Highway Cats by Janet Taylor Lisle

around.
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œStop 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