Amelia Bedelia & Friends #2 Page 3

  That night, Amelia Bedelia slept with Finally at the foot of her bed and the cat curled up beside her, purring loudly in her ear.

  At school the next morning, no one looked very cheerful. Amelia Bedelia and her friends met outside at the student lounge—which was really the stump of a very special tree—at recess.

  “My mom said our building has a rule that only pets in cages are allowed,” said Angel. She shrugged sadly. “My python is okay, but we can’t have a cat.”

  “Sorry, Amelia Bedelia,” said Skip. “My dad said our dog doesn’t get along with cats.”

  “My parents said that we already have two cats. Plus three gerbils and an aquarium full of fish,” said Penny. “They said no more pets until I graduate from college and have my own apartment.”

  “We can’t wait that long,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  It turned out that none of the kids in Mrs. Shauk’s class were able to give the cat a home. Either someone was allergic to cats or they already had cats or dogs or guinea pigs or rabbits. Some lived in places that did not allow pets.

  No one could take the cat. And now they only had four days to find the perfect home.

  “There’s got to be somebody who wants such a sweet cat!” said Penny. “We just have to find the right person.”

  “We can advertise!” said Amelia Bedelia. “That’s what my dad always says to do.”

  “But we’re just kids,” said Joy. “How are we going to advertise? It’s not like we can make a commercial and get it on TV.”

  “We can make posters,” said Amelia Bedelia. “We can put them up all over town!”

  Mr. Forest, the art teacher, was happy for Amelia Bedelia and her friends to make posters during their art period. They drew pictures of the cat and brainstormed slogans that would catch people’s eye, making them want to give the cat a home.

  Amelia Bedelia drew a picture of a calico cat curled up in a ball with her paw over her nose. PURRRRRRRFECT PET! she wrote above her curled-up cat.

  “Hey!” said Cliff. “You’re a copycat, Amelia Bedelia.”

  Amelia Bedelia had not even looked at Cliff’s poster. Now when she did, she saw that he had drawn a cat curled up in a ball, just like hers. But that didn’t mean that she’d copied him. If he’d drawn a poodle and she’d drawn a Great Dane, he’d probably call her a copy dog.

  “I didn’t copy you,” she said. “I just drew the cat.”

  “That can happen,” said Mr. Forest, smiling. “Sometimes artists have similar ideas, but their art will still look different when they are done. See, Cliff, your cat has its eyes open, and Amelia Bedelia drew hers with its eyes shut. No two artists will ever draw the same thing in exactly the same way. Every work of art is unique. Nobody can be a copycat, Cliff, even if they try to be.”

  After school, Amelia Bedelia got permission from her mother to go out with Joy and Penny to put the posters up around the neighborhood. “Don’t stay out too long,” her mother told them with a sneeze. “It’s getting very cloudy. It looks like rain.”

  The girls were rushing to put up as many posters as possible. They went to Pete’s Diner first, and after checking with Pete to make sure it was okay, they got to work taping a poster to the front door. Amelia Bedelia was sticking the last piece of tape to the glass when a woman hurrying into the diner nearly bumped into her.

  “Oops! Excuse me!” the woman said.

  “No problem,” said Amelia Bedelia. The woman looked familiar, but Amelia Bedelia wasn’t sure where she might have seen her before.

  The woman looked at the poster and smiled. “That’s the cat that was in the tree near the elementary school, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “It is!” said Amelia Bedelia. How could this woman know that? Looking at her more closely, it dawned on Amelia Bedelia.

  “Hi, Lieutenant Johnson!” she said.

  “Wow!” said Joy. “We didn’t recognize you without your uniform.”

  Lieutenant Johnson laughed. “That happens a lot,” she said. “I’m glad you’re trying to find a home for that sweet cat. Good luck!”

  “Thanks!” said the girls, and they hurried on their way. They went to the library and put a poster on the bulletin board. They put a poster up on the community board outside the grocery store, too. And at the park. They posted some posters around the school, attaching several to the fence with tape.

  Then they were out of posters. Out of tape. And totally out of time.

  From far away came a low grumble of thunder. A cold drop of rain splashed down on Amelia Bedelia’s nose.

  “Let’s go home!” said Joy. “I hope the posters work!”

  “I hope your phone rings soon,” said Penny. “Cross your fingers!”

  Amelia Bedelia crossed her fingers and waved goodbye to her friends before racing home herself.

  By the time Amelia Bedelia got home, her hair was dripping, her shirt was soggy, and her shoes were squelching.

  “Look what the cat dragged in!” said her father when she opened the front door.

  “What?” Amelia Bedelia looked around. Did the cat get out? Did she bring something back inside to play with?

  “I meant you!” said her father.

  “But the cat didn’t drag me in,” said Amelia Bedelia. “I walked home. I mean, I ran home.”

  “I can see that—and you got soaking wet,” said her father. “Go change into dry clothes.”

  Amelia Bedelia ran upstairs. She found Finally and the cat curled up together on her bed. Finally was snoring and the cat was purring. They were nearly as loud as the storm outside.

  “Hello, Finally! Hello, cat!” she said.

  Amelia Bedelia dried her hair, put on dry clothes, and tossed her wet things in the hamper. She settled onto the bed and waited for the phone to ring. Surely someone would see one of their posters soon and call her. Surely someone would want to adopt such a sweet and friendly cat.

  As she waited, Amelia Bedelia scratched Finally with one hand and the cat with the other. She wished she could keep the cat. She was so cute and soft! It wasn’t nice to keep thinking of the cat as simply the cat, though. She needed a name.

  Her orange-and-black fur made Amelia Bedelia think about Halloween. And the way the cat was curled up with just the tip of her tail sticking out reminded Amelia Bedelia of a pumpkin with a stem.

  That’s it! Pumpkin! It was the perfect name!

  “Hello, Finally! Hello, Pumpkin!” she said.

  Now all Pumpkin needed was a perfect home. But it seemed as if a home was going to be harder to find than a name, because the phone did not ring all afternoon.

  It did not ring during dinner.

  It did not ring when Amelia Bedelia was doing her homework.

  It did not ring before bedtime.

  Two days out of five were gone, and Pumpkin still did not have a home.

  Meow! Meow! Chirp, chirp, chirp! Meow! MEEEEOOOOOWWWW!

  Amelia Bedelia woke up. Pumpkin was sitting on the windowsill watching a bird in the tree outside her window. The sun was shining, drying up puddles.

  When Amelia Bedelia got to school, she began to understand why the phone hadn’t rung. The posters that she and Penny and Joy had taped up around the playground had been ruined by the rain. The paint and ink had run, and the paper was soggy and torn. Nobody could see how cute Pumpkin was—and nobody could read the phone number.

  “Oh, no,” said Penny when she jumped off the bus. “After all our hard work!”

  Penny and Amelia Bedelia stared at the posters—or what was left of them.

  “It just means we have to work harder and find a new solution,” said Amelia Bedelia. “We need to put an ad someplace where it can’t be washed away.”

  “But where?” asked Penny.

  “I know,” said Amelia Bedelia. “In the newspaper!”

  At recess, Amelia Bedelia’s friends gathered around the stump table while Amelia Bedelia, Penny, and Joy explained what had happened to the posters.

  “My dad always
says the more people who see your ad, the better,” said Amelia Bedelia. “If we put an ad in the newspaper, everyone who lives in this town will see it. Somebody will want to take Pumpkin home.”

  “Cool, but who is Pumpkin?” asked Clay.

  “The cat,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Amelia Bedelia named the cat Pumpkin,” said Penny.

  “That’s the perfect name!” said Joy.

  “But doesn’t it cost a lot to put an ad in the paper?” asked Angel.

  “Not really,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Mr. B helped me look it up on the library computer. We can buy a small ad for two hundred dollars.”

  Amelia Bedelia’s friends stared back at her blankly.

  “Amelia Bedelia, we don’t have two hundred dollars,” said Skip.

  “We can earn it,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “How?” asked Penny. “My allowance is only five dollars a week.”

  “So is mine,” said Amelia Bedelia. “But there are twenty kids in our class. So that’s one hundred dollars. What if we each ask our parents to give us double the chores?”

  Her friends started nodding. That seemed possible.

  “We can even ask our neighbors or grandparents if they need chores done,” said Cliff.

  “I know, we can make chore coupon books!” said Joy.

  “That’s a great idea!” said Penny.

  After lunch, Joy got two pieces of paper and folded them in half, then in half again. That made eight small rectangles.

  On each rectangle she wrote a chore. Skip, who was very good at drawing, made a sketch of each chore and created a cover for the coupon book.

  “See, if we each sell one chore coupon book, we’ll have the money we need for the ad,” Joy explained.

  “It’s a really good invention,” said Amelia Bedelia. “And it’s going to work—I know it will.”

  Mrs. Roman said they could use the office copier to make twenty chore books, plus some extras. At the end of the day, they handed them out. Every kid in Mrs. Shauk’s class agreed to try to convince someone to buy one. They would bring the money to Amelia Bedelia tomorrow.

  At dinner that night, Amelia Bedelia showed her parents her chore coupon books and told them about the plans to raise money for an ad.

  “You always say free advertising is the best kind,” she told her father. “But two-hundred-dollar advertising is still pretty good, right? Plus it will be dry.”

  “It definitely is,” agreed her father. “Much better than five-hundred-dollar advertising . . . or two-thousand-dollar advertising . . . or—”

  “We get the idea, honey,” said Amelia Bedelia’s mother, blowing her nose. “The best thing about this coupon book is that it guarantees no complaining. I’ll take two!”

  “So far, so good,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father to Amelia Bedelia.

  Amelia Bedelia’s mother took two ten-dollar bills from her purse and gave them to Amelia Bedelia.

  “Thanks, Mom!” said Amelia Bedelia. She got up from the table and tucked the money into her backpack. “I’m going to go play with Pumpkin.”

  “Oh, cool your jets,” said her mother, ripping a page out of the coupon book and handing it to Amelia Bedelia with a smile.

  “I don’t have any,” said Amelia Bedelia looking at the coupon. Wash dishes, it said.

  “Better get to work,” her father said. “We want to see if you’re worth your salt!”

  “No thanks, Daddy. Mom already gave me money,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Do I have to wash the dishes right now? I was going to play with Pumpkin and Finally.”

  “No whining or complaining,” said her mother. “That’s the guarantee, right?”

  “Right,” agreed Amelia Bedelia.

  While Amelia Bedelia’s parents settled down in the living room to watch TV, Amelia Bedelia cleared the table and stacked the dirty dishes next to the sink. Suddenly she was not so sure it was such a good thing that her parents had bought two coupon books. Maybe one would have been enough.

  But it was worth it if it helped to find Pumpkin a good home!

  The coupon books were a big hit. Some parents, like Amelia Bedelia’s, had purchased more than one. When Amelia Bedelia counted the money, there was enough for the ad, and a little left over.

  Amelia Bedelia and Skip had worked all recess on the ad. Skip had drawn a picture of Pumpkin, looking very friendly and a little lonely, and Amelia Bedelia had written the words:

  SWEET CAT NEEDS GOOD HOME!! EXCELLENT AT PURRING, VERY CUTE AND LOVES TO CUDDLE. PLEASE CALL 555-5555. EMERGENCY! NO TIME TO WASTE!

  After school, Amelia Bedelia, Skip, Penny, and Joy hurried downtown, past Pete’s Diner and the library, to a bright green door. On it was written DAILY GAZETTE—WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND TOWN.

  They pushed the door open and went inside.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

  Amelia Bedelia looked around. She had never been inside a newspaper office before. The desks had computers on them and papers piled here and there. A woman who was typing looked up and smiled.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “We want to—” said Skip.

  “We need a—” said Penny.

  “Do you have a—” said Joy.

  They all stopped at once, uncertain.

  “Come on, let the cat out of the bag,” said the woman, smiling.

  “We didn’t bring the cat,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “What cat?” the woman asked.

  “Pumpkin,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “The one the ad is for,” said Joy.

  The woman shook her head. “What ad?” she asked.

  “The one we want to put in the paper,” said Amelia Bedelia. She showed the woman their ad.

  “So you’re trying to find a new home for your cat?” the woman asked, studying the ad.

  “She’s not really my cat,” said Amelia Bedelia. She explained how they’d found the cat on the playground. Penny told how they’d tried to get the cat out of the tree. Joy explained that the fire truck had to come. Skip described how Lieutenant Johnson had lured the cat down with Amelia Bedelia’s tuna-fish sandwich.

  The woman listened. Her eyes got rounder and rounder.

  “I think you’ve made a mistake,” she said. “You don’t want to place an ad.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Amelia Bedelia. “We have two hundred and forty dollars, so we can afford it.”

  The woman smiled. “I’m sure you can, but you don’t need an ad. This is news! I want to write a story for the paper about Pumpkin the cat and how the students at Oak Tree Elementary rescued her. You kids are the cat’s pajamas!”

  Amelia Bedelia looked at her clothes. She had pajamas with cats on them at home, but she wasn’t wearing them. She had on leggings and a stripy skirt and a shirt with flowers on it and a purple jacket with a hood.

  “These aren’t my pajamas,” she said. “And mine are way too big for Pumpkin anyway.”

  “I can see that,” the woman said, smiling. “My name is Lydia Scoop, and I’m a reporter for the Gazette. First thing, I’d like to get a picture of Pumpkin for the paper. Can you bring her here for a photograph? Then I’ll interview you all. If we can get this done today, I’ll have the story ready for the paper tomorrow.”

  Amelia Bedelia looked at her friends. They all looked back at her and grinned. Pumpkin was going to be famous—and so were they!

  “We’ll be right back!” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Mom! I’m home!” called Amelia Bedelia when she, Skip, Penny, and Joy rushed through the front door. “Guess what?”

  “What?” her mother called. She came from the kitchen, carrying a tissue in one hand and her phone in the other. “Sweetie! You look like the cat that swallowed the canary!”

  “Oh, no! Did Pumpkin eat a canary? She really likes birds. But, wait, we don’t have a canary. And you said no more pets except for Finally. Did you change your mind?” Amelia Bedelia gasped in horror. “Did you get a canary today when I was at school?
And did Pumpkin eat it already?”

  “There is no canary,” her mother said, pausing to blow her nose.

  “Mom, guess what! A reporter named Lydia Scoop wants to do a story for the Gazette about Pumpkin!” said Amelia Bedelia. “We’re supposed to take Pumpkin to the newspaper office so she can take her picture.”

  Amelia Bedelia’s mother smiled. “That’s wonderful. And I have good news, too. Lieutenant Johnson from the fire station just called and said that she’s talked to all the other firefighters, and they’ve agreed that they want a cat to be their station pet. They’d like to adopt Pumpkin.”

  Amelia Bedelia and her friends cheered. “We did it!” shouted Joy.

  “Our posters worked!” yelled Skip.

  “Let’s go tell Pumpkin!” Penny hollered.

  Clummmmp! Clummmmppp! Clumppppppp! Chlump! Chlump!

  All four kids raced up the stairs and burst into Amelia Bedelia’s room. They sounded like a herd of buffalo.

  “Guess what, Pumpkin? You’ve got a new home!” Amelia Bedelia shouted.

  But there was no answer from Pumpkin—not a single purr or meow.

  Pumpkin was not rubbing against their ankles, begging for attention. She was not curled up on the pile of clean, folded laundry on Amelia Bedelia’s bed. She was not batting the ears or chewing on the noses of Amelia Bedelia’s stuffed animals.