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“No, we haven’t seen the mum at all. Do you think she won’t come back while we’re here? No, I suppose not, if she’s a stray… So, what do you think, should we leave them?”

“Oh no…” Lily whispered to herself, looking over at the tiny kittens. The little white one had ended up underneath the other two now. Lily longed to pick him up – surely it couldn’t be good for him to be squashed like that?

She breathed a sigh of relief as he wriggled out and accidentally nudged Hugo’s nose with his own. Hugo stepped back, surprised, and Lily giggled.

“You like them, don’t you?” Lily whispered to Hugo as he rested his chin on the arm of the sofa, gazing at the kittens.

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Lily turned back to Dad. Surely the shelter couldn’t be telling him to leave the kittens here? She couldn’t bear to think of them all on their own.

“I’m really not sure how long she’s been away, that’s the thing,” her dad was saying. “Amberdale Woods, that’s right. Mmmm. Yes, we could do that. Will there be someone answering the phone later this evening? OK, I’ll get back to you then. Thanks.”

“What did they say?” Lily burst out.

“They think the mum’s probably right here somewhere, hiding out and watching till we go away.”

“Oh…” Lily looked around the woods, golden and silent in the sunlight. “But what if she’s not? What if she doesn’t come back?”

“Well, that’s the problem. If she doesn’t, I’m afraid the kittens won’t last long without her. They’re just too little to survive by themselves. They’ll have to be taken to the shelter for hand-rearing – that means someone feeding them with a special bottle. So, we need to see what happens.”

Dad made an apologetic face at Lily.“I said we’d keep an eye on them and watch out for their mum, Lils. It might be a bit boring. The lady from the shelter said we needed to give the mother cat a few hours before we do anything like moving the kittens.”

“I don’t mind! I don’t want to leave them – even Hugo doesn’t, look at him.”

Dad nodded.“He’s really fascinated, isn’t he? It’s funny when you think how he is about Pixie. Maybe he doesn’t understand that these are cats, too…” He smiled at Lily. “It’s OK. I’m sure the mum will turn up soon if we get out of her way. Come on, Hugo,” He looked around the clearing asHugo paced slowly over to his side. “So now we need to find somewhere to watch from.”

Lily stepped back reluctantly from the sofa and the kittens. The white kitten was on the top of the pile now, weaving his head from side to side. She longed to pick him up and cuddle him, and tell him everything was going to be OK but she knew she mustn’t…

The white kitten mewed, calling miserably for his mother. He wanted milk– he kept blundering about, trying to suck but she wasn’t there. He didn’t understand. She had always been there to feed him before. She seemed to have been gone for so long and he was so hungry.

He hooked his tiny claws into the fabric at the back of the sofa and hauled himself up, sniffing the air, trying to find his mother. There was no warm, milky smell but hecould smell something else, something different. He mewed uncertainly and sniffed the air again. The smell seemed to have moved away. Confused and worn out by the effort, he nuzzled into the furry pile of other kittens and settled back to sleep.

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“Lily, are you sure you don’t want to go home?” Dad asked. “Mum just texted. She says she can walk up and get you and take Hugo back, too. We’ve been watching for an hour now. You must be getting hungry – it’s past lunchtime.”

Lily shook her head firmly.“I don’t want to go home. And I don’t mind not having any lunch.”

They were sitting on a fallen tree with Hugo at their feet, just close enough to see the abandoned sofa through the bracken. Lily was pretty sure they were far enough away not to worry the mother cat, as long as they were quiet. The sofa wasn’t that far from the main paths through the wood, so she must have been coming and going with people and dogs around.

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“Please, Dad,” Lily begged, as Dad started to text Mum back. “I really want to stay and make sure the kittens are OK. I know we’ve been here an hour but that’s a whole hour that their mum hasn’t come back to look after them. That can’t be right, can it? She’s been gone ages.”

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Dad nodded.“It does seem a long time to me but I’m not really sure how often tiny kittens need to be fed. I don’t think we can stay here all day, Lily. Perhaps we can keep popping back to check on them.”

“But there’s so many people who walk their dogs in this wood,” Lily pointed out. “I know Hugo just wants to look at the kittens but another dog might hurt them.”

They’d seen quite a few dog walkers already but luckily none of the dogs had come close enough to sniff out the kittens. Dad had asked the owners if they’d seen a cat around but they’d all said no. One lady had even offered to go home and ring the RSPCA when Dad and Lily told her about the kittens but Dad had explained they’d already called the shelter.