Alfie in the Snow

Rachel Wells's Alfie in the Snow is a cosy winter story for 11 year olds, told by a London cat who can't resist a new family moving in next door.

What happens

Alfie is a doorstep cat. He lives with one family on Edgar Road but pops in on several others, and he thinks of all of them as his. He's a dad too, to a kitten called George who's getting far too big to jump on him.

So when a removal van pulls up next door, the two of them are round there in a flash, peering through the patio doors. There's a mum called Sylvie, a teenage daughter called Connie and a very pretty cat called Hana. Hana has never been outside in her whole life. She's a house cat from Japan, and Alfie is determined to meet her anyway.

He can tell something is wrong next door. Late at night he sees Sylvie crying at her kitchen table with Hana on her lap. It turns out her husband has left her, and she and Connie have had to move back to England. Connie misses her school, her friends and her dad.

Then there's the grumpy old man across the road who shouts at the children on Halloween and pulls his curtains shut. The neighbours think he might be dangerous. Alfie isn't so sure. (He's the kind of cat who has to get to the bottom of things.)

Reading it is like being curled up with a very chatty cat. Alfie worries about EVERYONE. He frets when his girlfriend Tiger is taken to the vet. He panics when George climbs too high. He thinks teenagers are a strange new species. And he decides the best way to break the ice at an awkward dinner is to jump on the table (it works!).

The worries on the human side are grown-up ones. There's a divorce, a mum drinking wine on her own because she's sad, and the odd "nutter" and "Thank God". Nothing is graphic, but a lot of the feelings belong to the adults.

Got a reader who loves an animal narrator with a big heart? They'll enjoy seeing Edgar Road through Alfie's whiskers. The snow is on its way, and so is Christmas.

What to read next

This is a later book in the series and Alfie mentions plenty of earlier adventures. If they'd like to start at the very beginning, Alfie the Doorstep Cat is where he first sets out alone, after losing the old lady who'd had him since he was a kitten.