Highway Cats by Janet Taylor Lisle Read Free Book Online Page B

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.

CHAPTER SIX
    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