by Anna Wilson
When the final vote came in, it looked as though the nation had agreed with Simon and Danni – Jaffa had won!
‘Well, isn’t that marvellous, Berry?’ Fiona trilled.
‘BERTIE!’ we chorused.
Fiona flushed. ‘That’s what I said!’
Everyone laughed.
‘What you laughin’ at?’ Jaffa mewed.
‘Shh,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
Jazz was giving me funny looks. ‘Are you talking to your cat again, Bertie?’ she asked, scooping up a handful of tortilla chips with her ultra-long purple talons and stuffing them into her mouth.
‘Tell meeee!’ Jaffa mewed.
‘It seems, little Jaffa Cake, that not only are you the cutest kitten in the whole world, but you are also the cleverest,’ I told her.
‘Yeah,’ said Fergus, ruffling her head. ‘And Bertie’s not the only one to think so. The whole country agreed.’
Fiona stared into her drink and muttered, ‘I am sorry for encouraging her to come over to ours.’ She looked as though she was suffering from an attack of acute indigestion. I had the feeling ‘sorry’ was not a word that was often heard coming from Fiona Meerley’s mouth.
‘That’s OK,’ I said with feeling. ‘If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t all be here tonight.’
‘No, it was wrong of me, Bertie.’ (She got my name right!) ‘I promise I won’t do it again. I can see how much she means to you and how upset you were about her running away. But the fact is, Bertie,’ she paused and looked at Jaffa soppily, ‘it is very difficult not to fall for her charms.’
Fergus leaned in and said quietly, ‘A bit like her owner, you could say.’
I looked awkwardly away, but not before I’d caught Jazz raising an eyebrow at me in a woooo-what-about-that! gesture that made me cringe with embarrassment.
Luckily Jaffa broke the tension by miaowing so loudly, everyone laughed.
‘I think Jaffa agrees with you, Fiona!’ Dad said.
‘Yeah, Bertie. You gotta admit it, everyone is well and truly smitten with me!’
I had to laugh too and, cradling my kitten in my arms, I cooed, ‘You never spoke a truer word, little Jaffsie.’
A Message from the Author
If you’ve read Kitten Kaboodle you will already know about my pets: a gorgeous black Labrador called Kenna and two equally cute black cats called Inky and Jet. All three have provided inspiration for my writing over the years, but it was Jet alone who was the basis for Kitten Smitten and here’s how . . .
Inky and Jet are sisters. They were tiny little kittens when they came to live with us; only twelve weeks old. Their mother was a stray who was taken in by the RSPCA, and when she had her litter the kittens were taken to stay with a lady who looked after hundreds of cats until they found permanent homes. She was completely crazy about moggies: she had about twenty of her own who lived in her house with her, and her garden was teeming with foster cats.
I took my children to look at the new litter of kittens, thinking we would bring home only one with us. But when we peeked into the cardboard box the two sisters were living in and saw their minuscule, rather worried soft black faces looking up at us, we just couldn’t bear to choose between them.
When Inky and Jet were small, they played together all the time and when they weren’t playing, they slept curled around each other Sometimes they were snuggled so tightly together that you couldn’t tell where one cat ended and the other cat began! People who came to the house could not tell the sisters apart. But we soon noticed differences in the way they behaved: they each have their own distinctive walk and purr! Now I can tell even from a distance which cat is which: their personalities are so dissimilar.
Inky is fatter – she was always the greedier cat – and she is very lazy. She likes nothing better than to sleep all day. She only gets up for meals! She reminds me of a black version of Garfield, the ever-hungry cartoon cat.
Jet has softer fur than Inky, she has round, kind eyes, and likes going out and about so that she can hunt. She is a fantastic mouser, which is good news for us, as living in the country we have far too many mice scuttling around our house and garden.
Jet’s hunting habits sometimes take her quite far afield, and it was while I was writing Kitten Kaboodle that Jet took it into her head to go further than she’d ever gone before.We were used to her going off for a couple of days at a time, so we didn’t always panic when she wasn’t home at teatime. But one day we realized we hadn’t seen her for a whole week and began asking around to see if anyone had spotted her. That was when a neighbour told us that Jet had been taken in by a family who lived up the hill from us. The cheeky little cat had been coming in through their cat flap and mewing, so they had assumed she was hungry! Once these people found out Jet was our cat, they brought her back to us, but unfortunately, by this time, Jet had grown rather attached to her new-found home and she kept going back there. It seemed as though she had decided she did not want to live with us any more . . .
Of course, we were heartbroken.Who wouldn’t be? We tried everything to tempt her back: special treats, plates of tuna, lots of cuddles and kisses whenever we saw her. We even put her in her own room to keep her away from Kenna and Inky, because we thought maybe the reason she preferred the other family was because she didn’t have to share anything with any other animals in that house.
This went on for months and months until we had almost completely given up hope of ever persuading her to come back to us. And then one day the other family decided to move away. Jet was suddenly left with an empty house to visit – no more cuddles or treats. So she had to make a decision: to wait and see if anyone else came to live in that house, or to come back to us. Thankfully she made the right decision, and she’s been back with us for nearly a year now.
Kitten Smitten is only loosely based on what happened with Jet. The family she was ‘adopted’ by were nothing like the Meerleys, for starters! And of course Jet is black, not ginger, and she’s a fully grown adult cat, not a kitten. Oh, and she can’t talk . . .
‘That’s what you think, Anna!’
Wha— ?! Who said that?
Do you have pets that do crazy things or are just plain cute? If so I’d love to hear from you! Write to me at:
Anna Wilson
c/o Macmillan Children’s Books
20 New Wharf Road
London N1 9RR
United Kingdom
Love
Anna
xxx
PS Remember to enclose your full name and address (not email addresses!) so that I know where to write back to! And please do not send me any photos unless you are happy for me to keep them.
A Message from the Illustrator
If you love drawing, I hope that one day you’ll be as lucky as I am, and get to illustrate a book for Anna Wilson. Here’s what she wrote when she saw my little kitten drawings: ‘Oh oh oh ooooohhhhhh! They are GORGEOOOOOOUUUUUUS!’ and ‘Scrum-diddly-umptious!’ I think Anna Wilson is actually Mary Poppins in disguise.
Moira Munro