The Ghost's Grave Read Online Free PDF

woods, its brown-and-tan-striped fur blending into the background.
    â€œHello, kitty.”
    The startled cat hurried away.
    I broke off a piece of cheese and dropped it out the window. I waited.
    Soon the cat returned, moving cautiously. He sniffed the cheese, then gulped it down.
    I tossed out another piece. The cat backed away from the tree house, looking up at the window. When I remained still, the cat edged forward again and gobbled up the cheese.
    The poor thing is starving, I thought. I broke the rest of my cheese into pieces and dropped them to the ground. The cat ate it all, then looked up as if hoping for more, but he didn’t meow again. I wondered why the cat had meowed in the first place. Had he smelled the cheese from so far away? Or had he smelled me and taken a chance that I would feed him?
    When the cheese was gone, the cat washed his whiskers, then turned and went into the woods. He walked slowly and looked back once before he vanished into the undergrowth.
    I put a bookmark in my book and laid the book on the floor beside the pillow. I closed the shutters on the windows, climbed down the ladder, and hurried home.
    The house smelled like chocolate. Aunt Ethel stood in the kitchen, frosting a layer cake.
    â€œThat smells wonderful,” I said.
    â€œIt’s your new Welcome cake. Did you see any deer?”
    â€œYes, and I saw a starving cat.”
    â€œFleas and mosquitoes! Not another stray.”
    â€œI fed him some of my cheese.”
    â€œOh, don’t do that again. Feed a stray cat, and it’ll hang around forever.”
    â€œHe was hungry.”
    â€œPlenty of mice in the woods.”
    â€œHe acted scared, and he didn’t have a collar on. Do you have anything I can feed him, like a can of tuna?”
    â€œNo. I don’t cotton much to cats. Florence was the one with the soft heart for critters—always feeding some stray cat or taking in a lost dog. People dump animals out here, you know. Put them right at the end of my driveway and hope they’ll live in the woods.”
    I wondered if someone had dumped a peacock.
    â€œWould you drive me to Carbon City?” I asked. “The Market might sell cat food.”
    Aunt Ethel swirled her knife through the frosting, smoothing it across the cake’s top. “Feeding that cat is not a good idea.”
    â€œMom says we should be kind to all creatures and help them when we can.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t be a kindness to make a cat dependent on you for its food. You’ll leave at summer’s end, and the cat will starve.”
    â€œBy then maybe I can find someone who wants to adopt him.”
    â€œI don’t want a cat coming around, bothering Florence.”
    I realized Aunt Ethel didn’t want to help the cat because she feared it would hurt the peacock.
    â€œI could feed it out by the tree house,” I said.
    â€œIt would follow you home.”
    I looked away, annoyed by her lack of caring. First she killed an innocent bat, and now she refused to help a starving cat. The Welcome cake looked delicious, but I couldn’t enjoy cake when the cat needed food. There had to be some way to help. “Is there a humane society or other group that rescues strays?” I asked.
    â€œWe tried to build an animal shelter once,” Aunt Ethel said, “so there’d be a good place to take the unwanted dogs and cats. Everyone got together—all the small towns around here—and we had a big auction. It was the most exciting event we ever had in these parts, let me tell you. Businesses donated expensive items for the auction—trips, and a new car, even two tickets to the World Series.”
    â€œWow! I’d like to win that.”
    â€œChildren held bake sales and car washes and put decorated collection cans in all the stores. Lots of folks contributed. Florence and I gave five hundred dollars, in memory of our parents. Altogether, thecommunity raised one hundred