Highway Cats Read Free Page B

miracle.”
    â€œA miracle? Rat-wash!” Khalia Koo laughed. She’d heard the story of the kits’ amazing crossing but didn’t give it much credit. “These kits had blind luck, that’s all. They’re no more ss-special than anyone els-sse.”
    Shredder twitched his grizzled tail. “Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. All I’m saying is, what happened out there wasn’t usual. They were goners, and then in one blink they were safe. Ask Murray the Claw—he saw the whole thing.”
    Perhaps she did consult Murray because, later, the sharp eyes of a cottage cheese container could be seen examining the kits from behind a tree. That night, Khalia Koo was careful not to roll too hard on them in her pillow. Next morning, she gave them a sweet-and-sour shrimp that Jolly Roger had unearthed in one of the Dumpsters. It was old and smelly, but the kits gobbled it up.
    When Shredder went by again at the end of the week, the kittens had put on weight. They didn’t look too bad, he noticed; a little sad, maybe, from being tossed out so suddenly on their own. They weren’t complainers, though, like some. Shredder admired that. He wasn’t a complainer either.
    â€œWhere are you guys from?” he asked, leaning over their pen in a friendly way that wasn’t his usual style. It had been a long time since he’d been near any kittens.
    They couldn’t answer, of course. They were still too young. They recognized him from the highway, though, and gazed at him with such eager, trusting eyes that he glanced away in embarrassment.
    â€œDon’t look at me like that. There’s nothing more I can do,” he growled, and went off into the woods determined to put them out of his mind.
    That evening, though, crouched at the highway’s windy edge, Shredder found his thoughts circling back to the kittens with a strange feeling of…was it warmth ? That would never do! He flicked his tail fiercely and turned back to the wind and the roar of traffic.
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    K HALIA K OO’S RAT FARM was the only cat-owned business for miles around. Most highway cats found it necessary to work for her from time to time, when pickings at the Dumpsters froze up or the highway was rained out. The kits hadn’t been at the farm very long before their arrival was noticed and began to stir up talk. After all, every cat in those woods had personal dealings with Interstate 95. Like a powerful river, it flowed down the center of their lives, sometimes giving, sometimes taking away, delivering food and comfort one day, sudden death the next. Among the highway cats, close calls were proof of courage and something to boast about.
    â€œI survived an oil truck going seventy-five miles an hour.”
    â€œWell, I outran a horse van and only lost three whiskers.”
    â€œA forty-foot camper went right over me in the center lane! I jumped up on its tailpipe and took a ride!”
    â€œThat’s impossible! Campers don’t have tailpipes.”
    â€œWell, this one did!”
    â€œLiar!”
    â€œBonehead!”
    â€œFur ball!”
    â€œToad!”
    Here the conversation would usually disintegrate into an exchange of claws and teeth.
    The kits’ crossing sent a ripple of excitement through the cat community. Never had an entire litter of kittens, tiny infants, no less, been so fortunate as to come across together, without injury, when all hope was dashed and rescue seemed impossible. Who were the little survivors? Everyone wanted to know. How did they get so lucky?
    Shredder had an answer to that. “It wasn’t luck. It was a miracle!” he declared to anyone who would listen. “If you’d been there, you’d have seen. These kittens are something special. There’s no other way to explain it.”
    Of course, there was another way. Murray the Claw, still angry about losing his bet, was against all miracles. Holding to his theory of