Charlie the Kitten Who Saved a Life

‘No. I’m not sure. I told you I’ve never been there, I just knew it was the next village along, but I can’t remember which way. I wish I’d had another look at a map before we started out.’

‘So, what are we going to do?’ Caroline said, her voice all shaky. ‘It’s the middle of the night, we don’t know where we are, the bags are getting heavy …’

‘And my feet hurt. Let’s go back, Caro. I’m sorry, it’s my fault, maybe this was a bad idea.’ Grace sounded like she was going to start mewing.

‘I don’t know if we’ll find our way back, though,’ Caroline said. ‘We went round so many corners.’

‘I’ll show you!’ I meowed at once. Now was the time to show myself. I’d be their Rescue Cat, leading them home safely … as long as I could find the right way myself, of course. But before I could run up to them, there was the sound of a car coming along the road behind us. We hadn’t seen any cars since leaving the cottage. Probably they were all fast asleep at their homes, and I wasn’t sorry, because the road was narrow, with no pavements. You know how aggressive cars can be, wanting the whole road to themselves. This one was purring quite loudly and its eyes were shining very brightly. I jumped back into the bushes, and I saw the girls hiding themselves too. The car roared past us, but as we all stood and watched it continue down the next hill, the light from its big eyes danced off something vast and shiny down in front of us.

‘The sea!’ Grace shouted. ‘We’re heading back towards the coast!’

‘Yeah, but which coast?’ Caroline said. ‘It could be the other side of England for all we know, the distance we’ve walked!’

‘Or it could be the right coast, and we might be just coming into Duncombe. Come on, Caro, let’s get going again. It doesn’t look far.’

So off we trudged. Before long we could hear the crashing of the sea again, and one or two little cottages loomed up out of the darkness.

‘How are we supposed to know whether it’s Duncombe or not?’ Caroline demanded. She sounded fed up, and I didn’t blame her. ‘We didn’t think this through properly, Grace. It’s too dark to see anything, and there’s nobody around to ask.’

‘And I can’t walk any further. I’ve got blisters on both feet now. We’re going to have to stay here till the morning.’

‘What?’ Caroline shrieked. ‘Well, I’m not sleeping on the beach.’

‘There might be a nice dry bit of sand, up against the sea wall,’ Grace said. ‘At least it’s not cold. What else can we do?’

Shining the torch in front of them, they started to walk down a slope towards the sea.

‘No!’ I meowed after them in terror. ‘The sea will get you!’

But they couldn’t hear me because it was crashing so loudly. I have to be honest here. For a minute – just a minute, you understand – I was too scared to follow them. I stood at the top of that slope, looking down at the sea, my tail swishing back and forth for all it was worth. The sea was so big, and I was just one little cat, not much older than little Timmy Kitten over there behind the dustbin. What chance would I have, if it came after me? Then I thought about those two children, all alone in the dark, talking about going to sleep down there. They were braver than me! What a scaredy-cat I was being. But just as I was plucking up my courage to run after them, I heard Caroline calling out:

‘Look! The door of this one’s not locked.’

I crept a little way down the slope to see what they were looking at. There was a row of funny little houses, each of them looking only big enough for a couple of cats to live in. Caroline had pushed the door of one of them open and they were staring inside.

‘There’s nothing in here. I don’t think anyone can be using it. The others have all got padlocks on.’

‘It’s not ours, though, Caro. I think beach huts belong to the council, and people just rent them for their holidays.’

‘I know, but we need somewhere to sleep, don’t we? It’s an emergency. Surely it won’t hurt. There’s nobody around.’

‘But what if someone comes and finds us? We’ll get into trouble. I’m scared. I wish we hadn’t left home now.’

‘So do I, Grace, but it’s no good us just standing here crying about it. Come on, I think we should stay in the hut, nobody’s going to know. If you like, we can take it in turns to stay awake and keep watch.’

‘OK,’ Grace said, sounding doubtful. ‘I do need to take my shoes off for a while. And we could eat some of our biscuits.’

‘Yes, good idea, I’m starving.’