Moonlight Mischief

Moonlight Mischief is a Magic Kitten book by Sue Bentley.

Plot
Eve Dawson gloomily follows her parents to Sally Ross' cattery. They are looking after it while Sally's away. They meet Jo and her kids, Alison and Darren. Jo shows them around. In the living room, Eve watches Darren play with his toy fire engine on the floor and thinks he is really sweet. Alison shows her the way to her room and refuses to go out with Eve because she isn't keen on hanging out with younger kids. Defiant, Eve leaves the room and meets her dad, who jokes with her. Then she goes outside to the animal pens and is blinded by a dazzling flash. When she can see properly again, she sees Flame, a sandy-colored kitten whose Uncle Ebony has stolen the Lion Throne and sent his spies to find and kill him. Eve promises to keep him safe. Eve asks her mum to let her keep Flame, but she says it is a lot of work, and Eve is desperate to keep Flame safe. She asks if they can check Flame out by a vet, and Mum talks to her about Flame and agrees to have the vet check him out, but not keep him, but Eve whispers secretly to Flame that Mum will let her keep him. The next morning, Eve and Flame wake up together and have breakfast, though Eve manages half a slice of toast because she is too anxious to eat much breakfast. After doing her chores, Alison's suspiciousness gets the better of her as Eve's dad calls her to get Flame to take him to the vet, and Flame makes do with the pet carrier he is riding in. At the vet, Flame is stricken when the vet says he is healthy with a fat tummy, but he is doing really well.

Back at home, Eve hears Jo's angry voice from the kitchen and feels sorry for Alison, who got told off for not watching Darren. Then she goes to see Oscar, a white cat. He is grumpy because Eve thinks he may be sick. Flame has a go at talking to him, but when Oscar turns away, he realises that cats can't talk in Eve's world. When she has finished helping Dad when Mum asks her to go to the store for a jar of coffee. In the shop, she hears Darren having a temper tantrum near a toy car display. He grabs a box from the display and the whole thing starts to fall over, but Flame saves Darren by turning the boxes into a shower of colorful glittering feathers. Outside the shop, Eve meets Alison and Alison talks about how annoying her little brother is and asks if she would like to go to the cinema with her. Eve lets Darren hold Flame, but he runs off with Flame into a children's playground. But as he climbs up the stairs, he almost slips and Flame falls out of his arms and clings onto the handrail. Eve saves him and twists her knee. Flame uses magic to heal Eve's knee. Alison runs into the playground and she and Eve scold Darren for running off with Flame, and Eve tells Alison not to tell her mum about Darren running off.

While drying her hair after washing it the next morning, Eve tells Flame all about the cinema. When she goes round to Alison's house, she is very upset because Darren had been scribbling all over the duvets and bedroom curtains with Jo's lipsticks. Eve sympathetically promises to go to the cinema with her another day. Later on, Eve goes round to Alison's and asks her if she would like to come round to the cattery and watch a video instead, and Alison agrees. After watching the film, Eve hears a noise in the storeroom, and she, Alison, Eve's mum and dad and Jo rush in and find Darren right in the middle of the rubbish, with rubbish bins tipped over. Jo shouts at Darren for doing it, but Darren lies that it wasn't him, and throws a tantrum when Jo marches him home. Seeing how upset Jo is, Eve watches Flame fix the problem by tidying the rubbish back into the bins and picking the bins up with magic.

Eve and her mum take Flame to the vet. Flame is stricken when the vet says he still has his "fat little tummy", but Eve reassures him that healthy kittens are supposed to have round tummies. A nurse brings Oscar in and tells him that he is getting older and Has had some medicine and feeling better. Back at the cattery, Eve feeds Flame a few of Dad's favourite prawns. In the middle of the night, Eve and Flame find a person stealing sacks of cat food, thinking it is a burglar. They go outside and Flame catches the burglar, but it is really Alison. Eve and her mum and dad bring her indoors and Alison admits she had brought the food outside to wet so everyone would be furious with Darren because she didn't want to watch him all the time. Eve thinks in horror that she might go to prison, but her dad reassures her that she won't, and tells her to go back to bed. The next day, Eve finds Flame transformed into an adult lion next to Cirrus, his father. She tearfully says goodbye to Flame, and he and Cirrus disappear.

Characters

 * Flame
 * Eve Dawson
 * Alison
 * Darren
 * Jo
 * Mrs Dawson
 * Mr Dawson
 * Oscar