It was Lulu! Gus began to tremble with fear.
“You look very silly indeed,” Lulu said. Gus could almost hear her sharpening her claws gleefully. “I think you’d better come out, right now.”
“I can’t!” Gus whined miserably. “I’m stuck!”
“Serves you right for eating the diamond ring!” Lulu sniffed.
“I didn’t eat it!” Gus said indignantly. “I’ve come to look for it. And – and I’ve got to find it because if I don’t, I might get sent back to the Dogs’ Home and then I’ll never see Holly again . . .”
Lulu didn’t say anything, and Gus began to feel even more nervous. He couldn’t see what the cat was doing behind him, but he didn’t want to stay and find out. He began to wriggle about again, trying to get through the cat flap into Mrs Wilson’s kitchen.
“Keep still!” Lulu hissed at him. “You’ll never get in that way – you’re too fat! You’d better try and come out again.”
Gus knew that Lulu was right. He was just too big to get through the cat flap. “But I can’t get out again either!” he wailed.
“Yes, you can!” Lulu said crossly. “You got in, didn’t you? Just take it slowly.”
Gus began trying to ease himself gently backwards. At first he didn’t move at all. He pulled harder . . . and harder . . . Then, all of a sudden, he shot backwards out of the cat flap like a cork out of a bottle, and tumbled head over heels onto the path.
“Thank you!” he woofed.
Lulu, who was having a wash, gave him a bored look. “Dogs!” she yawned. “They’re so stupid! I can show you a much better way to get into the house.”
Gus stared at the cat in amazement.
“You want to get into the house, don’t you?” Lulu jumped onto a dustbin which stood underneath the kitchen windows. She began pulling at the smallest window with her claws and, after a minute or two, it swung open.
“The catch is broken,” explained Lulu as she leapt down onto the path again. “If you can get up there, you can climb into the kitchen quite easily.”
Gus could hardly believe his ears. Lulu, the cat who hated dogs, was helping him?
“Thank you!” he said. “But – but why are you helping me like this?”
“I came from the Cats’ Home,” Lulu said quietly. “I wouldn’t want to go back there either!”
The dustbin was quite tall, but there was a big black bag of rubbish lying next to it. Gus climbed onto the bag first and then managed to get onto the dustbin. From there, it was easy for him to jump up onto the windowsill.
He peered through the window into Mrs Wilson’s kitchen. Just below him was the sink and draining board, which was piled with clean plates and cups.
Gus hopped down carefully onto the edge of the sink, but felt his front paw skidding on the slippery surface. CRASH!
As Gus knocked against the pile of crockery, plates and cups flew everywhere and smashed to bits as they hit the floor.
“I think that’s called a crash landing,” Lulu remarked as she came in through the cat flap.
“Oh, no!” Gus muttered. “How did that happen?” He inspected his paw. He’d trodden on a drop of spilt washing-up liquid. No wonder he’d slipped!
He jumped down off the draining board. It wasn’t a very good start. Still, he was sure Mrs Wilson would forgive him if he found her diamond ring.
“Where are you going to start looking?” Lulu asked.
“I . . . er . . . don’t quite know.” Gus suddenly realised that he didn’t even know what a diamond ring was.
Lulu sighed. “You do know what a diamond ring is, don’t you?”
“No,” said Gus sadly.
Lulu told him. Gus couldn’t help feeling alarmed when he found out how small it was. He looked around the enormous kitchen. How would he find a tiny little thing like a diamond ring in here? But he had to try, for Holly’s sake.
First Gus went over to the kitchen table. He remembered that Mrs Wilson said she’d left her ring there when she’d started cooking. All the cakes and biscuits and the big bowl of pastry mix were still there, but Gus wasn’t interested in food. He jumped up onto a chair and nosed around, looking for the ring.
CRASH! Lulu jumped as Gus accidentally knocked the plate of chocolate chip cookies onto the floor.
“Be careful!” she hissed.
Gus didn’t care. He had to find that ring. But there was no sign of it on the kitchen table.
Next Gus sniffed his way all round the kitchen floor, in case the ring had fallen off the table. It hadn’t.
Then he looked in all the cupboards he could reach. It wasn’t easy, because it took him a long time to get each one open. The cupboards were so full of tins, bottles and packets of food that things kept falling out onto the floor.
Meanwhile, Lulu looked in all the places Gus couldn’t reach, like the top of the fridge and the high shelves on the wall. But they didn’t find the ring.
“It’s not here!” Gus slumped down miserably on the kitchen floor. “What am I going to do?”
“We’d better get out of here,” Lulu said, looking around the kitchen, “or we’re going to be in big trouble.”
Gus looked around the kitchen too, and his heart sank. It was a mess. The floor was covered with bits of broken crockery and cookies, along with tins and packets of food. What on earth would Mrs Wilson say when she saw it?
Lulu was right. They had to get out of there, and fast – before Mrs Wilson came back.
Then, suddenly, Gus’s ears pricked up. He could hear Holly’s voice! He listened harder. Now he could hear Mrs Carter and Mrs Wilson talking as well. The voices were coming closer and closer. Gus could hear footsteps too.
Mrs Wilson and Holly and her mum were walking up the path to Mrs Wilson’s kitchen door!
Gus panicked. He ran over to the sink, but the draining board was too high for him to jump onto.
“Hide!” Lulu hissed, her tail swinging wildly from side to side.
Gus looked frantically around for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. The voices were already outside the back door!