The Secret Cat Read online

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

  1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

  The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Text © Sarah Lean 2016

  Illustrations © Anna Currey 2016

  Cover illustration © Simon Mendes

  Sarah Lean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

  Anna Currey asserts the moral right to be identified as the illustrator of the work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008165666

  Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008165727

  Version: 2016-04-08

  To Fallon, one of the

  bravest I ever met

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1: Tiger’s Bedroom

  Chapter 2: An Extra Guest

  Chapter 3: What’s That Strange Noise?

  Chapter 4: Operation Wartie

  Chapter 5: Operation Cat

  Chapter 6: Mud and Us

  Chapter 7: The Staring Oat

  Chapter 8: Do You Love Warthogs Yet?

  Keep Reading

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Lean

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Tiger Days didn’t know anyone who loved tigers as much as she did.

  She wore tiger pyjamas, socks and slippers, and spent a lot of time in her bedroom reading about tigers and drawing tiger pictures. Her parents would often suggest bike rides and trips to the swimming pool on Saturday afternoons, but Tiger would much rather be in her bedroom doing tiger things.

  One Saturday afternoon, her parents appeared at her door.

  “You’ll never guess who that was on the phone …” said Mum.

  “Hmmmm?” said Tiger, not really listening.

  Dad rolled his eyes as Tiger’s nose stayed firmly buried in her wildlife book. “It was May Days!” he said.

  Tiger looked up, surprised. May Days was her grandmother and had been living in Africa on a wildlife reserve since Tiger was a baby. Whenever May Days phoned, Tiger asked when she was coming to visit, but May Days said it was hard to know because the giraffes or rhinos always needed her more. This time, May Days had phoned with wonderful news. She had finally come back to England and bought a place called Willowgate House.

  “She wants you to go and stay,” said Dad. “You can have your first adventure together at the new house.”

  Tiger wrinkled her nose. She was sometimes nervous about doing new things and the idea of a real-life adventure with May Days was a little scary. She had a feeling May Days wasn’t going to be like everyone else’s grandmother.

  “Won’t you be worried about me?” she asked her parents.

  “While you’re with May Days? Not even for a second,” said Mum, although it was obvious that somebody was worried.

  But Tiger put on a brave smile for her parents. An adventure with May Days would be great, wouldn’t it?

  “Are you sure this is the right house?” said Tiger.

  She stood close to her dad by the gate, beneath a large drooping willow tree.

  Willowgate House was unexpectedly huge, and it stood at the end of a long driveway. It had wide windows and tall chimney pots, and a conservatory that leaned slightly to the left.

  Tiger tilted her head to the side to see if it looked any straighter. But it didn’t. The lopsided building made her feel wobbly.

  Tiger waited on the doorstep behind Dad while he pulled the bell on the wall beside the door.

  The next surprise was May Days.

  Weren’t grandmothers supposed to be old and grey and worn?

  Instead she had curls that were wild and alive. Her sleeves were pushed up, as if she’d done a hard day’s work, and she bounded out like the kind of person who didn’t sit down very often.

  “You’re here, at last!” May Days beamed, throwing her arms around Dad first, and then around Tiger. Tiger peered behind her grandmother at the bare floorboards and curved staircase in the hall. It looked as if nobody had lived here for a very long time.

  “You were no bigger than a koala the last time I saw you,” May Days said, holding Tiger by the cheeks.Tiger blinked in surprise, and her tummy did a flip.

  “You’ve got a big house,” said Tiger, not sure what else to say.

  “Too big for one person,” May Days said, chuckling like a barrel full of chickens. “Come in! Come in!”

  Mr Days had also not seen his mother for a very long time and he had lots to tell her over gallons of tea. They laughed and talked while Tiger sat on a chair, still clinging to her tiger-striped suitcase. The faded lino flooring curled up in the corners of the kitchen, and there wasn’t a lot more to see than an old cooking range and a long pine table that had worn into a curve in the middle. Where were the proper kitchen cupboards and worktops? Tiger hoped that the rest of the house had been decorated.

  “Thank you for bringing me my granddaughter,” May Days said, squeezing Mr Days’ cheeks when he had to leave.

  Tiger clung to her dad for an extra-long hug.

  “Are you sure you don’t need me at home?” Tiger whispered.

  “We’ll miss you terribly,” said Mr Days, “but you and your grandmother have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “It’s just you and me,” said May Days, after they’d waved the car into the distance.

  “Shall I put my things in my room?” said Tiger.

  “Your room?” said May Days, smiling. “You’d better come with me.”

  May Days showed Tiger the outside bathroom first. Although the walls and floor were bare brick, there were soft towels, a cup for toothbrushes, a mirror and a light bulb with a long pull cord, all sparkling clean. Tiger tried to smile brightly.

  “I’m afraid we haven’t got a shower or bath yet,” said May Days. “But I have spare flannels if you need one.”

  She turned Tiger’s shoulders to face the back garden. “We’re going to share a room.”

  Tiger would have her own room one day, May Days assured her, but all of Willowgate needed a lot of work first. For now, they were going to be staying in the garden in an old green tent.

  A tent? thought Tiger, her eyes wide. Outside?!

  Tiger sat on one side of the long kitchen table and drew a tiger. She kept her pens tidy and was colouring carefully.

  “Do you know what my favourite animal is?” Tiger asked May Days.

  “A tapir?” May Days smiled.

  “No.” Tiger scratched her head. “Even though I don’t know what that is.”

  Tiger stretched her arms as wide as they would go. “It’s bigger than my arms, and about this high.” She measured a level beyond her head and thought for a moment.

  “Maybe a bit bigger or smaller, I can’t tell when I’m sitting down. And it’s black and white—”

  “A panda?” said May Days.

  “And orange.”

  “An o
rang-utan?” May Days chuckled. “An orange bear?”

  Tiger squinted, because she wasn’t sure if May Days was joking, and held up the picture she was drawing for her.

  “Oh!” said May Days, as if she’d suddenly remembered. “I know what it is! Did you know that I adore tigers too?”

  Just then a horn honked loudly outside and made Tiger jump and colour over the lines.

  “I expect that’s my other guest,” said May Days, which made Tiger’s tummy turn higgledy-piggledy again. Nobody had said anything to Tiger about anyone else coming to stay.

  A van had pulled up beside the house, and a young man wearing a green boilersuit and dark sunglasses jumped out of the driver’s seat.

  “You must be Tiger,” said the man. “I’ve heard how ferocious you are.” He grinned, but Tiger wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “This is Dennis,” said May Days. “He’s escaped from the zoo, and cheeky as a monkey.”

  But it wasn’t Dennis that would be staying at Willowgate.

  They all went around to the back of the van and Tiger’s mouth fell open. There, inside, huddled in a cage in the straw, was a snout-nosed, tippy-toed, bristled, sorry-looking, saggy-skinned …

  “What is it?” said Tiger, pulling a confused face.

  “A warthog,” said Dennis. “Known to us zookeepers as a wartie. Don’t you just love her?”

  The warthog was knobbly and brown and Tiger did not like the look of it at all.

  The warthog was the other guest.

  Being so young and small, the warthog would be kept in a pen in the kitchen and was going to need a lot of attention. Dennis clipped four meshed panels together to make the sides of a pen, and bundled in some straw. The little warthog sat in the middle and shook. From the other side of the room Tiger shuddered and sat back at the kitchen table, while May Days got the warthog out of the pen, put a towel on her lap and fed the wrinkly little creature from a baby’s bottle. The warthog guzzled and milk dribbled down its chin.

  “Would you like to feed her?” asked May Days, but Tiger was busy drawing again.

  “Would you like to hold her?” asked May Days, but Tiger had colouring to finish.

  “Would you like to give her a name?” said May Days, and Tiger looked up and said she’d think about that.

  Tiger thought of Stinky and Saggy, Snorty and Pooper, but none of these names seemed to quite sum up the knockedy-kneed creature. She’d have to think some more, but it was hard to find a name for something she didn’t really care for.

  Dennis sat at the table beside Tiger and told her what he did at the zoo. It was mostly feeding and cleaning poop by the sound of it, but he did look very interesting in his dark glasses, with his wide smile, and Tiger thought she might prefer it if Dennis was staying instead of the warthog.

  “Isn’t Willowgate amazing?” asked Dennis.

  Tiger put the lid back on her orange colouring pen. She’d finished a tiger picture for Dennis too, but neither of the drawings made her feel happy like she did in her room at home.

  Tiger thought about home, her family, her soft bed, her striped blanket and the sign on her bedroom door with her name on it.

  “I’ve never been to a house where a warthog lived in the kitchen. And I’ve never camped in a tent,” Tiger said, quietly.

  “I don’t suppose it feels like home to the wartie yet either,” said Dennis. The wartie was back in the pen, her head drooping.

  “What was her old home like?” said Tiger.

  “Empty,” he said. “She’s an orphan.”

  Tiger leaned over the table. The warthog looked up. Tiny dark eyes glistened and blinked at Tiger. That’s why she looked so sad. She had no family anywhere at all.

  “Hello,” said Tiger to the wartie, even though they had already met.

  “Are you missing home?” asked May Days that night when Tiger was zipped up in her sleeping bag on her camp bed.

  “Yes,” she said. “Do you miss Africa?”

  “Terribly,” May Days said. “Makes me feel all out of sorts.”

  Tiger whispered, “I know what you mean. Being here feels a bit unusual and skew-whiff in your tummy.”

  “We’ll be fine,” said May Days, and they held hands across the tent. “Have you thought of a name for the wartie yet?”

  Tiger nodded. “Monday,” she said.

  “I like it,” said May Days. “What made you think of that?”

  “Because Monday is the beginning of the week, and being here is the beginning of something new,” said Tiger, softly. “And as we are all Days I thought she might like to be part of our family too.”

  Tiger was used to the bustling and rumbling of cars, buses and trains in the town where she lived, but there were more unusual sounds at Willowgate.

  “What’s that screeching?” Tiger asked.

  “A barn owl,” said May Days.

  “What’s that plopping?” Tiger asked.

  “Squirrels dropping pine cones on the roof.”

  “What’s that racket?” Tiger said in the kitchen one day.

  “Oh dear,” May Days said as the ceiling shuddered and the pipes grumbled. “The plumbing’s up the spout.”

  The perilous plumbing filled the old house with a hullabaloo whenever a tap was turned on, so May Days called a plumber. When he arrived, May Days helped him to pull up floorboards to fix the plunking pipes.

  “What is that other strange noise?” Tiger said, hearing a yowling sound. “Is there another creature in the house?”

  Monday the wartie stood up in her pen and pricked her ears.

  Tiger didn’t want to investigate the strange noise by herself, so instead went outside, sat in the tent and put a blanket over her head.

  “Hello!” a voice said from outside the tent.

  “Who’s there?” Tiger said.

  “Tom Henry Thomas,” replied the voice. “Who are you?”

  “Tiger,” she said, peeping outside the tent. But she couldn’t see anyone … Hearing a gasp, she quickly added, “I’m not an actual tiger, it’s just my name. Where are you?”

  “In the hedge,” said the voice and a boy poked his head out of the leaves and crawled forward on his hands and knees. “Could the noise be the sound of a despicabor?” he said.

  Tiger giggled. “What’s a despicabor?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “I made it up. Grumps says I’ve got a livid imagination. I’m staying at his house next door.”

  “I’d like to know what’s making the noise, but I don’t want to find out by myself. It might just be a mouse, but it might be something scarier …” Tiger said.

  “I’ll come with you!” Tom said enthusiastically. “Wait for me. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Tom crawled back through the hedge and returned a minute later with a wire cage the size of a small shoe box and a piece of cheese, just in case it was a mouse.

  Tom’s grandfather, Grumps, had mice in his woodshed. He’d catch them in the trap and let them go in the fields.

  Tom and Tiger went around to the front of Willowgate House, through the hall, and slowly crept up the stairs. They couldn’t hear the yowling sound any more, but it had seemed like it was coming from upstairs.

  The floorboards along the hallway groaned like old bones.

  “It didn’t sound like that, did it?” Tom said.

  “Not really,” said Tiger.

  They pushed the first door open and peered into the bathroom. Orange rust crackled the bottom of the bath and fungus grew on the wall.

  “Zombie mushrooms,” Tom whispered in a dreaded, doomed kind of way.

  “I don’t think mushrooms can make noises,” Tiger said.

  They turned a bath tap each. The taps coughed and spluttered, the pipes clanged. Tiger shook her head. It wasn’t any of those sounds either.

  Tiger and Tom crept close to the wall and crouched behind the last door in the hallway. They closed one eye each and peeped through the gap between the door and the wall. They couldn
’t see anything, but it seemed just as good a place as any to set the trap.

  With a hunk of cheese inside and the trapdoor caught open on a spring, they crept away and waited halfway down the stairs.

  “We actually had a school pet mouse,” whispered Tiger.

  “Did you look after it?” said Tom. “No, I’m the pencil monitor,” Tiger said. “I keep all the pencils sharp, which is tricky when some people chew both ends.”

  Snap! The trap clapped shut and Tiger followed Tom, holding on to the edge of his T-shirt.

  There was nothing in the trap except the cheese, but the door of the cupboard in the hallway was now open a little.

  Something moved inside.

  Tom crept over and looked back at Tiger. She gulped and said, “One, two, three!”

  Tom flung open the door.

  “Yeeowwrrreeeeow!” said the creature inside, giving them a fright. Tiger jumped and Tom slammed the cupboard shut. They galloped down the stairs and raced to the kitchen.

  “What was it?!” said Tiger.

  Tom skidded to a halt. “I didn’t see, but could it be one of those?” he said, pointing at the bristly creature jumping up at the pen.

  “That’s Monday, our wartie, but we’ve only got one,” Tiger said.

  Tom was still pointing. “What did you say it was?”

  “A warthog,” said Tiger. “Listen!”

  There was the strange yowling noise again, this time sounding as though it was coming from the wall … Monday stood still, her ears up, her tail stiff like a flag. Her nose twitched towards a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, directly below the one upstairs.

  Tiger and Tom tiptoed over. They counted to three again and then threw open the door. Inside was empty, but there was a hole halfway up the wall, with ropes hanging straight down. Tom pulled the rope a little.

  “It’s a lift to the upstairs cupboard,” said Tiger, as the shelf lowered.

  “A very small lift,” said Tom, wondering what it was for. “But if the mystery creature is inside …”

  “It will come down with it!” finished Tiger, her eyes popping wide.