SNOWFLAKE

Snowflake was a pretty white cat with lovely green eyes and she belonged to a girl named Elizabeth. Her coat was like a white sheet of snow and Elizabeth would always clean snowflake to keep her coat shining and clean. Snowflake lived with Elizabeth and her parents in a small quaint little house in the countryside. The house was made of red bricks and had a red tile roof. There was a beautiful fireplace and a chimney. The fireplace would be lit on especially cold days.

One evening after Elizabeth had had a bath she called out to Snowflake. But he didn't come. Elizabeth searched the entire house looking for snowflake and calling out his name, but alas even after one hour Snowflake was missing.

Elizabeth's father told Elizabeth to go to sleep and he promised to look for Snowflake. Since it was cold, even if Snowflake had left the house, he could not have gone very far. Elizabeth's father went out with his torch and looked everywhere he could for Snowflake. He looked in the trees in the backyard, in the bushes, down the road in the other gardens, but alas, he could not find the cat. Elizabeth's mother was very worried when her husband told her that Snowflake could not be found.

The next morning when Elizabeth woke up, she was extremely disturbed that Snowflake had not returned from wherever he was hiding or she began wondering if he had got lost forever and would never be found.

The next morning, the coalman came to Elizabeth's house to drop in some coal. The weather had turned rather nasty and the temperature was gradually falling. Mother had ordered lots of coal to keep the fir burning through the long cold nights.

The coalman was big and tall and his face was black with soot. When he came in, Elizabeth took him to the coal shed to direct him as to where to keep the coal. She took the coalman round to the back of the house where the coal shed was.

No sooner had she opened the door to the coal shed than she heard a very loud meow and out jumped a cat straight on to the coalman who was too astonished to say anything. "Snowflake," cried out Elizabeth, but to her surprise out ran a dirty little black cat. Elizabeth looked at it in disappointment and realised that the cat was not her Snowflake. However since the cat looked very hungry she decided to take it to the kitchen and feed it some milk. The cat purred gently when Elizabeth picked him up. After placing some milk in a saucer and giving it to the cat, Elizabeth went to tell her mother about the find of the black cat. Her mother came to the kitchen and took one long look at the cat and burst out laughing. She explained to Elizabeth that the black cat was none other than Snowflake. She picked up a duster and wet it and wiped part of the fur on the cat's back which was then began to look like a shade of white. Snowflake had been trapped in the coal shed and all the soot had covered her fur and made her black in colour.