Trapped!

by Peg Kehret

  Catfight

  Hogman swore and struggled to position the gun. Pete bit the man’s arm again, sinking his teeth in farther this time. The man yelped and jerked away, loosening his grasp on Pete’s front legs.

  With his front paws finally free, Pete clawed at the man’s face, leaving deep scratches on both cheeks. The man grabbed Pete around the middle, shoved him into the crook of his arm, and squeezed so hard that Pete thought he might break in two.

  The man raised the gun.

  Pete thrust his hind foot toward the gun, hoping to spoil the man’s aim. His foot came down on the trigger.

  BANG!

  The sound exploded, echoing through the forest.

  TRAPPED

  OTHER BOOKS BY PEG KEHRET

  Abduction!

  Cages

  Danger at the Fair

  Don’t Tell Anyone

  Earthquake Terror

  The Ghost’s Grave

  Horror at the Haunted House

  I’m Not Who You Think I Am

  Night of Fear

  Nightmare Mountain

  Searching for Candlestick Park

  Sisters Long Ago

  Spy Cat

  The Stranger Next Door

  Terror at the Zoo

  PEG KEHRET

  AND PETE THE CAT

  TRAPPED

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008

  Copyright © Peg Kehret, 2006

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DUTTON EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Kehret, Peg. Trapped! / Peg Kehret and Pete the Cat.—1st ed. p. cm.

  Summary: When his owner, Alex, finds an illegal animal trap in the woods, Pete the cat faces grave danger as he tries to help his human friends find the culprit who set the trap.

  [1. Trapping—Fiction. 2. Cats—Fiction.]

  I. Title

  PZ7.K2518Tra 2006

  [Fic]—dc22 2005032962

  Puffin Books ISBN: 978-1-101-66178-9

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  For Rosanne Lauer,

  my editor and friend for twenty years

  —P.K.

  For all the shelters that help stray cats

  —PETE

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  A Note from Peg Kehret:

  A Note from Pete The Cat:

  Prologue

  I am Pete the cat, co-author of this book. For some reason, my publisher thinks there should be a note here at the beginning to explain why a cat has written a book. If you ask me, no explanation is necessary, but nobody asked me. People never do. The humans think they are the ones in charge; we cats know better.

  This is the third book that my person, Peg, and I have written together, and we used the same format as before. My parts are in italics; hers are not. In case you haven’t read them, the other two books are THE STRANGER NEXT DOOR and SPY CAT. Peg says it’s shameless to promote the first two books by listing them here, but I say if you haven’t read them you’ve missed out on some good reading, and I’m only doing you a favor.

  There is a fine cat hero in all three books. He is clever, courageous, and capable. If you want to describe him, remember the three C’s. He’s also exceptionally handsome. His name is Pete.

  I told Pete that characters in novels are not supposed to be real, but he insists there’s no need to make up a pretend cat when the perfect feline is willing to be in the story. When I suggested he could add a fourth C—corpulent—to his description, he hissed and left the room.

  Pete IS a highly unusual cat. I chose him at the humane society because his papers said “good with children.” I wanted a cat who would enjoy having my grandchildren come to visit. The papers didn’t mention literary talent, so I had no idea that I was adopting a cat who could read and write.

  I can talk, too, but she hasn’t yet learned to understand me. Humans are not as bright as cats are.

  One day when I was working on a new book, I left my computer unattended for a few minutes. When I returned, I saw that half a page had been added to my story. The new part was signed: “by Pete the Cat.”

  At first I thought my husband had played a joke on me; then I remembered that Carl had gone to the hardware store. No one was home except my dog, Lucy, who was asleep on her pillow, my other cat, Molly, who was napping in her heated bed, and Pete, who was watching me from the other end of the library table that I use for a desk.

  No, I thought. Pete couldn’t have written this. It’s impossible!

  Ha! That proves you should not jump to conclusions. I not only wrote that section, but from then on I wrote two or three pages every night while Peg was asleep.

  It’s true. I began leaving the computer on at night, and when I’d get up in the morning, there would be new pages in the book, written from the cat’s point of view. Someone had changed the villain from an escaped convict to a pit bull, and someone had written new parts of the story. Of course, I never actually SAW Pete typing on the keyboard, but what other explanation is there? Everyone else in my family stays in bed all night; Pete’s the one who always prowls around in the dark.

  You don’t SEE lots of things that are real: electricity, cellphone signals, cats reading newspapers. I learned to read at the humane society, where a copy of the Wall Street Journal got put on the floor of my kennel every morning. The staff used that paper because the ink in the newsprint doesn’t smear off onto cat fur the way other papers do. I would have preferred to read CAT FANCY magazine, but I learned a lot from the Wall Street Journal.

  Once I realized how quickly I could write a book with Pete’s assistance, I was happy for his help. Writing is hard work, so it was wonderful to get up every morning and discover that the current book was two or three pages longer than when I went to bed. Aside from the
pit bull, the only parts I had to change were the lines where Pete described himself as lean or slender. Anybody with eyes can see that Pete is—as my veterinarian tactfully put it—“a bit on the pudgy side.”

  What does he know? Anyone who would stick a thermometer up a cat’s rear end is not to be trusted.

  Now that you know how we came to collaborate, I hope you’ll enjoy the book that Pete and I wrote together.

  Books. Plural. All of the books I wrote are good. Of course, the byline on all three books should say, “By Pete the Cat, with a little help from Peg Kehret.” I did most of the work.

  1

  Alex found the trap by accident.

  He and his best friend, Rocky, were in the woods, searching for deer antlers. The undergrowth in this part of the woods was thick, making it hard to walk. An hour into their hike, Alex stopped to take a drink from his water bottle. He wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve, his eyes scanning the area around him.

  “I’m starting to think it’s an urban legend that deer shed their antlers,” Rocky said. “If it were true, we would have found some by now.”

  “Dad swears it’s true,” Alex said. “He says if I keep looking, I’ll find some antlers. When I do, I’m going to mount them and hang them on my bedroom wall.”

  “Not me,” Rocky said. “I’m going to sell mine on eBay.”

  “Right. After we knock ourselves out looking for them, you don’t plan to keep them.” Rocky’s mom had started a home business selling items for people on eBay; now Rocky kept threatening to sell something good, such as his Game Boy or his bike, but he never did it.

  As Alex screwed the top back on the water bottle, he noticed a piece of metal on the forest floor ahead of him, caught in the shaft of sunlight that filtered through the trees.

  “Look over there,” Alex said. “What’s that?”

  Rocky came closer and looked where Alex was pointing. Both boys walked toward the rusty metal.

  “It’s a trap!” Alex said. “An animal trap.”

  “It’s set,” Rocky said. “Look. There’s a piece of meat in it.”

  The boys looked down at the strong steel trap, which was tucked between a huckleberry bush and a clump of salal. Flies buzzed around a piece of raw meat being used as bait.

  Alex gulped. “I hate to think what that trap would do to the foot of an animal that steps on it,” he said.

  “Is trapping still legal?” Rocky asked.

  “I don’t know. If it is, it shouldn’t be. That thing looks cruel, to me.”

  “Let’s set it off,” Rocky said, “so it can’t hurt an animal.”

  Alex found a sturdy branch, about two inches in diameter, that had blown to the ground. He poked the broken end of the branch into the trap until it touched the bait. Instantly, the two pieces of steel snapped shut, breaking the branch in half.

  Alex jumped back. He looked at the piece of branch that was still in his hand. “I’m glad that branch wasn’t the leg of a fox or a coyote,” he said.

  “Or a dog. What if we had brought Rufus with us?” The boys often took Rocky’s dog along when they went exploring, even though Rufus had only three legs. Since they had planned to hike farther than usual that day, they had left him home.

  “Be careful walking out of here,” Alex said. “There may be more than one trap.”

  Alex didn’t want to hunt for antlers any longer. The trap made the woods seem unsafe, and frightening. He could tell that Rocky was ready to go home, too. They didn’t even have to discuss it; they both just turned back the way they had come.

  After the boys retraced their path out of the woods, they hurried down the road toward home.

  When they turned the corner onto Valley View Drive, Alex’s younger brother, Benjie, waved at them from his “spy station” on the empty lot at the end of the block.

  “I saw you coming,” Benjie called. “I was using my binoculars to watch for flying green panthers, and I saw you instead. Did you find any antlers?”

  “No, but we found a trap.”

  Benjie’s eyes widened. “What kind of trap? A bear trap? Was there a bear in it? Did he growl and try to get out?”

  “There wasn’t a bear,” Alex said, “but there was meat in it, for bait. We used a big stick to make the trap go off so it won’t snap shut on an animal.”

  Benjie quickly gathered his spy kit and binoculars and went home with Alex and Rocky. Mr. and Mrs. Kendrill were sitting at the kitchen table with their checkbook, paying bills, when the boys arrived.

  Alex’s big white-and-brown cat, Pete, sat on the window ledge, watching the birds at the feeder. He jumped down and hid behind the couch when he heard Benjie’s footsteps pound across the porch. When Benjie was excited, which was often, he talked loudly and moved fast; Pete preferred to watch and listen from a safe place.

  Benjie rushed inside first. “Alex and Rocky found a humongous trap in the woods,” he said, “and they set it off with a big stick. I bet somebody’s trying to catch one of the flying green panthers so they can sell it to a circus.”

  “What kind of trap?” Mrs. Kendrill asked.

  “It was made of steel bands,” Alex said, “with a piece of meat inside. When we poked the stick at the meat, the trap clamped shut.”

  “It’s a cat trap!” Pete said. “I’ve heard of those. The humans who set them always claim they’re trying to catch coyotes or skunks, but the truth is they trap a lot of cats that way, including pet house cats. They catch dogs, too.” His tail swished angrily back and forth.

  “It was wicked-looking,” Rocky said. “It would do some serious damage to any animal that stepped in it.”

  “That sounds to me like one of those leghold traps,” Mr. Kendrill said. “They aren’t legal in this state anymore. There was an initiative on the ballot a few years back, and the public voted to outlaw leghold traps. Since then, there have been a few attempts at getting the state legislature to reinstate them, but, as far as I know, it hasn’t happened.”

  “I should hope not,” Pete said. “If cats could vote, those traps would not be legal, that’s for sure. Of course, if cats could vote, a lot of things would be better.”

  “If that kind of trap isn’t legal,” Mrs. Kendrill said, “maybe we should report this to the sheriff.”

  “Or the game warden,” Mr. Kendrill said. “Do you boys know exactly where the trap was? Could you find it again?”

  Alex and Rocky looked at each other. “It was way out in the woods,” Alex said, “but I think we could find it.”

  “This is one more reason why cats are superior to humans,” Pete said. “Cats never set traps—not even mousetraps. Cats never cheat or tell lies, either.”

  “I think there’s a Department of Fish and Wildlife that handles matters like this,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  “Is there a Department of Cats?” Pete asked. “Why should the fish and wildlife get their own government agency? Cats are more deserving of representation than trout or moose. Who decides these things? Probably the humans, who know the least about animals. Now if cats were in charge. . . .”

  “Alex,” Mrs. Kendrill said, “did you forget to feed Pete this morning? I can’t think with all that meowing.”

  “I’m not meowing,” Pete said. “I’m expressing my opinion about a serious matter.” It was exasperating. He could understand everything the humans said, but they had not yet learned to understand him. The only good part of the situation was that when he talked, they usually thought he was begging for food, which got his bowl refilled more often than it would be otherwise.

  “I fed him,” Alex said. “I think he’s excited because he can tell we’re upset.” He picked up Pete and stroked his fur.

  “Lizzy isn’t meowing,” Benjie said.

  Pete looked sadly at the black-and-tan-striped kitten that the Kendrills had adopted. It was one of the great disappointments of his life that Lizzy could only speak and understand Cat. Pete had tried to teach her what the humans were saying, but she had never caugh
t on. She didn’t know how to read, either.

  It would be terrible, Pete thought, to go through life unable to read a book or a newspaper. Lizzy couldn’t even look up words in the dictionary, which was one of Pete’s favorite pastimes. Pete was especially fond of words that began with the letters c-a-t. But Lizzy spent her days happily playing with catnip toys and napping in her basket, unaware of what she was missing.

  “Let’s tell Mrs. Sunburg what sort of trap you found and ask her advice,” Mrs. Kendrill suggested. “She’ll probably know who to call.”

  Pete purred, and snuggled close to Alex. He liked Mrs. Sunburg and her granddaughter, Mary, who lived next door. They were foster parents for an animal rescue group, and they always kept freeze-dried salmon treats on hand for visiting cats.

  “Good idea. We’ll go talk to her right now.” Alex put Pete down, then headed for the door with Rocky right behind him.

  “Wait for me,” said Benjie, who had one hand in the cookie jar. He quickly removed two snickerdoodles.

  “I’ll go with you,” Mr. Kendrill said. “I want to hear what she thinks.”

  “So do I,” Mrs. Kendrill said. “I don’t like the idea of you boys finding that trap. One of you could have stepped in it! And who knows how many more of them there are.”

  When his family went out the door to head toward the neighbors’ house, Pete slipped out, too, and followed them across the grass. He wanted to hear what Mrs. Sunburg had to say about trapping. A well-informed cat, Pete thought, is a safer cat.

  2

  Alex and Rocky described what they’d found, and drew a sketch of it.

  “That’s a leghold trap,” Mrs. Sunburg said. “They’re horrible. They clamp down on the animal’s leg and then—well, you don’t want to hear the details. It makes me sick to think about it.”

  “Is that kind of trap legal?” Alex asked.

  “Not in this state. The voters outlawed them three years ago. It was about time, if you ask me. More than eighty other countries around the world have banned leghold traps entirely.”