📖 The Book That Meowed

In the corner of the town library, on the very bottom shelf, there was an old green book with no title. Every day at four o'clock, it meowed.

The librarian, Mr. Bean, never heard it, because he was always busy stamping books. But one afternoon, a girl named Ada did. She crouched down and pulled the green book off the shelf.

When she opened it, the pages were empty except for one small drawing of a grey cat with a curly tail. And the cat blinked.

"Thank goodness," said the cat. "I'm Inky. I live in this book, but I'm very bored, because nobody has drawn me anything to do."

Ada had an idea. She took out her pencil and drew a ball of yarn next to Inky. The yarn bounced, and Inky chased it across the page, laughing. Ada drew a sunny window. Inky lay in the sunbeam and purred.

Then Ada drew a garden with flowers and birds. Inky ran through the flowers and tweeted along with the birds, making Ada giggle so loudly that Mr. Bean said, "Shh!"

"Will you come back tomorrow?" asked Inky. "Every day," promised Ada. And she did. Page by page, she drew Inky a whole world: a house, a river, a mountain and even a friend, a little brown dog called Smudge.

Years later, Ada became a famous writer and artist. And if you visit that library, at four o'clock, you might still hear a tiny meow from the bottom shelf.