Free Highway Cats by Janet Taylor Lisle

THOSE KIDDENS AGAIN !” Murray the Claw growled to Jolly Roger. The two were watching the victory parade from one of the fallen timbers of the old barn. “Look at them riding around like royalty in a coach. If you want my opinion, everybody in this forest is being taken to the cleaners. They’ve fallen in headfirst and are going down the drain. Their noses are getting skinned, their fur is being fleeced, they’ve swallowed hook, line and sinker and now they’re headed for the soup.”
    No one knew more ways to describe life’s tricks and treacheries than Murray the Claw, probably because he’d suffered more than most in his time. He looked around for Jolly Roger after making this dark prediction, but Roger was nowhere to be seen. A moment later, as Murray scowled down on the celebration below, he caught sight of the yellow cat sidling up to the kits with a greasy grin.
    â€œWhy, you double-crossing road rat!” Murray exclaimed. “You’ve gone and joined up with those nidwid phonies.”
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    Potterberg Evening News
    CEMETERY PHANTOMS STRIKE AGAIN!
    F or the second time in a week, a team of road builders has been set upon and terrorized by ghostly attackers. The assault occurred as workers once again approached an old cemetery that lies in the path of an access road being constructed to the Potterberg Shopping Center. Several victims reported that a massive field of what appeared to be roadside litter rose up to confront them as they came toward the graveyard.
    â€œWe couldn’t believe it,” said Jim King, project foreman. “There was howling first, then a bunch of eerie screams. Then we saw a tidal wave of trash coming at us, steaming and stinking to high heaven. And the scary thing was it had eyes, hundreds of eyes! We got out of there fast.”
    â€œIf you ask me, it was spirits of the dead sending us a message,” added Larry Turpin, who twisted an ankle during the retreat. “We shouldn’t be building a road through there. That’s old Potter land, and it’s their graves we’re bothering.”
    Town officials, including Mayor Blunt, played down the comments.
    â€œWhat we’ve got here is a childish case of overactive imagination,” Blunt told reporters. “There are no ghosts in that place. My guess is the wind blew some trash up from the highway and scared a few folks. My intention is to replace that road crew with one that can finish the job. The road is going through!”
    Opposition to the access road is gaining strength, however, and with the election only a week a way, some residents seem ready to vote against the mayor if he doesn’t take the matter more seriously.

CHAPTER NINE
    T hat night, a spring rainstorm blew through the forest. In the cemetery at the top of the hill, the cats took cover. The wind whipped between the gravestones like a ghostly broom, sweeping up the litter of trash left lying there. Down the hill the rubbish flew, back to the highway, where the wheels of passing vehicles soon mashed it to a papery pulp. No evidence remained of Kahlia Koo’s ingenious trash disguises.
    When the cats woke in the morning, they found the cemetery tidied up corner to corner and sparkling in the sun. The air had a dazzling freshness to it. The chirp of songbirds came from the trees overhead. During the night, several flocks had flown in to shelter in the lower branches. And this was just the first flutter of woodland life that now began to return to the forest.

    Soon animals of all kinds could be seen slipping back to their old territories. A busload of commuters on the highway witnessed the homecoming of the red fox, joined now by a mate, as both scampered across the traffic lanes. A little later, seven deer made the sprint in safety. A pair of raccoons rose from a culvert near the overpass and waddled with low-slung determination down the shoulder of the road.
    Something was calling from the little