Highway Cats Read Free

the right direction. It didn’t help. They turned back the moment he stepped away, sending out a pathetic chorus of mews.
    â€œDon’t follow me! Go that way,” Shredder urged them, pointing one more time. The hour had come for him to move up the expressway to look for early-morning doughnuts near the overpass. “And stay away from that road!” he called as he padded out of sight.
    It might seem heartless to some, leaving senseless babies on a roadside like that, but things worked differently out here by the highway. Shredder knew that he had already done more than most cats would in this outcast place. Everyone for himself—that was the only law here. The faster you learned it, the more chance you had to survive.

CHAPTER TWO
    T he dump Shredder had pointed the kits toward wasn’t the old-fashioned kind of fiery heap reeking of smoke on the edge of town. It was a more-modern place, a group of three enormous, wide-open Dumpsters parked off to one side of the very same thriving shopping center Mayor Blunt had looked down on from his lofty office.
    Occupying quarters in this shopping center were, among other stores, Charlotte’s Web House (a home computer store), The Three-Minute Egg Roll (a Chinese fast food place), O Solo Mealo (an Italian pizza parlor), and Grill Me, Honey! (a cowboy-style rib house), all in profitable operation serving customers until late into the night. As a result, there was always an interesting selection of half-chewed egg rolls, rancid meatballs and mildewed ribs lying around in the Dumpsters. On the strength of this, and with the added support of the interstate’s road food, a few dozen cats had taken up residence in an overlooked stretch of woods that lay between the shopping center and the highway.

    They were a scrawny, scruffy bunch, the kind of cats that couldn’t get along in civilized society and now, with the new Dumpsters, didn’t have to anymore. Some were runaways who’d been kicked around once too often by their owners. Others had been transported to strange towns and abandoned or left behind when their families moved to the city. That was fine with them. They didn’t need families anymore. They’d grown used to living outside on their own. The idea of coming home every night to an overheated kitchen and a bowl of store-bought cat pellets wasn’t high on their list of priorities.
    Shredder looked tough, but he was an old cat now with an old cat’s sadder and deeper thoughts. Compared to Murray the Claw and the rest of the highway bunch, he wasn’t much of a ruffian anymore. The foul language that came out of the mouths of these cats was shocking and unprintable. The battles they fought against each other were savage. The rotten stuff they ate and the way they ate it was revolting beyond words, and since they’d long ago stopped washing up like proper cats, they were malodorous, which means they stank. For the most part, they were avoided by humans and animals alike, left to occupy their patch of forest in lowlife peace.
    Until they broke the peace, that is. Then there was Animal Control. From time to time AnCon officers were called in to sweep across the parking lot and stop fights. They arrested stragglers, bagged escapees, broke up the biggest brawls with fire hoses and attempted to stamp down the bushes and undergrowth where many cats made their homes. Those who were caught were sent straight to The Shelter, never to return as far as anyone knew.
    â€œWhat happens there?” a young stray dared to ask one time.
    â€œCurtains is what happens,” Murray the Claw had growled. “The lights go out.”
    â€œYou mean…?”
    â€œThad’s right. And no applause neither.”
    This was the frightening, grown-up world the kits were about to enter, if they ever smartened up enough to figure out where the Dumpsters were. Now they seemed too exhausted to be hungry. After old Shredder had gone, they