Free Tigger by Susanne Haywood

us.
They
noticed my open door straight away. Dad examined my work with expert appreciation, while Mum clapped her hands and screamed in delight at all the dead mice and moles I had lined up for her on the doormat. I purred at her and told her it was nothing. Then I helped Dad put the door back in its frame. I think he regretted locking it in the first place, because it was quite a fiddly job, especially without Piglet’s assistance from outside. While we did that, Mum changed the sheets on the big bed and generally tidied up our bedroom. It was good to have them back, and best of all Mum said they weren’t going to leave me alone again for a long, long time.

18
    WE HAVE A SLEEPOVER AND I JOIN THE TEDDY BEARS’ PICNIC
    Caroline’s best friend came over for a sleepover; they were both very excited. The three of us went up to Caroline’s room to put up the spare bed. Then I sat on it and watched the girls give each other fancy hairstyles. They piled each other’s hair up high in various ways to see how many pins and ties they could fit on their heads. The pins looked sharp and nasty, and I didn’t like the look of the ties either. They had a tendency to shoot off from the girls’ fingers like lethal projectiles, and I kept my distance until they had used them all up. Then they started painting each other’s faces with little brushes and powder puffs. I checked all the different paints and powders with my paws and made pretty, multicoloured paw print patterns on Caroline’s desk and on the carpet. Soon the room was full of pink and blue powder that made me sneeze. The girls looked a bit scary once they had applied lots of bright blue around their eyes, thick, black lines to their eyebrows and poisonous shades of red to their lips. When they approached me with a brush and one of the powder puffs, I retreated to the safety of the kitchen, where Mum was preparing dinner.
    After dinner, we went back upstairs again to listen to music and to talk. I listened to the music while the girls talked. Emily and Robin weren’t allowed in. When Mum came to say it was time to go to sleep, the talking changed to whispering, but it didn’t stop. I nodded off at the foot of Caroline’s bed to the sound of whispers and giggles.
    I woke up in the middle of the night. The girls were just getting out of bed. I had a quick stretch before joining them. We crept silently past Mum and Dad’s bedroom door, down the stairs and into the kitchen. The girls opened fridge and pantry and prepared a midnight feast on the kitchen table. The spread was magnificent: we had cheese, ham, crackers, biscuits and a whole giant bar of chocolate between us. The chocolate was delicious. I had never tasted any – Mum believes in healthy snacks for cats. Now I wished I’d eaten some of the chocolate eggs and bunnies at Easter.
    When we had had enough, we went outside into the dark, silent garden. A full moon bathed lawn and trees in a silvery light. The bushes all around the lawn gave off a heady scent; their white blossoms looked like brilliant stars fallen from the sky. The air was warm and still. Somewhere in the forest an owl was hooting. The girls got bikes out of the garage and raced them up and down the driveway and round and round the house. Then they bounced on the trampoline. I expected Mum and Dad to appear on their balcony at any moment, but they never heard us, so I did a bit of hunting and caught another bat. There were hundreds of them flying around us. The big, yellow moon had set and dawn was just breaking when we finally crept back into the house and upstairs into our beds. This time the whispering and giggling stopped quite soon, and the three of us slept soundly.
    The sun was high in the sky and the rest of the family looked as though they had been out and about for hours when we finally crawled downstairs. Mum was working in the vegetable garden, talking encouragingly to the lettuces, while