The Case of the Missing Cat Read online

  “Sorry?” said Mrs Peabody again. “I don’t understand.”

  Lottie wiggled her notebook out of her pocket and wrote SCAT on a blank page.

  “We at SCAT believe that animals do not belong anywhere near children. They certainly should not be in schools,” said Mrs Snoop. “Animals are filthy, vicious creatures that give children germs and allergies.”

  “What is she saying?” Lottie heard Rani whisper to Ava. “And look how can she talk without moving her lips!” It was true. Mrs Snoop’s mouth was perfectly still, even when she was speaking.

  “She’s saying that Lady Lovelypaws is mean and dirty!” explained Ava. “And that she might make us sneeze!”

  From her position on the floor Lottie could see the framed photo of Lady Lovelypaws that Mrs Peabody kept on her desk. In the picture, Lady Lovelypaws’s white fur was glorious and fluffy and her lips were curled into a warm smile. Lady Lovelypaws really could smile; she was a most extraordinary cat. She certainly wasn’t filthy or vicious.

  “Ah, yes,” said Mrs Peabody. “I seem to remember getting a letter from SCAT earlier this term after our student Charlotte Lewis brought her dog, Pip, in for the day.” Mrs Peabody glanced down at Lottie under the chair. “You don’t approve of pets visiting schools, then, Mrs Snoop?”

  “Having a pet visit is bad enough,” said Mrs Snoop. “I’m happy to report that we have nearly put an end to pet school visits throughout this fine city.”

  No more pet visits sounded terrible to Lottie. Every spring, Crabtree School held a Bring Your Pet to School Parade. Would they not be allowed this any more? Lottie’s dog, Pip, would be so disappointed! And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  “To have a cat living in a school is against everything that we at SCAT stand for,” continued Mrs Snoop. “AND it is also against rule four thousand, three hundred and twenty-one of the Official Rules for All Primary Schools Everywhere. The rule clearly says NO ANIMALS.”

  “But we’ve had a cat here at Crabtree School for hundreds of years,” said Mrs Peabody. “And we’ve never had a problem.”

  Mrs Peabody was talking about all the cats that had lived at Crabtree School before Lady Lovelypaws had even been born. But Lottie misunderstood the headmistress.

  “Lady Lovelypaws is A HUNDRED YEARS OLD?” she cried out. Lottie forgot that she was supposed to be hiding, which almost never happened.

  Mrs Snoop was none too pleased to find a child under her chair, although her face of stone didn’t show it.

  “Up at once!” she told Lottie, without changing her expression. “Get up this very minute! Just think of how dirty that floor is if there is a CAT about.”

  “But there isn’t a cat about,” called Zoe from outside the window. “That’s the problem!”

  “No,” Mrs Snoop told them. “That is not a problem at all. Because if I hear that a cat is back on these school grounds, I shall be forced to call the mayor to report the violation of rule four thousand, three hundred and twenty-one and arrange for the removal of the offending feline.”

  “What did she say?” Ava asked Isabel.

  “She said that she is going to take Lady Lovelypaws away if we ever find her!” replied Isabel.

  “You can’t take our cat away,” said Mrs Peabody firmly to Mrs Snoop. “She’s lived here for years, and her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother all lived here before her. I love her, the girls love her—”

  “Lady Lovelypaws looks after us,” Rani told Mrs Snoop. “When you are feeling sad at school, Lady Lovelypaws comes and cuddles you.”

  “Disgusting!” declared Mrs Snoop, looking at Rani in horror. “Cats are horrid animals that do not belong near small children. NO MORE CUDDLING WITH CATS! We must find this vile creature and hand it over to SCAT. ASAP.”

  “What’s ASAP?” Rani asked Zoe. “Is that like SCAT?”

  “It means ‘As Soon As Possible’,” Lottie said, coming to stand by the window as Mrs Snoop marched out of Mrs Peabody’s office. “And it means that we need to find Lady Lovelypaws ASAP, too.”

  “But if we find her, SCAT will take her away!” said Rani, her eyes full of tears. Lady Lovelypaws had been very kind and welcoming when Rani was brand new at Crabtree School. Rani loved her like she was her very own cat.

  Lottie climbed out of the window to give Rani a hug, but the tears still came.

  It was known throughout the world that Mrs Peabody could not bear to see a child cry. Rani’s sobs made huge red hives appear on Mrs Peabody’s face. Smoke swirled from the headmistress’s nose and her knees began to knock together.

  “Just find her,” said Mrs Peabody to the five friends outside her window. “Find her before Mrs Snoop does!”

  Mrs Snoop’s threat to take Lady Lovelypaws away made the search for the Crabtree cat even more important. They had to find Lady Lovelypaws before SCAT did.

  After lunch, two things happened that brought the friends new hope.

  “That’s so very odd,” said a puzzled Mrs Peabody to Lottie in the hallway by the kitchen. “Last night, I’m sure there was some food left in Lady Lovelypaws’s bowl. Now this morning, it’s gone.” Mrs Peabody looked sadly down at the empty cat bowl.

  Lottie knew a clue when she found one. She wrote:

  MISSING CAT FOOD?

  down in her notebook.

  Then, on their way out to the playground, Lottie and her friends found Colonel Crunch by the flowerbeds. The groundskeeper was staring at the ground, and scratching his head.

  “What is it?” said Lottie. She thought about the note she’d seen on Mrs Biro’s desk. “Have you got the nits from someone in Year One, Colonel Crunch?”

  “Certainly not!” barked the Colonel. “It’s just that, I swear I left Lady Lovelypaws’s toy mice on the pavement by the kitchen door yesterday. Then this morning I found them here in the flowers.”

  Mice on the move was definitely a clue.

  Two clues together gave Lottie an idea.

  “This is the biggest bowl of cat food I’ve ever seen!” said Rani. “It could feed Lady Lovelypaws for a week!”

  “I’ve marked how full the bowl is, here,” said Lottie, pointing to a line drawn in black marker on the inside of Lady Lovelypaws’s dish. “So we’ll be able to tell if she eats any.”

  “What if something else eats it?” asked Ava. “Like a fairy or an alien?”

  “Or a squirrel smart enough to use the cat flap,” added Isabel.

  “I’m pretty sure squirrels sleep at night,” replied Lottie. “The clues were all found in the morning. If we leave this bowl out when we go home, we should be able to tell if Lady Lovelypaws comes out after we are gone to eat the food. If she does, it means that she is here in the school somewhere, hiding!”

  “Why would she do that?” asked Zoe.

  No one knew, but the next morning, they discovered proper proof that Lady Lovelypaws was hiding in Crabtree School, and also proof that she was hungry: the food in the bowl was nearly all gone.

  “It could have been a fox,” said Colonel Crunch uneasily. He didn’t like the idea of foxes in his school at night.

  “No,” said Lottie. “It WAS Lady Lovelypaws! Look!” They all gasped as, between two fingers, Lottie held up a real and true clue: a white cat hair.

  “It was next to the bowl,” explained Lottie.

  “It’s her! It’s really her!” shrieked Mrs Peabody, seizing the cat hair. She and Colonel Crunch raced off to begin searching anew.

  “I really don’t understand,” said Zoe, when the friends were alone in the hallway. “Why would Lady Lovelypaws hide from us? Why would she disappear all day and only come out at night?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lottie. “But I know how we can find out.”

  “How?” asked Zoe, Isabel, Ava and Rani, all at the same time. Lottie looked deadly serious. They leaned in close to listen: whatever this plan was, it was going to be big.

  “We are going to SPEND THE NIGHT IN CRABTREE SCHOOL!”

  Convinc
ing Mrs Peabody that they needed to have a sleepover in Crabtree School was easier than Lottie might have thought. The headmistress was desperate to find her deputy-head cat. Every time Mrs Peabody looked out of her office window, Mrs Snoop just happened to be strolling by the school, her stony eyes searching for cat hiding places. In the end Mrs Peabody even agreed to stay over with Lottie and her friends, because of course they would need a grown-up to order the pizzas.

  “Pizzas?” asked Mrs Peabody.

  “Yes,” said Ava. “Even though we’re solving a mystery, it still has to be a proper sleepover! Pizzas, ghost stories, popcorn…”

  “And most importantly, finding Lady Lovelypaws!” Lottie reassured the bewildered headmistress.

  Lottie’s mum took more persuading than Mrs Peabody.

  “But, Lottie,” she said as they walked home from school, “you’ve only ever been to sleepovers at Gran’s! Won’t you be scared?”

  “Of course not!” Lottie told her. “I’ll be too busy to be scared. Besides, Ava and Isabel and Zoe and Rani will be with me. And Mrs Peabody.”

  “A sleepover at school?” Lottie’s mum said. “Whoever heard of a sleepover at school?” They stopped for a minute to let Pip catch up. Pip was their dog, and he was nearly one thousand years old in dog years.

  “Can I have a sleepover at school, too?” asked Lola, Lottie’s little sister.

  “Reception girls are too little to have sleepovers,” Lottie told her. “You’d be crying for Mummy even before tea! Besides, Mrs Peabody gave special permission just for me and my friends.” That last bit was true; for though Mrs Peabody loved each and every Crabtree girl, there was a special place in her heart for Lottie, Ava, Zoe, Isabel and Rani. The friends had been through all sorts of adventures together, and the headmistress knew that if anyone could save the day, they could.

  Lottie and her family started for home again, with Pip trudging along behind them. “Lottie, Dad and I could not be popping out to get you in the middle of the night,” Lottie’s mum said sternly. “Where would you sleep, anyway?”

  “We have already made a plan,” said Lottie excitedly. “We are going to set up a tent in the front hall!”

  Missing a chance to spend the night in a tent was too much for Lola. “That’s not fair!!!” she said. “You’re mean, Lottie! I’m big enough for a sleepover! I’m almost five!” Lola started to cry. She refused to walk any further, and Pip took the opportunity to lie down on the pavement. He began to snore as Lola howled.

  Whilst her mum got crosser and crosser, Lottie resorted to begging. “Please, Mummy, please,” she said. “A trillion times please? Googolplex pleases?” Googolplex was the largest number ever; Zoe was always going on about it. (Probably right now Zoe was saying googolplex pleases to her mummy too.)

  Whether it was the googolplex pleases or the fact that Lottie’s mum wanted to get home before midnight, she finally gave in and said that Lottie could go.

  “I’m still worried you’ll change your mind in the middle of the night,” Lottie’s mum said. “Maybe one of us should go with you? The trouble is, Dad’s back is hurting and I don’t really fancy sleeping on the floor. Hmmm. Maybe Lola could actually—”

  Lottie and her mum both looked down at Lola, who was rolling about on the ground. She was holding her breath because she hadn’t got her way, and she was turning blue. Taking Lola on the sleepover was out of the question.

  Then a snore from her feet gave Lottie an idea. “I’ll take Pip!” she said. “Pip can help us find Lady Lovelypaws!”

  Lottie knelt down on the pavement, lifted up one of Pip’s floppy ears and spoke softly to him. “Pip, do you want to come on a sleepover with me? We can tell ghost stories and look for Lady Lovelypaws?”

  Pip opened one eye and looked at Lottie. Lottie watched as his tail moved one tiny centimetre to the left, and then one tiny centimetre to the right.

  Pip had agreed to attend the sleepover.

  After a minute the dog’s heavy eyelid drooped closed again. He began to snore even more loudly than before.

  “Well,” said Lottie’s mum, “he’ll be very good at the sleeping bit!”

  Everyone knows that planning for a sleepover is almost as much fun as actually going to one. Lottie and her friends couldn’t have the sleepover on a school night, so they had to wait two whole days for it to be Friday. In the meantime, Lottie tried to carry on with her normal activities. At home, she spied on the neighbours like she always did, and wrote down what her parents watched on television at night, who they spoke to on the phone and what they ate for breakfast. At school, Lottie continued her tally of Miss Moody’s sweeties. She played loads of rounds of Not Being Spotted, and she found out Year Three’s homework before Miss Moody even assigned it. Lottie also kept count of how many times she saw Mrs Snoop walking by Crabtree School. That number was getting worryingly high.

  Mostly though, Lottie planned for the sleepover. Her notebook was filled with pages and pages of suggested sleepover plans, lists of things she wanted to bring with her, and even a diagram of exactly how they should sleep so that they would all fit in the tent.

  What was truly exciting was that all of the sleepover plans had to be kept secret. Mrs Peabody had agreed to let Ava, Zoe, Rani, Isabel and Lottie spend the night at Crabtree School, but she couldn’t very well invite the rest of the school to join them. A sleepover of that size would be a nightmare to organize. Also, if they were going to coax Lady Lovelypaws to come out of hiding, they couldn’t have too many people around. But they didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or have any more tantrums like Lola’s, so they had to keep their plans to themselves. This meant whispering.

  “We have to tell ghost stories,” whispered Ava during PE on the Thursday. “Every sleepover has ghost stories.” Ava and Zoe had already had three sleepovers and there had been ghost stories at every one.

  “Not the really scary ones!” whispered Zoe. Thanks to Ava’s crazy imagination, Zoe had to check inside her cupboard and under her bed every night before she went to sleep.

  During break time on Thursday afternoon, Rani whispered to them about the midnight feasts her older brothers had when they went to sleepovers. “When it gets very dark and very late,” Rani looked round to make sure no one else was listening, “we have to go to the kitchen and sneak loads of food. Especially sweeties and cakes.”

  Isabel thought that they would have to have a midnight tooth-brushing session, too. She didn’t want their teeth turning black and falling out, like Miss Moody’s were going to.

  After lunch on Friday, Isabel and Lottie sat in the tree house writing up the final sleepover plan whilst the other three stayed below, chasing away anyone who came near the ladder.

  When they were finished with the final, official sleepover plan, it looked like this:

  Miss Moody kindly made photocopies of the schedule for each of the five friends, for the Year Three teacher was in on the sleepover plan too. She had even agreed to stay the night to give Mrs Peabody some grown-up company.

  It was a very strange thing to arrive at school at teatime. Lottie felt nervous as she tugged at Pip’s lead.

  “My goodness, Lottie, that is a big bag for just one night!” said Mrs Peabody, as she opened the front door. With her dad’s help, Lottie wheeled her giant suitcase through the hallway as Pip trudged along behind her.

  “Is Pip staying?” asked Mrs Peabody. “Won’t he chase Lady Lovelypaws away?”

  Mrs Peabody, Lottie and Lottie’s dad all stared at Pip. The old dog had stopped under the giant statue of Lady Hawthorne. Pip looked to one side of the hallway, then to the other. He sniffed the air. He lay down, rolled over on to his back and began to snore.

  “Pip doesn’t do much chasing,” Lottie’s dad explained. “Mostly he does sleeping. We thought he might keep you all company.”

  “Ah yes, of course,” said Mrs Peabody. “But does he like cats?”

  “Of course he does. And Pip is a dog detective, aren’t you, Pip?” said
Lottie, stroking his head. “Pip always looks like he is sleeping,” Lottie told Mrs Peabody. “So you forget that he is there. But secretly, he’s watching everything. He has come to help us find Lady Lovelypaws!”

  The dog detective did not move when Lottie’s dad said goodbye and goodnight, nor did he open his eyes when, one by one, the other slumber party guests arrived.

  When all the parents had finished their “be good!” speeches and were gone, Lottie looked around the big front hallway for the best place to set up the tent.

  “Here!” she said, pointing right next to the statue of Lady Hawthorne. “We’ll put the tent here, facing the front door.” Lottie opened her ginormous suitcase. She took out a huge tent and loads of tent poles.

  The friends had played with the tent so many times in Lottie’s garden that they put it up in seconds. Mrs Peabody watched in amazement as each girl took out a sleeping bag and began unrolling it inside the expertly assembled tent.

  “I hope you don’t mind, girls,” the headmistress said, “but Miss Moody and I are going to sleep in my office. I’ve never been very fond of tents – and I must tell you that I prefer cats to dogs,” she added nervously, watching Lottie unpack Pip’s dog bed and put it next to her sleeping bag.

  Mrs Peabody went to find Miss Moody whilst the preparations continued. Isabel reached into her flowery overnight bag and pulled out a big quilt, which she spread out on the floor in front of the tent. Then she took out some bunting and began to hang it around their campsite. She had also made a sign for the side of the tent that read DETECTIVES SLEEPING on one side and DETECTIVES AWAKE on the other.

  Ava unpacked a pile of books and a whole load of dolls from her purple rucksack and laid them out on the quilt. She had brought five dolls, one for each of them, and pyjamas and a change of clothes for each doll. The dolls even had their own little tent, with sleeping bags and tiny pillows.