesse said, “so they probably don’t know what’s going on. We’ve had them for a few weeks, with their mum. We’re planning to rehome her with one of the kittens, and the others either on their own or together.”
“Just one for us!” Dad said anxiously. “We’re not very experienced pet owners. We only want one kitten.”
Darcy closed her mouth firmly. She’d been just about to say that maybe they should have two kittens, but she didn’t want to put Dad off.
“Aren’t there four of them?” she asked Jesse, looking around the room. There were definitely only three kittens out. The two tabbies were still by the crate, watching cautiously, and the ginger one was now trying to climb up Dad’s jeans.
Jesse nodded.“Look…” he murmured, and Darcy crouched down to look inside the wire crate. It was padded with a rumpled fleece blanket and peering out from under the folds was a small, worried-looking tabby and white face.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_6]
[Êàðòèíêà: img_7]
The kitten had the pinkest nose that Darcy had ever seen on a cat. It was such a bright pink that it almost looked like it would glow in the dark. The kitten stared back at Darcy with round, yellow-green eyes and then it stepped out from under the folds of the blanket. Now Darcy could see that it looked different to the other two tabbies. They were tabby all over, with grey-brown paws. This kitten was tabby with a neat white shirt front and sparklingly white paws. It had a very cute white chin too, as if it was white with a tabby mask over its eyes and ears.
“Oh, that’s a very sweet kitten,” Mum said and Jesse laughed.
“I know – I love his markings.”
The tabby and white kitten edged slowly out of the crate and then sat down in front of it. He still looked nervous– perhaps he was scared of the room full of people, Darcy thought. Will was so desperate to make Jesse think he was sensible that he hadn’t said a word, but even though they were being quiet, they were still very big compared to a kitten.
The kitten lifted one of his front paws, licked at it and passed it vaguely in the direction of his ears. Darcy had a feeling he wasn’t really trying to wash, it was just giving him something to do, so he could pretend he hadn’t noticed all these people staring at him.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_8]
Now that he was washing, Darcy noticed the underside of his paws– the pads were the same neon-pink as his nose. They stood out brightly against the white fur, like little pink beans.
“He’s gorgeous,” she said, looking hopefully at Mum to see if she felt the same way. Maybe she’d fallen in love with one of the others?
But Mum was looking at the kitten washing too, with the same sort of face that Darcy imagined she was making.“Isn’t he?” she agreed.