Kitten Wars Read Free Page B

floor, looking very
dolefully and, if I wasn’t mistaken, accusingly, at me. Then my eyes were drawn to the kitchen table. The scene didn’t make sense at first. There were little scatterings of some white
grainy stuff on the table and a trail of wet pawprints going in and out of it. The only other items on the table were two dirty mugs, which Dad and I had left there before going out, and the sugar
bowl. It was the sugar bowl that was puzzling me the most. I was certain it had been full of sugar earlier because I remembered Dad heaping a spoon and stirring it into his coffee that morning, but
now it seemed to be full to overflowing with a strange yellowish liquid that, in my confused state, I thought might possibly have been washing-up liquid.
    ‘Dad? Why did you leave the sugar bowl to soak on the table?’ I called.
    Dad entered the kitchen. ‘I didn’t.’
    ‘Watch it!’ I called as he nearly stepped on Jaffa, who was skulking near a chair leg.
    Dad stopped abruptly in his tracks and teetered backwards, peering round the bags of cat litter as he looked out for the kitten. He couldn’t sustain this awkward pose and ended up losing
his balance, dropping the sacks and causing Jaffa to rocket across to the other side of the kitchen like a mad March hare to try and hide under one of the fitted cupboards. She got stuck, her
little bottom up in the air as she tried to decide whether to squash herself further under or pull herself back out. It reminded me of the Winnie-the-Pooh story I used to love when I was younger,
where Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s doorway. I giggled while Dad scrabbled around to retrieve the bags.
    ‘Thanks for helping,’ he said sarcastically. Then: ‘What was that you said about the sugar bowl?’
    ‘Oh yes – it’s just a bit strange. Look at it,’ I said, gesturing vaguely at the bowl while keeping my eyes fixed on my cute little cat, wiggling her bottom in the
air.
    ‘OH NO!’
    I whirled round. Dad was leaning over the table, holding the sugar bowl out at arm’s length, his face contorted with repulsion. ‘That is DISGUSTING!’ he cried, carefully
lowering the bowl back down again.
    ‘What?’ I said.
    ‘That!’ Dad said, jabbing his finger at the bowl.
    ‘I don’t get it,’ I said, shaking my head.
    Dad shuddered. ‘It looks like a case of desperate times calling for extremely desperate measures.’ I looked at him blankly. ‘Let’s just say that your new pet
couldn’t
quite
wait for us to come back from the shops with a litter tray,’ Dad said with a heavy note of irony.
    ‘Wha—? Aargh!’ I backed away from the table.
    ‘Cat pee,’ Dad said, to emphasize a point already very well made in my opinion.
    ‘OK!’ I said irritably. ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’
    ‘Well now, let me see . . .’ Dad smiled and made a big show of having a think, scratching his head and rubbing his chin, taking his glasses off and giving them a good clean.
    ‘All right – I get it. She’s my pet, so I have to clean the cat pee out of the sugar bowl.’ Even as I said the words I realized how utterly bizarre they sounded. Who had
ever heard of a cat using a sugar bowl as a loo? I gingerly picked up the offending article and then held it underneath as well with my other hand. There was no way I wanted to spill a drop of the
stuff. I carefully moved away from the table and started a slow journey to the sink.
    Behind me, Dad let out a splutter of laughter.
    I whirled round in surprise and succeeded in sloshing a wave of sugared pee solution down the front of my best hoody. ‘AARGH! What did you have to do that for?’ I yelled.
    Dad was bright red in the face, gasping and wheezing with laughter now. He was pointing at me and then at Jaffa who was still squirming under the cupboard, and squeaked something which sounded
like, ‘Tiny bottom.’
    I was not amused.
    I put the sugar bowl in the sink and ran out of the room to change my top and wash my hands.
    When I