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She raced upstairs, but all the bedroom doors were ajar. She checked the airing cupboard on the landing, just in case, but she wasn’t in there… Or in Sara’s wardrobe, or hers, or Mum and Dad’s. She wasn’t anywhere at all.

“Mum, I don’t know where she can be,” Amber said, bursting back into the kitchen. She was trying very hard not to cry. Mum would only say she was getting in a state about nothing. But this really didn’t feel like nothing. Cleo never missed meals.

Mum put her arm round Amber’s shoulders. “Sit down for a moment, have a drink, and let’s think about this.” She handed Amber some squash and pushed her gently into a chair. “Cleo was around just before lunch when I went into school. And we know she’s been getting more adventurous lately, going over the wall into the front garden. She’s probably just gone further than before. After all, you’ve only been back at school a week. Cleo doesn’t really know what time you come home, does she? And the fact I’m working different times of day probably confuses her, too.”

“I suppose so…”

“I expect she’ll be back in a minute, yowling if we don’t get her food in front of her before the cat flap bangs shut.”

Amber tried to laugh, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

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Cleo stood perched on the pile of old sacks, mewing anxiously. She didn’t understand why the doors had closed so suddenly. All she knew was that now she couldn’t get out. She started to pick her way carefully between the boxes back towards the doors. Perhaps when she got closer she’d find a way to escape. When she pushed on doors in the house, sometimes they opened. Although sometimes they didn’t… She scampered up to the doors and scrabbled at them with her front paws. They were shut tight.

There was a growling noise and then suddenly the van lurched, and Cleo slipped over sideways with a little squeak of fright. She’d only been in a car a few times, when she was brought home from the shelter and for trips to the vet. She’d always travelled in a comfortable basket, padded with a blanket, though. She slid across the floor of the van as it pulled out into the road, meowing frantically. She hadn’t meant forthis to happen at all.

Cleo pressed herself into a small dark space under a storage locker that had been built for tools. It was a tight fit, but it made her feel safer. Nothing could get at her under here. She squashed herself back against the cold metal of the van’s wall and waited.

Eventually the van seemed to slow down, and then it lurched to a stop. The noisy engine was turned off, leaving Cleo’s ears buzzing. There was a crunching, clashing sound, and the doors swung open. Cleo wriggled her nose out of the tiny gap and tried to see what was happening. She could smell the fresh air coming in through the open doors, and she desperately wanted to race for them. But there was so much noise. She darted back into her safe hiding place as a huge box slid past her with a shriek of metal on metal and shivered. What if more of the boxes moved as she ran for the doors? She had to try, though.

Cleo laid her ears back close to her head and crept out. With her tummy pressed against the floor of the van, she edged across to the doors.

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She could see the road outside, and her whiskers twitched with the warm smells of the sunny afternoon. But just as she was getting ready to jump down, the doors clanged shut. She was trapped once more.

Cleo flung herself at the doors with a desperate wail, banging her paws against the hard metal. The doors didn’t budge. She should have run for it when she could! Furious and frightened, she stomped back across the van, the fur all along her spine raised, her tail fluffed up. What was going to happen now? What if she never got out?

Miserably aware of how hungry and thirsty and lonely she felt, Cleo meowed as loudly as she could, hoping that Amber would come, the way she always did.Surely Amber would come and rescue her…

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“Amber, I don’t think she can have been hit by a car,” Mum said gently, as Amber’s dad came into the kitchen and hung his laptop bag over a chair. “We’d have heard. Cleo’s microchipped. If she’d been taken to a vet, they would have called my mobile.”

Amber had searched everywhere she could think of. She’d opened every cupboard in the house, remembering the day when Dad had accidentally shut Cleo in the cupboard under the stairs. And then she’d gone back and checked all the drawers, too. When Sara had got home from school, the sisters had gone down their road calling for her, while Mum had checked the garage and the shed. But Cleo was nowhere to be found. And what made it even worse was that Amber and Sara had found her collar under one of the bushes in front of the house next door. So now even if someone found her, they wouldn’t know the number to call.

“What’s up? Has Cleo disappeared?” Dad asked, giving Amber a hug. “She’s probably just out exploring.”