The Rescued Kitten by Holly Webb
For the real Edie and Barbie. Thank you so much for telling me your wonderful story.
Chapter One
“This week seems to have gone on for ages. I’m so glad it’s the weekend.” Edie rolled her shoulders under the straps of her school bag and gave a huge sigh.
Layla nodded. “I know. Sometimes I think Mr Bennett makes Fridays hard on purpose. He knows we all just want to get home. We did too much writing today, way too much.” She shuddered.
Edie giggled. “And too much thinking. Are you doing anything this weekend? Want to come over to mine tomorrow?”
Layla nodded. “Sounds great. I’ve got swimming tonight but nothing else.”
The two girls lived almost next door to each other, in a group of houses that had once been old farm buildings. Each house had its own little garden at the back, but there was a shared courtyard in the middle of the houses, which meant there was usually a group of children around.
Up until this year, one of their mums or dads had always walked them to school, but luckily for Edie and Layla, a footpath led from their houses along the edge of some fields to the main village, where their school was. Now they were in Year Five, they were allowed to walk there and back by themselves.
The girls weren’t far from home, following the footpath past a wheat field. They were keeping to the side, in the shelter of the hedge, out of the spitting rain. It was close to the end of the summer term but it had been a damp sort of day, not very summery at all.
“Is that a bird?” Edie asked, stopping suddenly.
“Where?” Layla stopped, too, peering up the track. They quite often saw pheasants stalking across the path, or rabbits. But she couldn’t see anything now.
“I’m sure I can hear a noise.” Edie turned round slowly, trying to work out where it was coming from. Maybe it was a bird that had fallen out of its nest. It was a bit late in the year for nesting birds, but she knew some birds laid more eggs after their first chicks had flown. So it could be a fledgling stuck on the ground. “A squeaking sound. Can’t you hear it?” She crouched down. The noise seemed to be coming from somewhere to the side of the path.
“Oh… Yeah, I think so…” Layla crouched, too, frowning a little.
“I think it was coming from the hedge. But it’s stopped now…” Edie could feel her heart starting to thump harder. When she’d first heard the noise, it had just been something she’d wanted to investigate, but now she was worried. The squeaking had sounded thin and weak and now it had stopped, as though whoever was making it had given up – like they didn’t even have the strength to ask for help any more.
“I’m pretty sure it was over here,” Edie murmured, leaning in and parting the long damp grass. There was a hedge of straggly hawthorn bushes growing beyond the grass and wild flowers.
“Mind the wire,” Layla said, looking over Edie’s shoulder. “There’s barbed wire under those bushes, I can see it. Don’t get scratched.”
Edie nodded. “I’ll be careful. Oh! Did you hear that?”
Another tiny, breath-like squeak rang out. There definitely was something in the hedge, something that sounded little and lost.
“What is it?” Layla asked, in a worried voice.
Edie carefully pulled back the prickly branches and the two girls peered in.
“Oh no…” Layla whispered.
Under the branches of the hedge, dangling from the strands of barbed wire, was a limp little bundle of ginger fur.
The kitten could hear something coming. She didn’t know that she was hearing children’s voices – she didn’t know what people were, she had never met any. She only knew her mother, her brother and her sisters, and that they had left her here. She didn’t understand what was happening now. Could it be her mother coming back to find her? It didn’t sound like her mother. She moved softly, quickly, not like this – not with noise and heavy footsteps. The kitten wriggled a little, unsure whether she should try again to free herself before this strange thing came any closer. But she couldn’t move. She was trapped and every time she tried to pull herself away from the thing that was holding her, she felt weaker and weaker.
She needed help.
But if it wasn’t her mother, what was it? The kittens had heard foxes and other animals sniffing around outside the hollow tree where their mother had made her little den, but they didn’t know what the creatures were. They were so little that their mother was the only thing they really knew – the warmth of her curling up around them, her milk and the gentle way she licked them clean.
It must be her mother coming back to find her, the kitten decided. Her mother wouldn’t abandon her like this. The kitten tried again to wriggle, and then mewed, as loud as she could. Find me, help me, take me home, I’m frightened!
Even though it was her loudest mew, the sound was still very faint. Hardly more than a squeak. She tried again, squeaking and tugging back against the wire as hard as she could. It bounced a little and she squeaked once more, with pain this time as the long fur on the back of her neck pulled and the wire pressed into her skin.
The noise was coming closer and she twisted her body, pulling to try and see what was making it, still calling faintly to her mother. But instead of a cat hurrying to rescue her, the kitten saw two frightened, wide-eyed faces. She wrenched at the wire again and the cut on her neck went deeper. It hurt and she sagged down miserably. She was terrified and so, so tired. She didn’t understand. All she could do was close her eyes and hope that whatever this was would go away and then her mother would come.
Chapter Two
“A kitten!” Edie breathed. “I thought it had to be a bird…”
Layla nodded. “Is it stuck?”
“Yeah, poor little thing.” Edie wriggled a bit closer into the hedge, ignoring the thorny branches catching on her jacket and tangling in her hair. “I think it’s her long fur – she’s got it all tangled up in the barbed wire. Oh, poor baby, she’s actually cut her neck on it, too.”
“Can you get her out?” Layla asked. “Do you want me to lift up the wire or something?”
Edie sat back on her heels for a moment. “I’m just thinking. Maybe we should go and fetch my mum? She’ll know how to rescue the kitten without hurting her.” She looked worriedly at the tiny kitten, wondering what to do. What she wanted was to get her off the wire as quickly as possible. She seemed so small and fragile, stuck there, and the cut on her neck looked horrible. Edie’s mum and dad were both vets, so it wasn’t as if Edie hadn’t seen sick animals before. Quite often if no one was able to look after a sick cat or dog at the surgery, Mum or Dad would bring them home, and Edie loved the chance to fuss over them and pretend she had a pet of her own. But she’d never seen a creature look so feeble and so clearly in pain.
As Edie looked at her, the kitten opened her eyes – tiny round green eyes – and stared back. She mewed, or at least she tried to but no sound came out. She didn’t even have the strength left to mew, Edie realized.
“No, we need to get her out of there right now,” she muttered. “She’s so weak. We need to get her back home so Mum can have a look at her.” She reached tentatively towards the kitten, wondering if the little thing would scratch or bite – not to be nasty, just because she was so scared. But when Edie touched the clump of fur that was twisted up in the teeth of the wire, the kitten didn’t try to fight. She just shuddered a little and opened her mouth in another heart-breaking silent mew.