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“I wonder if we should call the shelter,” Mum said as they reached the supermarket at the end of the road. “Just in case someone’s found Flower and handed her in.”

“But then they’ll know we didn’t look after her properly,” Abi whispered.

“Oh Abi, love. I’m sure they won’t think that. We’ve done everything they said…”

“Except we let her out!” Abi gasped. She’d been trying so hard not to cry all this time, but now she couldn’t help it. “What if she gets run over? What if she already has been? They said it’s happened on this road before…”

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“Someone would have seen and told us,” Mum said firmly. “And I think the shelter will be closed now anyway. So we can’t ring them tonight. But I think we’ll have to tomorrow morning, if we haven’t found her by then.”

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Flower stayed huddled under the bushes. She had peeped out into the darkening alley a few times, but she could still see the blurred lines of cars shooting along the road at the end, and she remembered how one of them had come so close to her. She didn’t understand why that had happened, but she dreaded that rumbling rush and the blast of air through her whiskers. The bushes were safe, even if her fur was smeared with dust. Yes, she could just stay here…

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But if she did that, she wouldn’t be able to get home. Abi and Ruby would have put food out for her to find, and she was hungry. She had sniffed around in the dead leaves for something to eat but all she had found was a beetle that was crunchy and tasted strange when she’d tried to eat it. She was so, so hungry. She wanted her food and to have Ruby dance a toy about for her, and then to be lifted up on Abi’s lap to sleep.

She had to get home. Even if meant going back to that road again.

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Abi lay in bed listening to Ruby’s snuffled hiccupy breathing. Ruby had been crying again, and she’d woken up when Abi came to bed and crawled in with her. She’d cried all over Abi’s pyjamas so Abi felt damp and even more miserable and she just couldn’t sleep.

“Are you OK, Abi, love?” Mum whispered from the doorway. “Are you awake?”

“A little bit,” Abi whispered back.

“We’re going to bed now,” Mum said, coming to crouch down by Abi’s bed. “Do you want me to put Ruby back in her own bed?”

“No, she’ll wake up. It’s OK.”

“I’m sure we’ll find Flower tomorrow.” Mum stroked her hair. “Chris will look for her while we’re all at school.”

“OK.” Abi didn’t know what else to say. She was sure she couldn’t spend the day doing literacy and maths while Flower was still missing. But her mum was a teacher – she was never going to agree to let Abi have the day off school to keep on looking.

Mum shut the door gently and Abi wriggled a bit, trying to get comfortable next to Ruby. Her little sister snuffled in her sleep and half rolled over so that she was up against the wall. She took most of the duvet with her and Abi sighed and pulled her old cuddly fleece blanket up around her instead. It smelled comforting, like washing powder, and she snuggled it up by her face, sniffing it sadly.

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Then she stopped and sat up on her elbow, staring into the darkness.

Smell!

One of the websites she’d read had said deaf cats probably had better other senses than cats who could hear, because they depended on those senses more and practised using them. And Abi had definitely read somewhere else that one thing you could do for a lost cat was put their bed or their litter tray outside the house, because cats had brilliant noses and would smell their own scent and find their way home.

So Flower would be even better at that than an ordinary cat, wouldn’t she?

Abi slid carefully out of bed, trying not to wake Ruby, and wrapped her blanket round her shoulders. She hesitated on the landing outside Mum and Chris’s room – should she wake them? If she did, they’d probably go and put the litter tray outside and tell her to go back to bed.

But Abi wanted to be there– she wanted to watch, in case it worked. What if they put the litter tray outside and went back to bed, and then Flower came? She wouldn’t understand why her litter tray was there and nobody was waiting for her. She might go away again.

So Abi tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen to fetch the litter tray. Luckily no one had cleaned it out– it didn’t smell very much to Abi but she bet Flower would be able to smell it for miles. She hoped so anyway. This had to work. It had to.

She unlocked the front door carefully and couldn’t stop herself glancing round to make sure Flower wasn’t racing down the hallway to see what was happening. “Stupid,” she muttered to herself. Then she slipped outside, shivering in the night air, and set the tray down on the path.

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She stood in the gateway, looking up and down the road, hoping to see a little white shape hurrying towards her through the darkness but there was no one around. It was eerie.