Highway Cats (5 page)

N
ews of the kits' return traveled around the little forest with tremendous speed. In a matter of hours, every cat had heard about it. That night, after the road crew had gone, dozens made their way to Khalia Koo's ruined rat farm for a firsthand view.

There, beneath the light of a full moon, they came across the silent hulk of the bulldozer and saw the red gash of its treads through the woods. The crushed rat cages were terrifying to behold. What a good thing the rats hadn't still been inside. No one would wish such an end on even a rat!

It was the kittens who were the most astounding, though. They looked just as they always had, as tiny and inseparable, as playful and unknowing. Wherever they had been these past weeks, it had left no mark on them. In high spirits, they raced around Shredder, overjoyed at their reunion and wanting to make up for lost time.

On his side, Shredder brimmed over with happiness, his old cat face shining bright as the moon itself in the night shadows under the trees. Every cat there felt lifted by the sight. A mood of celebration filled the air, as if some important victory had been won, which in a way it had. For once again the kits had survived. They'd done the impossible, beaten the odds. A wary excitement spread through the crowd of cats, a sense that rules had been broken and patterns long in force disturbed.

What did it mean? No cat could answer that. A few gazed skyward as Khalia Koo had done, in case some ghostly paw should be there stirring the heavens into new configurations. None was, at least none that a scruffy, beaten-down highway cat could at that moment detect.

Certainly nothing had changed out on Interstate 95, where the evening rush hour was under way as usual. Streams of vehicles sped past churning up an unbreathable mix of sand and dirt. Tractor-trailers roared by like tornados, crushing whatever was in their paths. Motors whined, gears ground, fumes rose.

Behind a roadside clump of weeds, Murray the Claw and Jolly Roger crouched together, wiping the grit from their eyes and watching for food.

“I thought you said the little dopes were bagged,” Jolly Roger complained during a lull in the traffic. They'd just come from spying on the happy celebration in the woods.

“They were! You saw it too,” Murray hissed in reply.

“So, what are they doing back? It's embarrassing. They must have somehow got away from AnCon.”

“Dumb twids like them? They couldn't get out of a mud puddle if they fell in.”

“They must've had help again.”

“They're frauds,” Murray growled. “Anyone with half a brain could see it. Something fishy's going on, mark my words. I wouldn't trust them.”

“They definitely don't act like any real kittens I've ever seen,” Jolly Roger agreed. “Did you watch them trying to run?”

“They can't pounce either. Can't mew right. Can't talk, that's for sure. Haw, there's not one thing special about them. They can't do anything!”

“But…somehow they stopped that bulldozer in its tracks.” A note of awe had entered Jolly Roger's voice.

“That wasn't them!” Murray exploded. “Don't you start thinking like a moron. What's come over this woods? We used to know the score around here and be able to deal with it. Now we're being brainwashed by a bunch of nursery school drop-offs? It's sad, sad, but you know what? It won't matter in the end.”

“It won't?”

“No.” Murray leaned over and whispered in Jolly Roger's ear. “I know a secret!”

“What?”

“This forest is dead wood.”

“You mean…”

“That's right—we're scorched earth, headed for asphalt.”

“Asphalt! How do you know?”

Murray nodded wisely. “I've seen machines like that one in the field before. They mean one thing: a road is going through.”

“But the bulldozer broke down!”

“So? It'll get fixed. That dozer will be up and running by tomorrow, you watch. Nothing in the world can stop a road from going through once it's started. Not mountains or rivers, not prairies or deserts, not a jungle full of wild animals and certainly not a bunch of dopey kiddens.”

Jolly Roger wilted a bit after hearing this, as if he might have put some hope in the kits himself.

“How about heading up the road for breakfast?” he said, to change the subject. “The moon's going down. It'll be morning soon. We'll get the first pick of jelly doughnuts.”

Murray nodded. “Good idea! My favorite's raspberry. What's yours?”

“Peach yogurt,” Jolly Roger replied. “It just went on the menu at Hamburger Heaven. Supposed to thicken your hair.”

“Yogurt!” Murray shivered all over. “I'd rather eat glue!”

The two cats slouched off into the shadows.

 

I
F ONLY TIME WOULD STAND STILL
.

If only a full moon casting silvery light on a peaceful meadow in a forgotten woods could shine on forever, protecting it and its inhabitants from change.

If only night would never end and the sun would never rise on a highway racing with cars, over a shopping center opening its doors for another frantic day of business, on a bulldozer waiting for repair so that work could continue on an important access road.

This was the wish—the prayer, really—that Shredder found running through his head as he lay beside the sleeping kits in the lost graveyard on the hill.

He and Khalia had brought the kits there to rest after the evening's celebration. Now, as the moon sank down one side of the wood and rosy paws of sun began to creep up the other, Shredder watched over them, making sure no falling leaf or wandering beetle would disturb them. Miraculous they might be, but they were also tiny kittens, fragile and unaware. Shredder wanted more than anything to keep them safe.

Nearby, curled up in various bushes and hollows between the gravestones, other highway cats slept, their dirty tails and broken whiskers giving evidence of their hard lives.

Why were they here? Because they couldn't keep away. Like hungry birds drawn to a springtime feeder, they were staying close to the kits. The little ones' strange sparkly sheen was now visible to all. Through the dark it glowed, an eerie, otherworldly beacon that seemed to those watching no more or less than the glimmer of hope.

Shredder sighed. The truth was, the future looked grim. An impossible series of miracles would be necessary to save their bit of forest. The old cat knew the signs of road-building as well as Murray the Claw. He knew the power of its machinery and the force of will behind it. Somewhere in the city, high up in one of the office buildings Shredder had passed on his recent journey, a plot had been hatched. A script had been written that could not be unwritten. The stage had been set. Their wood would soon become another strip of roadside brush.

“What's-ss wrong?” Khalia Koo's hiss came suddenly from overhead. She was perched on the crumbling stone wall that ran around the graveyard.

“Nothing.”

“You shivered. I thought you might have heard something.”

“I was remembering another time, another place.” Shredder's voice trailed away. “There was a small house, a yard, miles of open land…”

“Your old home.”

“Yes. I still dream of it sometimes. I had a family once, you know, a bunch of little ones like these.” He curled his weathered tail more closely around the sleeping kits. “They've brought it all back, much as I've tried to forget.”

“I guess-ssed there was something like that in your past,” Khalia said. “I never did see you as a hard-bitten road cat.”

“Oh, I've been hard-bitten, all right. I've got the scars to prove it. But I never was as tough as I pretended to be. I've been scared most of the time. I didn't want this highway life. I got lost is what happened, and I couldn't go back.”

Khalia became silent, for this was exactly what had happened to her. Shredder's honesty pierced the wall she kept around her heart. Again she felt a desire to throw off her disguise and tell her true story.
“I was once a loved cat who had great beauty and many admirers,”
she would begin. But then what? How would she dare to show her real face? Her burns were so terrible. Shredder would shut his eyes and run.

A metallic shriek sounded from the clearing below, followed by the cough of an engine.

“They're going to fix it,” Khalia said. “They're working on it now.”

“Only a matter of time,” Shredder agreed.

“I guess it's back to the highway for us. We're being ss-shoved out again.”

The truth of this remark caught Shredder like a punch in the stomach: the unfairness of it, the careless crushing of small lives, the cringing along roadsides and hiding in weeds, choking on fumes and fighting for road food. It was too much to bear. No one, not even a highway cat, should have to live that way.

“No! I won't do it,” he muttered.

“Won't do what?”

“I won't go back out there. I'm too old.”

Khalia stared down at him.

“And the kits are too young,” Shredder went on wearily. “Miracles or not, they're unfit for the road. We're staying put. This will be our last stop.”

“But you can't stay here!” Khalia Koo jumped off the stone wall. “They're going to level this wood. If you think the kits will stop them, good luck is all I can say. This has gone far beyond what anyone can do.”

Shredder nodded his old head. “I know, but I'm tired. It's too late to start over. You go on and save yourself. I'll stay with the kits and take what comes. They're the only things I really care about now.”

Another wheeze rose from the forest below, followed by the piercing squeal of a motor revving up. Around them, the sleeping highway cats leapt to their feet.

In other parts of the wood, hundreds of birds and wild animals still dozing in the early morning sun also jerked awake. What was that? A storm was coming! All over the wood, warning calls went out and the age-old rustle of frantic preparations could be heard. Bad weather on the way! Get ready! Get ready!

Meanwhile, the three kittens slept on in the Potter graveyard, seemingly unaware of what was happening around them. Mounded together, their heads nestled on each others' backs and their paws curled beneath, they looked to Shredder like a silvery patch of forest floor, the kind of enchanted place a woodland makes when left alone, undisturbed. As the sound of falling trees and tearing turf came to his ears from below, the old cat stayed beside the kittens, drawing warmth from their small bodies and waiting for what was to come.

T
o those traveling by car on Interstate 95 that early spring morning, a strange sight now presented itself. From the woods along the highway, clusters of animals began to appear.

A mother skunk and her babies scuttled up the shoulder of the road. Two raccoons lumbered out of the brush, blinked at the passing traffic and scooted away toward the overpass.

Squirrels darted here and there, unable to hold a straight course but keeping generally to one side of the traffic. Not so a fox, who zipped like a red-tailed arrow between the cars, somehow managing to cross all four lanes of eastbound traffic before landing safely on the center median.

He was followed by five deer and a fawn leaping gracefully lane to lane, crossing the center strip without pause to take on the westbound lanes. Tires screeched. Startled motorists slowed and gaped through their windows. On the heels of the deer came the streaking fox again, dodging bravely between the cars, his slender jaw clenched in fright.

All that morning, animals came out of the little wood to hop, waddle, scamper, pad, skitter, leap and hustle along the eastbound lanes or to make desperate rushes across the highway. Overhead, birds also were evacuating. Hawks and owls, woodpeckers and starlings, robins and early-arriving swallows, even a family of migrating Canada geese flapped away to other sanctuaries, if any were to be had in that congested landscape.

The only animals not seen along the road, for once, were highway cats. And this was because, despite all of Khalia's warnings, most had refused to budge from the old cemetery. They were hunkered down amid the gravestones, sniffing the bulldozer's gritty fumes, listening to its mash and roar through the trees.

In the end, Khalia found that she couldn't leave either. If Shredder was staying, so would she! A strange stubbornness on this point had risen up inside her, though she was the last to see it for what it was. As the morning wore on, she remained, dozing, on the stone wall. Below her, Shredder had fallen into a sound snooze, exhausted from his night of watching over the kits, who continued their nap beside him.

Both cats awoke suddenly about mid-afternoon. All sound of machinery below had stopped. Silence broke like a long, peaceful sigh over the woods. In the distance, a hunting hawk's triumphant shriek pierced the air. From a closer place came the rustle of a small animal scurrying through weeds. Then, just as Shredder's ears had grown accustomed to the quiet, new vibrations rose from the ground. Footsteps. They moved steadily up the hill toward the graveyard. Someone was coming!

Perhaps the kits heard it too. They chose this moment to at last wake up, to sniff, stretch, and look sleepily around.

“Not now!” Shredder whispered to them. “Stay out of sight!”

He pushed their fuzzy heads down.

They didn't understand and pushed back. More dangerously, they decided to become playful. They began to wrestle with each other and to leap.

“Stop that!” Shredder hissed. “For your own good, lie down and be quiet.”

It was no use. The kits were now wide awake, and like all young things cooped up for too long, they were surging with energy. The closer the footsteps came, the rowdier they became. They twisted, heaved and squirmed to get away. There was only one thing to do: like a mother hen on her nest, Shredder sat on them. And just in time!

Three orange hard hats appeared not forty feet away, stamping through the grove of tall pine trees near the barn foundation. The cats hidden in the graveyard lowered their heads until only the glimmer of their eyes showed above the weeds. Not a tail twitched. Not a whisker flicked.

The hard-hats paused and glanced around in surprise. An old foundation? A field of crumbling gravestones? One worker brought out a square of paper and consulted it with a frown.

What a nuisance—no mention here of obstacles
, his expression announced. And also:
No time for this!

He waved the others forward. The men went to work pounding red pegs in a wide path across the middle of the cemetery. A roar came from the bulldozer below as it began to grind uphill. The access road was going through!

At this moment, a violent struggle erupted under Shredder. The kits churned furiously, mewed and squeaked, pushed and pried, and finally broke free by lifting the old cat's body completely off the ground. Who would have guessed they had such strength? They bolted from underneath him into the sun and rolled in a silly tumble through the gravestones to the very feet of the hard-hats, who leaned over for a closer look.

Shredder let out a howl, but it was too late. Hands were already reaching out, scooping up the tiny kittens, holding them high in the air. Beside him, Khalia Koo's eyes flashed sapphire through the potato sack mesh. In a second, she had jumped off the wall and was racing tooth and claw to the rescue. As she ran, the potato sack flapped and crackled around her and began to drag along the ground. Khalia pulled at it desperately, but the sack snagged on the branches of a small bush. For a moment, she was trapped and struggled to break free. Then, with a frantic hiss, she threw the sack off her head. When she leapt forward again, the cats watching in the graveyard caught their breaths. Under the sun's blazing spotlight, the ruined landscape of her face was plainly revealed. Ragged ridges and deep cracks, bald patches and fibrous scars were all that remained of her once-great beauty.

To her credit, Khalia never broke stride. On she went, strong and unflinching, and this produced an unforeseen result. The hard-hats took one look at the hideous creature bounding toward them and dropped the kits. They staggered back and turned to run. At this, Shredder jumped out with a frightful snarl. In a flash, the other highway cats rose from their hiding places to follow him. A savage swarm of fur-coated monsters catapulted out of the graveyard on the heels of the hard-hats, who yelled in terror and fled down the hill toward the parking lot. Even this wasn't far enough. On the men ran between the cars, to the Three-Minute Egg Roll, where they flung open the door and rushed inside.

What a charge! What a chase! What an amazing turnabout! Never had any cat there felt such a rush of excitement. It was as if they'd been living undercover for years and were suddenly set free to show their real selves. No one wanted to stop! They might have hurtled on into the jaws of death if Khalia's fierce command hadn't brought them to a halt at the edge of the parking lot. Just in time, the cats came to their senses and veered back into the forest. They made for the shelter of the cemetery in a joyful surge.

There was not one second to trade war stories. They were barely inside the old stone wall when footsteps could be heard coming up the hill again.

“Take cover!” Khalia warned. A minute later, a much larger group of hard-hats entered the graveyard and began to look around for what had frightened the first bunch. Once again, the cats hid in the weeds. So well did they make themselves invisible (this time even the kits were quiet as mice) that not a whisker or a tail was seen between the gravestones, and the men went away looking mystified and uneasy.

That afternoon, to the delight of the cats, the bulldozer at the bottom of the hill didn't start up again.

 

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