“Probably road debris,” I muttered to myself, adjusting the radio.
The scratching came again a few minutes later—light, uneven, almost like something tapping against metal. I turned the radio down and listened more carefully.
“Just the wind,” I said out loud.
Truck drivers learn not to stop for every strange sound. If you did, you’d spend half your life sitting on the shoulder of the road chasing ghosts. So I kept driving. An hour later I finally pulled into a small rest area to stretch my legs and grab a coffee from the vending machine. The place was quiet except for the hum of highway traffic in the distance and the flickering fluorescent lights over the parking lot.
As I climbed down from the cab, I heard the scratching again. This time it sounded weaker.
I walked around the truck slowly, expecting to find a loose panel or maybe a branch caught under the trailer. Instead, I noticed something small wedged between the back of the cab and the metal frame of the truck.
At first I thought it was a piece of cloth. Then it moved. It was a cat. A small gray cat with wide, terrified eyes and fur matted with dirt. She was wedged into the narrow gap behind the cab like she had crawled there for protection and then been too afraid to climb out again. Her body trembled violently as she stared up at me.
