The Catnappers - Ann Pilling

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of house. They also took little walks but they got tired more quickly than when they were young, and soon came home again.

      “If only Nicholas could talk,” Miss McGee said wistfully one day. “He takes very long walks: I expect he picks up all the gossip.”

      Nicholas was their cat and one of the reasons Debbie had liked visiting the old ladies, on the days when her mum dropped by to do a bit of cleaning for them. This hadn’t happened very often as Mrs Springer had so many other cleaning jobs and needed the money. But she refused to take any from the old ladies because they were her friends and they only had their pensions.

      Nicholas was very handsome. He was pale ginger, the colour of a lightly baked biscuit. His fur was soft and fluffy and his tail was fat and plume-like and rather resembled a feather duster.

      “Who does your Nicholas belong to then?” said Mr Plackett the postman one day. He liked cats; they didn’t snap at him like dogs did. Nicholas was not only handsome, he was also very friendly; he would talk to anybody.

      “He’s both of ours,” explained Miss McGee. “We share him.”

      “But who owns the tail end?” said Mr Plackett. “That’s the bit I’d like. I mean, you could dust all the cobwebs away with a tail like that. You could just tuck him under your arm, and get to work.”

      “Nobody owns it,” Kitty told him rather coldly. She was alarmed at the idea of using Nicholas’s tail to clear cobwebs. “And nobody owns him. You can’t own a cat. Nicholas belongs to himself alone.”

      “Don’t get it,” grunted Mr Plackett, walking off down the path. But Kitty wasn’t listening. “The tail of Nicholas is the glory of God,” she murmured. It was one of her poetry things.

      It was certainly true that Nicholas was for ever going out, in fact, he was very sociable, and sometimes he did very bold things. Once, seeing a tasty-looking bird, he leaped from a first-floor window right down into the square, to try and catch it. He could have been squashed flat, but he wasn’t. You probably know that a cat has nine lives. Well that day, Nicholas certainly lost one of them.

      But there was one thing that always frightened him. If ever he heard a loud noise, he went pelting off to hide in some very secret place where he stayed for ages and ages – sometimes for hours.

      It was because loud noises terrified Nicholas that everything went wrong, and it all started because of a silly quarrel. One day Miss McGee lost her temper with Kitty, and shouted and, rather to her surprise, dreamy Kitty shouted back. Then they threw things at each other and shouted more loudly, and it all made a very big noise indeed.

      Kitty blamed Miss McGee and Miss McGee blamed Kitty and they both stormed off to sulk in their own rooms. But Nicholas didn’t creep up the stairs to comfort them both, one by one, in his usual purry way, and this was because he had vanished.

      But before we get on to that, there is something more pleasant to tell you, something quite exciting that happened in Golden Square, only days before the old ladies quarrelled.

       Chapter Two

      The excitement happened just a few weeks before Christmas. Miss McGee was busy, mixing her pudding. She normally made it on Bonfire Night so that it could sit for a good long time on the cool pantry shelf, and develop all its lovely flavours of fruit and spice and best brandy, and be just perfect for Christmas Day. But she had been ill in bed with a nasty cold so the pudding making had been delayed.

      Kitty offered to make it for her. “I could do it, McGee,” she said one morning, “if you will give me exact instructions.”

      But Miss McGee, who was still feeling rather ill, called out from her bedroom, “Oh no, thank you. When it comes to cooking, you’re hopeless.”

      Poor Kitty crept away, feeling very crushed, and went to sit in her front room, quietly, among her plants, with Nicholas on her knee. “Dear McGee must be feeling very bad indeed,” she confided, “or I don’t think she would have said such a thing to her oldest friend, do you?” And while Nicholas purred, in an understanding kind of way (the old ladies told him all their troubles, both separately and together), a little tear trickled slowly down her cheek.

      Kitty, who was not very good at forgetting hurtful things, such as being told she was “hopeless”, was unhappy for the whole of that day, and into the next and the next. The unhappiness was like very bad toothache, just gnawing and gnawing, and it only went away when something unusual suddenly caught her eye, down in the square. It was a big, silvery furniture van with Friendly Ghost Removals painted on the side in bold blue letters.

      “McGee,” she called. “McGee, come quickly. Somebody’s moving into Number 26.” In spite of her creaky little legs, Miss McGee came up the stairs quite fast, to look for herself. People never moved into Golden Square, they always moved out.

      For example, just as they had got used to little Debbie Springer running in and out of their house, calling them her “special grannies” (even though she had a perfectly nice gran of her own, who lived by the sea at Blackpool), the flood happened, and the green mould, so that, almost overnight, Debbie and her mum had gone. Much as Kitty and Miss McGee liked Debbie, they were both nervous about going to the top of the Town Flats in that lift, so they didn’t see her any more. And all this was part of the reason that the two old ladies, who loved families and pets and, most of all, children, felt lonely.

      They stood side by side at the window and peered down into the square where three men in brown overalls were carrying things into the house. Kitty removed her spectacles, to see better, and Miss McGee put hers on, for the same reason.

      “There goes the ironing board,” Miss McGee cried. “And there goes the washing machine.”

      “And there goes a bicycle … no, two bicycles,” said Kitty. “And they’re quite little ones.” She turned to her friend with shining eyes. “You don’t suppose a real family’s moving in, do you, McGee? Real people, after all those dentists and doctors? Might it be a real family at last, with real children?”

      Miss McGee screwed her nose up, and her mouth and her eyes, till her face was one big scrunch. She didn’t want Kitty to be disappointed, in case it wasn’t a real family and she didn’t want to be disappointed herself. They both liked children. Kitty had once been a teacher, in the school that had closed down. She had been used to little boys and girls playing round her feet all day. Miss McGee had been a special nurse and had cared for sick children in hospital. “I wouldn’t like to say, Kitty,” she replied. “It could be some young people moving in. They might keep us awake all night, with their noisy parties.”

      “Oh surely not,” said Kitty (though secretly, she rather liked parties), “not in Golden Square.”

      The fetching and carrying went on for quite a long time, then there was a great slamming of doors. The driver whistled and soon the silvery van was moving away from the pavement. Just for an instant, the old ladies saw two grown-ups standing outside the door of Number 26, a man and a woman hand in hand. They were staring rather sadly at the disappearing removal van. Kitty and Miss McGee held their breath because the front door was still open; a handful of leftover autumn leaves was scurrying over the doormat.

      “Where are the children?” whispered Kitty. “Perhaps they’re inside, unpacking their toys. Perhaps, if we wait, they’ll come out. They might even ride their bicycles round the square,” and she pressed her nose against the window pane.

      “I don’t think so, dear,” muttered Miss McGee and she hid her own disappointment by going back to the pudding making, down in her kitchen. “There probably aren’t any children,” she added, under her breath.