Highway Cats (4 page)

Across the parking lot, several automobiles came to a halt. A crowd of late-night diners gathered outside the restaurants. Never had they seen such a savage horde of cats.

Soon sirens wailed and Animal Control pulled up in an armored, grill-windowed vehicle, followed by a fire engine and a police car. Within minutes, AnCon officers had rushed across the parking lot and were wading into the fray. They walloped the fighting cats with sticks and kicked them with their heavy boots while the firemen aimed fire hoses and blasted the Dumpsters with water.

The highway cats were in such a maddened state by this time that at first nothing would stop them. Not until AnCon officers had succeeded in slipping bags over the heads of a few brawlers did the danger begin to sink in.

“Run for it! AnCon!” The cry went up at last. The cats were jolted back to their senses. Doused and bedraggled, they fled in a tangled, clawing mass toward the shelter of the woods. Shredder went with them, limping from a bite wound on his front leg. His pain was so great that he forgot about the kits. Only at the forest's edge did he suddenly remember and turn back.

It was too late. In the midst of the chaos he saw the little ones huddled desperately together, not far from where they had landed after their plunge from the Dumpster. As he watched, two AnCon officers bore down on them, bags in hand.

“Look out!” Shredder shrieked. “Run! Run for your lives!”

The kits didn't hear. They cringed in terror, unable to move. It was just as it had been on the highway when Shredder and Murray had played their gruesome game. Now as then, Shredder closed his eyes and held his breath, though this time there was no bet to be won from their escape. When he looked again, the terrible deed was done. The kits were gone. The officers, clutching their wriggling bags, were marching off to look for other stragglers.

A cold fist took hold of Shredder's heart and squeezed.

 

W
HILE THE OTHER CATS FLED
, Shredder stayed behind that night, crouched in tall grass on the edge of the parking lot. He couldn't make himself run away.

He saw the AnCon officers give up their chase, get into their grill-windowed vehicle and drive off. He watched the firemen and the police car depart and the crowd of spectators break up and head for home. Only when the last human had gone and the parking lot lay gleaming under its all-night lights did he step out, a tiny, limping shadow on the vast field of cement. He went across to the spot where the kits had been, sniffing here and there.

“Where are you guys?” he whispered. “Now's the time to show your stuff. If you're here, come out. You can come out now.”

A lone dog bayed in a nearby yard. A chilly wind blew across the parking lot, rattling the branches of the little forest. Through the trees, Shredder heard a truck horn's mournful hoot out on the highway. From the kits, there was no answer.

The old cat put his head down and limped away. As he went, a black despair spread through him, and the whole of his life seemed to rise before his eyes. He saw the careless streets of New Orleans and the treacherous river barges. He saw the door of a bus baggage compartment close on him with a slam. He felt the angry, beating sticks of AnCon's officers and the fire hose's blast, and it seemed to him that the world had no place for him, that he was doomed always to live hungry and alone, cast out along the highway like a useless piece of trash.

Shredder began to run. Faster he went, faster and faster, until the hot glare of the parking lot was left behind and he was deep in the dark bushy arms of the forest.

 

SCENE:
Early the next morning (5
A.M
.) at Mayor Blunt's Potterberg home. His Honor is jolted awake in bed by a ringing telephone. He answers to find Chief of Staff Farley on the line.

 

MAYOR BLUNT. Uff?

FARLEY. Mayor? Mayor, is that you?

MAYOR. Ump!

FARLEY. Sorry to wake you, sir. There's been an incident. I thought you might want to know so you'll be ready for the television reporters this morn—

MAYOR. (
Still half asleep.
) Oog grumph!

FARLEY. Yes, sir, I know it's early. There's been an incident with a few cats. Well, a lot of cats, actually. Out in that shopping center by the highway. They came from the woods there. A big fight at the Dumpsters.

MAYOR. Awk!

FARLEY. Yes, people were frightened. We've had complaints. It's all right now. Animal Control did its job. But we need to keep a handle on the press. They'll be raising issues of rampant rabies, roving wildcats, town leadership asleep at the helm.

MAYOR. Glickenclopencope!

FARLEY. What's that, Mayor? I didn't quite catch…

MAYOR. GLICKENCLOPENCOPE!

FARLEY. Of course, sir. Understood. Your leadership
never
sleeps. You're on top of everything 24/7, 7/52, and 12/1. What I was thinking was, this might be a good time to announce your new exit ramp plan. That woods demolition crew can be ready to go at the end of this week. You could kill two birds with one…

MAYOR. (
Yawning
) Ugoocatskulldone.

FARLEY.
What?
Oh…haw, haw, that's a good one. Two
cats
with one stone. Right. Don't worry, we'll get rid of the little pests. They won't know what hit 'em. I'll give the order to proceed, let you get back to your rest. You want to be ready for the TV reporters in the morning. Not to mention the camera crew and the
Potterberg Evening News
and a conference call with the National Guard…

 

(Farley jabbers on. The mayor's eyelids flutter and close. He begins to snore, a low rumble that grows into a thunderous roar, as the scene fades.)

A
s dawn broke in the little forest, a long roll of thunder echoed ominously through the air. The wild creatures who lived there glanced up in alarm. A storm was coming. A bad one! Though it seemed still some way off, the animals started to prepare.

They sent warning calls to their neighbors, gathered their young, stockpiled food and began to burrow into thickets or the hollows of rotted logs. Above, in the trees, the birds also were on guard, crying to each other in shrill voices and making for shelter in the dense groves of pine.

Only out on the highway were there no calls of alarm. The cats lying in wait for breakfast cared nothing for each other or the weather. The roar of wheels was in their ears. The wind from passing cars flattened the fur against their heads. Who could watch the sky when a bulging bag of sausage biscuits might land at any moment in the center lane? Everyone for himself, that was the rule out here, and those who forgot it would lose out to those who knew better.

About mid-morning, as dark clouds moved closer, the lean, rectangular form of a cereal box slid out of the woods. It made its way toward the highway's edge, halting at a place where a particularly ratty-looking tail could be seen sticking out of a clump of weeds.

“Murray the Claw! Is that you?”

“Yeah, it's me. Whadya want, a Coco Pop in the nose? Ha, ha, ha.”

Khalia Koo gazed at him with extreme dislike. Whatever sympathy she might have felt for Murray's mutilated paws was always quickly erased by his sneering attitude.

“I'm looking for my kittens-ss,” she told him. “They didn't come home last night. Any sign of them here?”

Murray turned his furry bulk around to face her. He gave another guffaw.

“AnCon caught 'em,” he said. “At the Dumpsters. We all saw it. Those liddle miracles got the sack. I say good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“They didn't run,” added Jolly Roger, appearing from a nearby bush with a savage smile. He and Murray had formed an alliance of sorts. It was based on their mutual dislike of all kittens everywhere, especially highway drop-offs who pretended to be special.

“Your kits sat blinking like morons in the path of certain destruction,” Jolly Roger went on. “What could anyone do?”

“You could've tried to ss-save them,” Khalia Koo hissed, sounding more upset than one might expect of a cold-blooded business-cat. “Where's Shredder?”

“Holed up somewhere. Not speaking to no one.” Murray snickered again. “He lost his bet in the end, that's for sure. Nobody's likely to set eyes on those liddle twids again.”

Khalia felt a sudden, powerful urge to sink her teeth into Murray's back. She was a civilized cat, though, who believed in higher standards of behavior. Besides, she realized that Murray was right. Sad as it was, the kits were most likely history. Their small miraculous lives had come and gone like rays of sun on a rainy day. Under the cereal box, she allowed herself a small, damp sniff. Then she pulled herself together.

“Why are you hanging around with this-ss one-clawed weas-ssel,” she hissed at Jolly Roger. “He'll just get you into trouble. Come on back to the farm with me. We've got work to do.”

“Not me. I quit,” the yellow cat snapped. “I'm eating better out here on the road and getting more respect. You and your rat business can go to the moon for all I care!” He turned his back on her and refused to budge.

Khalia Koo went home alone with a dark and friendless feeling. Even after the storm dwindled into light rain and the sun came out in a golden glow, she huddled inside her kitchen. It wasn't only that Jolly Roger had turned against her. Without the kits running around, getting underfoot, the whole house seemed suddenly so cold and empty.

 

K
HALIA WASN'T THE ONLY
one to notice the kittens' absence. At the rat farm that afternoon, the cat workers were moody. They'd heard about the kits' capture and kept glancing toward their old pen, as if they expected the little ones to show up anyway.

All that day, they watched for them, and the next day and the next. When, after a week, it became clear that no further miracles were at hand and the kits were truly lost, the workers became sullen and bad-tempered. Their foul vocabularies returned. They scratched and fought among themselves. No one bothered to wash up anymore and rat-gobbling rose to heights of gluttony never seen before at the farm.

As if this weren't enough, even the rats went into a gray funk. They lay on the wiry bottoms of their cages, clamped their mouths shut and refused to eat. Within days they became so thin that pet food production was brought to a halt. There was no work to be done anymore. Khalia Koo was forced to let her cat crew go. One by one, the cats slunk away toward the highway or to the Dumpsters, followed shortly by droves of rats, which, in their new scrawniness, were able to slip through the wires of their cages and escape.

So the once-thriving rat farm was deserted.

Shredder, arriving at the farm one morning several days later, found Khalia Koo perched on the roof of one of her own rat cages, surveying her ruined business through the dusty mesh of an empty potato sack.

“Where've you been?” she called to him. “Hiding out, I hear. A lot of help you are in the face of disaster!”

She turned her back angrily on him.

The old cat climbed up beside her. His coat was ragged and thick with mud. His whiskers were frayed. He looked exhausted.

“I wasn't hiding. I was traveling. I've been to The Shelter.”

“The SSS-Shelter!” Khalia glanced around. No one she knew and no one she'd ever heard of had made the trip downtown to The Shelter. The stranglehold of highways around Potterberg guaranteed death to all who tried to enter on foot.

“Why did you go there?”

“To look for the kits.”

“To rescue them, I suppose. What a harebrained idea.”

Shredder nodded and hung his head. “I was hoping I might at least talk to them, through the walls or something. I couldn't stand the thought of them locked up alone.” Shredder's voice began to tremble. “Shut away in that place for weeks and weeks with no one to help…no one, no one…” He broke down and couldn't go on.

Khalia's heart went out to him. She knew he was remembering his own loneliness and the terrifying journey in the baggage compartment.

“Did you find them?” she asked gently.

Shredder shook his head. “They weren't there. I went over every one of the AnCon vehicles, double-checked every door into the place. The kits never made it inside. If they had, I'd have smelled them.”

“So, where are they?”

“Gone. Lost. AnCon must've gotten rid of them on the way.”

“Gotten rid of them! How?”

“Better not to think of that.”

There was a long silence during which both cats thought of it anyway.

“Well, ss-so much for your miracles-ss,” Khalia hissed bitterly at last.

“The kits' luck finally ran out,” Shredder had to agree.

“I always-ss knew it would. Jus-ss-st a matter of time.”

“Such tiny things. I don't know why I put my hopes on them.”

“They ss-seemed to be doing okay for a while. I was kind of hopeful myself,” Khalia admitted.

“We tried to look after them.”

“We did.”

“They were too young, that's all. Too innocent. They didn't stand a chance in this rotten place.”

“None of us does, when you think about it,” Khalia couldn't help blurting out. “Here we are, cornered, in this tiny patch of woods, surrounded on all sides by asphalt and cement. It won't last, you can bet. It never does for cats like us. The world will catch up and chase us out again.”

She had hardly finished speaking when, as if to underline the truth of her words, a frightening roar rose from the direction of the shopping center parking lot. Both cats leapt to their feet. A huge bulldozer hove into view, smashing through the trees and squashing bushes left and right. Behind it, a team of long-stemmed, beetle-browed humans advanced on foot, making directly for them. The two cats had only moments to evacuate to a nearby oak before the machine had flattened the rat cages and proceeded to carve a red-brown swath of newly turned earth across Khalia Koo's farm.

The noise was hideous. Sound waves echoed through the forest, sending flocks of birds spiraling upward into the sky and small animals scooting underground.

Khalia and Shredder clung to their tree in terror while the bulldozer plowed through a stone wall and, continuing on, headed for an innocent clump of blue flowers nestled in a clearing beyond. Shredder shut his eyes. It was too awful to watch. Khalia, however, adjusted the potato sack on her head and sharpened her vision.

Blue flowers?

She couldn't remember noticing such a clump on her property before. That color—where had she seen it?—a sort of silvery blue, as of early-morning mist rising off a pond.

“Shredder, it's the kits! Look, in the field.”

Shredder's eyes flew open.

They were there, all three of them, huddled in their usual mound, giving off a more powerful radiance than usual, a shine that deepened, it seemed to Shredder, as the bulldozer rumbled toward them.

The machine's heavy treads crushed the forest floor. Its big shovel plowed up the earth. The kits were beyond rescue. Once more they cowered in the path of death. Once again, Shredder cringed in horror. And then, at the very last second, an amazing thing happened.

A clanking sound came from the bulldozer's motor and its body began to shake. Its pace slowed and changed to a lurching wobble. With an earsplitting shriek, the machine came to a halt. A man stepped out and kicked one of the treads.

Khalia Koo gave a hiss of astonishment.

“Did you ss-see that? It bus-ss-sted!”

“I saw it.”

“Right in front of the kits. They're ss-saved.”

“They seem to be.” Shredder felt quivery with relief.

“How did that happen? It's a miracle! If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to think…” Khalia glanced upward suspiciously but the sky was as unrevealing as ever.

“Still, it makes you wonder,” she murmured to herself, “if Mother Nature herself is watching out for them. But why would that be? They're only common kittens!”

Shredder wasn't listening. He was climbing backward as fast as possible down the oak's trunk. Khalia Koo tried to climb after him. The potato sack snagged and slowed her down. Such a bother, these disguises! There were times when she was tempted to throw them off and show her real face, shocking as it might be.

In the distance, she spied Shredder's old cat figure leaping a stone wall with amazing vigor. On he went, wild with joy, scampering through bushes, galloping past the bulldozer, making headlong for the beautiful blue flowers in the field.