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“Shh! Listen, there it is again!” Lucie whispered.

Olivia jumped, dropping half the treats on the ground.“I heard it too! It must be him. Smudge, where are you?” she called.

There was silence for a minute, and then a loud, desperate meow.

“It is! It is! Where is he? Smudge, we’re coming to find you!” Olivia called, running towards the garages.

Inside the garage, Smudge scrabbled at the metal again. He could hear Olivia! She’d come to find him. Furiously he scraped and scratched, mewing as loudly as he could. He had to make them hear him!

“Which one is it?” Ben asked.

“The one at the end, I think,” Rob said, smiling for the first time that morning. “He must be stuck somehow, he’s trying to get out.”

Olivia pushed her way past him, and crouched down by the garage wall.“He’s here somewhere. Smudge… Smudge…”

A little grey paw suddenly stuck out from a hole in the concrete wall, where it had been patched together.

“He’s there! I saw him. Oh, Smudge, we’ve missed you!” Olivia stroked the grubby little paw. “Look, his claws are all torn where he’s been trying to get out.” She sniffed, choking back sudden tears.

“How are we going to get him out?” Ben asked. “That hole isn’t nearly big enough.”

“What about this?” Rob held up a thick stick, which he’d found lying on the grass. “Couldn’t we use it to pull that metal away a bit more?” He banged gently on the metal sheet, and the paw shot back inside as Smudge jumped back in fright.

“Don’t scare him!” Olivia snapped.

Rob shook his head.“I had to, Olivia. If he was right behind the metal, I might hurt his paws with the stick.”

“Oh.” Olivia nodded.

Rob hooked the stick into the hole, and pulled. There was a creaking noise, and the thin metal bent a little.

“It’s getting bigger! Here, I’ll pull too.” Ben added his weight to the stick, and Olivia knelt down by the hole.

“Don’t be scared, Smudge, you’ll be out of there in a minute.”

“There!” Ben said triumphantly. “That must be big enough. Good plan, Rob!”

Inside the garage, Smudge blinked at the hole, his whiskers quivering excitedly. He could hear Olivia. He edged forward, squeezing himself tightly against the concrete block, and suddenly tumbled forward out of the hole, and into Olivia’s hands.

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“Oh, Smudge, we’ve been looking everywhere.” Olivia snuggled the kitten up against her chin, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Hey! You’ve found him!” Olivia’s dad came running up the alley, with all the others hurrying behind him.

“He’s fine,” Olivia told them. “Just a bit dirty. He was stuck in that garage.”

“We moved that bit of metal,” Ben explained. “It was Rob who thought of it.”

“But he wouldn’t have run off and got stuck if I hadn’t taken him first,” Rob muttered. “I’ll never do anything that stupid again, I promise.”

“You’re just lucky that you found him,” his dad pointed out grimly.

“I know it was all my fault,” Rob muttered. “I said I’m really sorry, Dad.”

“I think you’d better give some of your pocket money to the Rescue Centre by way of apology,” his mum suggested, and Rob nodded.

Olivia looked over at Rob.“He only did it because he really wants a cat of his own,” she murmured.

Rob’s dad sighed. “Well, maybe when he proves he can be sensible enough to look after a kitten, he can have one. Which will take a long time!”

Olivia turned to Rob.“Rob, do you want to stroke Smudge too?”

Rob ran a gentle finger down the back of Smudge’s head.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

Now she had Smudge snuggled up and purring in her arms again, Olivia felt like she could forgive anything. Smudge pressed closer against her, looking nervously at Rob.

“It’s OK, Smudge.” She tickled him under the chin. “Rob’s not going to hurt you.” She smiled at Rob, only a small smile, but she got a huge one back.

Lucie reached out to rub Smudge’s ears. “He’s gorgeous. You’re so lucky, Olivia!”

Olivia smiled. She was. Lucky to have Smudge – and even more lucky to have him back safe.

21. THE FRIGHTENED KITTEN

Chapter One

“Make sure you wrap it up carefully,” Kate told Maddy, stuffing an armful of bubble wrap into her best friend’s lap.

Maddy nodded, smoothing it out and starting to wind it round the photo frame.“Ben looks gorgeous in this picture,” she said, her voice a bit wobbly.

Kate nodded.“He always does. But that’s my favourite photo of him.”

Maddy stared down at the photo– she was in it too. It had been taken last summer, and showed her and Kate, with Kate’s huge black cat Ben sitting on the picnic rug between them. He was almost as tall as they were, when the girls were sitting down.

She laughed with surprise as a hard head butted her arm, and Ben stomped his way on to her lap to see exactly what she was doing. He’d been asleep at the end of Kate’s bed, but he’d obviously decided something interesting was happening. He was the world’s nosiest cat.

“Do you think he’ll mind moving?” Maddy asked, watching Kate fill a big cardboard box with books and her ornaments, all carefully wrapped up.