Lulu and the Cat in the Bag by Hilary McKay

Author:Hilary McKay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2013-08-18T04:00:00+00:00

Just as the marigold cat was the largest cat by far that Lulu and Mellie had ever seen, so the marigold cat’s purring was the loudest they had ever heard. It purred as they stroked it. It purred as it chewed up everything on the tray. It purred even when wrapped in the patchwork quilt. It purred by itself alone in the bedroom when they took away the supper tray and crept back downstairs to wash the empty plates. They could hear it in the kitchen, and they could hear it in the living room, and in her dreams, Nan heard it too.

“Was I snoring?” she asked, waking up with a jump. “Lulu, I dreamed I heard myself snoring! It can’t be true! I never have! Snoring! Was I? Now, Mellie, tell me the truth!”

Mellie became speechless with giggles and had to lie on the floor.

“Lulu?” asked Nan pleadingly.

“You were snoring a little tiny bit, but hardly anything at all,” Lulu told her truthfully.

Nan looked as horrified as if Lulu had said, “Your head was falling off a little tiny bit, but hardly anything at all.”

So Lulu added kindly, “But I don’t think that’s what you heard…”

Lulu paused. There was no sound from upstairs anymore. No purring. Nothing. And anyway, what could she say? “I think you heard the marigold cat?” Of course not!

“Perhaps a helicopter flew over,” she suggested to Nan. “Maybe you heard that. Or a motorcycle, revving up. A lawn mower, even…”

“Helicopters!” wailed poor Nan, who up until the last few minutes had believed she spent all her sleep hours in ladylike silence. “Motorcycles! Lawn mowers! I sounded like that! Tomorrow I will go to the doctor!”

“For snoring?” asked Mellie, rolling around on the carpet, and she laughed so much that Lulu could not help joining in too.

Suddenly, in the middle of the laughter and in the middle of Nan’s wailing, came a sound that startled them all into silence.

Heavy feet. Beanbag feet. Treading hard and loud, creaking the floorboards of the room overhead.

Sam and Rocko, who had been dozing by the fire, woke and put back their ears and growled. All down the middle of their backs a line of fur stood up like grass.

“What is that?” whispered Nan.

Lulu and Mellie knew what it was of course: the marigold cat. What else could it be?

“A ghost?” asked Lulu hopefully.

The dogs began to bark.

Nan was on her feet. She did not believe in ghosts. She believed in burglars. She was not afraid of them, though. She was not afraid of anything (except being heard to snore). Brave as a lion, she rolled her magazine into a weapon, ordered, “Girls—stay here with the dogs! Dogs—guard the girls!” and charged up the stairs.

Lulu and Mellie charged after her.

The dogs did not. They dared not. They knew who was the boss. Nan. “Dogs Downstairs” was the absolute rule when Nan was visiting. Not even the smell of the most enormous marigold cat in the world could entice them to break it.

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