Realistic kitten tattoo on an upper arm

The rain has not let up since Tuesday, and the stalls on Carrick Street are running like gutters. Mr Okafor says the council will knock the old tenements down by spring, and I believe him, because the scaffold went up on the corner the same morning the tabby turned up under my crate of pears. She was soaked flat and furious, all ears and bones, and she sat on the wet cobbles staring at me as if I owed her rent.

I gave her a sardine from the tin I keep for my lunch. She ate it, then climbed up the back of the stall and sat on the awning pole, watching the half-demolished block across the road where the wallpaper still shows the pattern of somebody's kitchen. Every morning since she has taken the same spot, facing that wall, and every morning I find her there with rain beading on her whiskers, not moving, as though she is waiting for someone to finish drawing the windows.

Yesterday the scaffold men left a grey chalk line on the brickwork, a sketch of where the new doorway will go. The kitten padded over the wet road, ignored the lorry, and sat down right in the middle of the line. The driver leaned out and swore, then laughed, and then he just waited with his engine idling until she decided she was done.

I've decided to call her Ledger, because she keeps the accounts of everything that goes. Come and see her before the rain takes the last of the chalk.

Love, Maddie