Mallory and the Ghost Cat

  “Guess what?” asked Margaret again.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We’re doing a play!” chorused the girls.

  Oh no, another play. Didn’t I get enough of this at home? I resisted the impulse to sigh and roll my eyes. “Great!” I said, trying to sound sincere. “Who’s in it?”

  “All our babies,” said Sophie. “It’s a play about a lady with a million babies.”

  Katie approached me with an armful of dolls. She began to arrange them on my lap, telling me their names as she posed them. “Barbie B.,” she said, sitting a Barbie on my right thigh. “Nancy,” she said, as she tucked a baby doll into my arms. “Martha,” she said, showing me a floppy rag doll.

  “I’m glad to meet all your babies,” I said, trying to contain my giggles.

  Mrs. Craine walked into the living room then, buttoning up her coat. “Isn’t it something how she comes up with those names?” she said. “I don’t know how she thinks of them, but the second she gets a new doll, she has a name for it.” She gave each of the girls a quick hug. “I’m on my way,” she said. “Have fun!”

  “I don’t want you to leave!” said Sophie suddenly. She threw her arms around her mother’s knees.

  I was surprised. That had never happened before. I looked at Mrs. Craine.

  “She’s a little sleepy, I think,” she said. “She only had a short nap this afternoon.” She looked down at her daughter. Sophie was frowning and holding on tight. “Honey,” she said. “I have to go. But I’ll be back soon. And you’ll have a good time with Mallory.”

  Sophie shook her head and readjusted her grip. “I want to go with you,” she whined.

  It was time for the oldest trick in the baby-sitters’ book. “Sophie,” I said. “I brought some special toys for you to play with today. Toys you’ve never even seen before!” I went to the hall table where I’d left my Kid-Kit when I came in. I held up the box so Sophie could see it. Immediately she let go of her mother and ran to my side. Mrs. Craine smiled at me and waved good-bye as she tiptoed out the door.

  Distraction. It rarely fails.

  Sophie took the box from me and sat on the floor with it, rummaging through the stuff inside. Kid-Kits are great. I’ve never seen a kid who could resist them. They were another of Kristy’s ideas for our club. They’re just boxes that we’ve decorated so that they look kind of fancy, and then filled with little toys, games, books, stickers, crayons. You name it, it’s in there. Not all of the stuff is new. I get a lot of cast-off toys from my brothers and sisters for my Kid-Kit, but since the things are new to the kids we sit for, they find them fascinating.

  Katie and Margaret joined Sophie on the floor. I have toys in my kit for all different age levels, so each girl found something to play with, and there wasn’t much squabbling. Their play was forgotten, and I can’t say I minded.

  “I love this book, Mallory,” said Margaret. She was looking at a tiny paperback copy of Angelina Ballerina. “Can I keep it?”

  I could tell that she longed to own that book. “I can’t let you keep it,” I said, “because I baby-sit for a lot of kids who love it, too.” Margaret’s face fell. “But I promise to bring it with me every time I come.” Margaret cheered up. I knew I’d have to tell Mrs. Craine that the book had been a hit. Maybe Margaret would get it for her next birthday.

  Katie was playing with a small stuffed elephant she’d found at the bottom of the box. “Bobby,” she said, naming him.

  “Okay,” I said. “Bobby it is. Bobby the Elephant. He never even had a name before, and now he has the perfect one.” Katie beamed.

  Sophie was trying on a sequined tiara, one of the most popular items in my kit. “I’m a princess,” she said. “Princess Aurora.” She began to spin around in the middle of the room.

  Just then I heard a meow. “Ghost Cat!” I said. I’d almost forgotten about him. “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s fine,” said Margaret, putting down the book. “Want to see him?” She led the way to the laundry room. But she stopped suddenly and put her hand over her mouth. “I forgot,” she said. “He always runs out when we open the door. Then we have to look all over the house and find him and catch him.”

  “Well, maybe we better just leave him alone,” I said.

  “No, no!” said Sophie. “I want to show him to you.”

  “Show cat!” said Katie.

  Margaret looked torn. But her pride as a new pet owner won out. “He’s so pretty,” she said. “He’s gotten fatter and shinier since we’ve been taking care of him. I’ll open the door just a little bit, and you can peek inside really fast, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “If you’re sure …”

  Margaret opened the door — just a crack — and Ghost Cat shot out of the laundry room. “Oh!” she said, watching him go. There was no point in chasing him; he was moving too fast. “He’ll go hide somewhere now, and then we can find him,” she said.

  We waited for a few minutes. Then we started to search the house, whistling and calling. “Heeeeere, kittykittykitty!” I called.

  “Come here, Ghost Cat,” said Margaret. “I have a treat for you!” She’d picked up a little box of cat treats, and she was shaking it to make a rattling noise. “Sometimes he hears this and he comes to me,” she explained.

  But Ghost Cat didn’t fall for the old “treats” trick. He stayed hidden. We looked everywhere — under beds, in closets, even under the refrigerator. No Ghost Cat.

  “I know! I bet he’s in the attic,” said Sophie. “I’ll get my flashlight and we can look.”

  I’d noticed that the door to the attic was shut, so I knew there was no way he could be in there, but I didn’t want to make Sophie feel bad by ignoring her suggestion.

  Armed with flashlights, we climbed the stairs one more time. “Here, kittykittykitty,” I called. I shone my light around the room. Did I mention before that I love attics? There’s nothing I like better than poking through a bunch of musty, dusty old stuff, looking for forgotten treasures. Old clothes, ancient pictures, antique furniture; these things make history come to life for me. Of course, this attic wasn’t my attic, so I didn’t feel that I could explore it fully. But I couldn’t resist taking a quick peek around while the girls checked every corner for Ghost Cat.

  I saw an old dressmaker’s dummy, standing silently in a corner. The woman who’d used it must have been tiny. The waist looked so small I bet I could have put my two hands around it. An old hat with faded red roses spilling off the sides was on the dummy’s head. A bookshelf stood nearby, full of dusty old books with leather bindings and gold writing on their spines. My hands itched to hold them, but I held myself back.

  Finally I said, “I don’t think we’re going to find him up here, girls. Why don’t we go back downstairs and have a snack while we figure out what to do next?” Margaret and Sophie looked reluctant about leaving the attic without Ghost Cat, but Katie’s eyes lit up when she heard the word “snack.”

  “Apple juice?” she asked. “Cracker?”

  I picked her up and started for the stairs with the other girls following behind me. My flashlight beam hit something I hadn’t seen before. “An old hat box!” I said. “Oh, how neat. I wonder if there’s a hat inside it?” The round box was striped in faded pink and white, and the carrying handle was of braided pink silk. I put Katie down and gently opened the box. And what was inside was much, much better than a hat.

  “Letters!” said Margaret.

  “Lots of letters!” said Sophie.

  I picked up the bundle of letters that was tied with a blue ribbon, and shone my flashlight on them. The envelopes were yellowed and crumbling, and the handwriting on the front of the top one was pale and spidery. “Wow,” I said. “These are really, really old.”

  “Let’s take them downstairs and read them!” said Margaret.

  She didn’t have to twist my arm. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go!”

  Under the bright lights of the kitchen, the writing on the envelope
s was easier to read. The letters were all addressed to a Samuel K. Graham, and the return addresses read “Kennedy Graham, 94 High St.” That was the Craines’ address! As I sifted through the packet, a note — not in an envelope — fell out from between two letters. “Abigail,” it said (I read it out loud to the girls), “I thought you’d like to have our Uncle Kennedy’s letters, since you are now living in what used to be his house. Regards, your cousin Samuel.”

  “Okay,” I said, beginning to put the picture together. “This man Kennedy Graham lived in this house a long, long time ago. And when he was living here, he wrote these letters to his nephew. Then, a long time later, a niece of his, Abigail, ended up living here. And Samuel sent her the letters.”

  “Neat!” said Margaret. “So the letters might have stuff about our house in them!”

  “Right,” I said. “Do you want to read one?”

  Margaret nodded eagerly, but when she shook one of the letters out of its envelope and began to examine it closely, she realized the old-fashioned handwriting was too hard for her to read. “I can’t do it,” she said, sounding frustrated. “He made his letters too funny.”

  “How about if I read?” I asked. “Then we can all hear at once.” Margaret handed me the letter and I began to read. “Dear Samuel,” the letter said. “Weather today is clear and bright. I have seen a number of robins on the front lawn, which tells me that spring is surely here. A visitor arrived on my doorstep this morning: a small, sickly, white kitten.”

  “A kitten!” cried Margaret. I smiled at her and went on reading.

  “As I am without human companionship, I have taken the cat in and vowed to care for it.”

  That letter went on with some kind of boring details about a root cellar that Kennedy Graham was planning to dig that summer. I put it down and picked up the next one, which was dated a few months later. “Dear Samuel,” I read. The girls were staring at me with round eyes, eager to hear more about the kitten. “The leaves have begun to turn scarlet and gold, and Tinker (that is the name I have given my tomcat) chases each and every one as it falls. He has grown into a fine, sleek animal, and he is my dearest friend.”

  Margaret clapped her hands. “More!” she said. Sophie jumped up and down. Katie, who probably didn’t understand too much, just grinned. I went on reading. The letters were really interesting, but the best parts were about the cat. Apparently Kennedy Graham had been really, really lonely before the cat came to live with him. He loved that cat and I could tell he spoiled it rotten. “Tinker had chicken livers for his supper tonight, as I had roasted one of my best hens for myself. He loved the taste and ate until he could barely move …”

  I was getting to like Kennedy Graham, and Tinker, too. So it was a shock to read that the cat had died “… of a wasting disease that left him thin as a rail before it took his life.” I could see that the girls were upset by the cat’s death, so I tried to screen the rest of the letters as I read them. It was sad. After the cat died, Kennedy Graham was never the same again. He was “distraught …” He constantly thought he heard the cat meowing, “crying as if his heart had broken …” — and the sound seemed to come from the attic!

  I got a chill when I read that. Had the ghost of Tinker come back to be with Kennedy Graham? Or had Kennedy Graham gone a little crazy?

  “He looks kind of weird,” said Margaret, picking up an old, fuzzy photo that had fallen out of one of the letters. She showed it to me. Kennedy Graham had been a craggy, white-haired man with a small scar under his left eye. “A cat scratch, I bet!” said Margaret, looking at it.

  Just as she said that, I heard a meow. Loudly. And the sound was coming from upstairs! I swear, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. But I gathered my courage and ran upstairs to check the attic. Maybe it was our own Ghost Cat, stuck up there after all.

  There was no cat in the attic. But here’s the weird thing. Right after I went to the attic, I checked the laundry room. And there was Ghost Cat, curled up cozily on top of some clean towels. He’d been there all along.

  Kristy was sitting for the three Korman kids that evening. The Kormans have become pretty regular clients since they moved into Kristy’s neighborhood, and Kristy sits for them more than the rest of us do because she lives across the street from them.

  The evening had started off well. Kristy had made special arrangements to bring her stepsister Karen along with her, since Karen and Melody are the same age (seven) and have become good friends. When Kristy and Karen arrived at the Kormans’ door, Melody threw it open before they could even ring the bell.

  “I saw you coming up the walk!” she said. “I am so, so happy you’re here.”

  “Well, I’m glad to be here,” said Kristy, smiling.

  “Not you, silly!” said Melody. Kristy’s face fell. “I mean,” said Melody, realizing she might have hurt Kristy’s feelings, “I’m glad to see you, but I’m really glad to see Karen. Skylar’s asleep and Bill is being so boring. All he wants to do is line up his G.I. Joes and talk about which weapons each one knows how to use. Yucko.”

  “Yucko,” echoed Karen.

  “So now that you’re here, we can play!” said Melody to Karen. “What should we do first?”

  “Let’s pretend that we’re mermaids and the fountain is our swimming pool!” said Karen.

  Yes, there’s a fountain in the Kormans’ front hall! Remember I told you that Kristy lives in a mansion? Well, most of the other houses in her neighborhood are mansion-type houses, too. And the Kormans’ is the most mansion-like of all. But there’s one thing I should mention about the fountain, which, by the way, is shaped like a fish standing on its tail. When the Kormans moved into this house, not too long ago, they thought the fountain was kind of funny, so they turned it on. Skylar panicked! She’s only a year old, and I can’t even begin to imagine why that fountain scared her so much, but it did. So the Kormans turned the fountain off, and it’s stayed off.

  I like the fact that the Kormans thought the fountain was silly, and didn’t mind turning it off. The family that lived in that house before — the Delaneys — were really kind of stuck up. They thought the fountain was “elegant,” and the kids boasted about it, along with the swimming pool, the two tennis courts, and all the other features of the house.

  Anyway, after Mr. and Mrs. Korman had left, Melody didn’t want to play in the fountain that night. “I’m tired of being mermaids,” she said. “Let’s do something else.”

  “How about a game of ‘Let’s All Come In’?” asked Karen, hopefully. That’s her favorite game, probably because she invented it. It’s a “let’s pretend” game about various guests checking into a fancy old hotel.

  “Nah,” said Melody. “Not enough people. Bill won’t play, and Skylar’s too young to play, even if she was awake, and if it’s just you and me it’s no fun.”

  Kristy was kind of relieved. “Let’s All Come In” isn’t necessarily one of her favorite games. Somehow it often seems to cause bickering among the players. Everybody always wants to play the fun characters — the wealthy guests — and nobody wants to play the boring parts, like the bellhop.

  “I guess you’re right,” Karen said to Melody. “Hmmmm … Oh! I know!” she said. “How about Lovely Ladies? We haven’t played that in a long, long time.”

  Kristy thought they’d played Lovely Ladies just the week before, but she didn’t say anything. And if Melody remembered, she didn’t seem to mind. “Yay!” she said. “Lovely Ladies! I got the neatest new hat from Mommy. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They ran upstairs to Melody’s room. Lovely Ladies is a dress-up game that Amanda Delaney, who was one of Karen’s best friends before she moved away, had made up. Kristy knew the girls would be occupied for a while, so she decided to look in on Bill. She poked her head into his room. “Hiya!” she said. “What’s up?”

  Bill was lying on his back on the rag rug in the middle of the floor. He was holding a toy helicopter in one hand, and a toy jet in the other. “Pow!” he
said. “Blam-blam-blam-BLAM!” He waved his arms around so that the jet and the helicopter seemed to be involved in an air battle. He was in another world; Kristy knew he hadn’t even heard her.

  “Bill!” she said, more loudly. “Yo!”

  Bill stopped making noises for a second and looked over at her. “Oh, hi!” he said. He raised his eyebrows, as if he were wondering what she wanted from him.

  “I just stopped in to see how you’re doing,” explained Kristy.

  “I’m okay,” he said, quickly. He obviously wanted to be left alone to finish off his dogfight.

  “Okay,” said Kristy. She started to leave Bill’s room, but then she stuck her head back in at the last minute. “We’ll be having dinner soon,” she said.

  Bill was already making explosion noises again. He nodded at her without interrupting his battle.

  Kristy shrugged and headed down the hall to Skylar’s room. “Banky!” she heard, just as she opened the door. Skylar had woken up from her nap. And she wanted her blanket, which she’d thrown out of her crib. Kristy bent down and picked it up.

  “Here’s your banky,” she said. Then she held out her arms. “Ready to get up?” she asked. Skylar’s usually a pretty happy baby. She gave Kristy a big grin. Kristy lifted her out of the crib, changed her diaper (babies are almost always wet — or worse — when they wake up from a nap), and dressed her in a clean romper.

  “Let’s go find your brother and sister and my stepsister and then we’ll make dinner,” she said, as she bounced Skylar on her hip. “How does that sound?”

  Skylar smiled and clapped her hands together. “Eat!” she said.

  “That’s right,” said Kristy. “Eat.” She carried Skylar down the hall to Melody’s room. By that time, Melody and Karen were heavily involved in their Lovely Ladies game. Melody was wearing a pink tutu, silver high-heeled shoes, a wedding veil, and a “diamond” necklace. Karen was wearing a long red cloak with a hood (usually used for putting on plays with Little Red Riding Hood as a character), and she was carrying a magic wand. At the top of the wand was a pink star with sequins on it, and pink and purple streamers.