Bailey's Story Read Online Free

strange animal I’d smelled on the boy’s clothes, and on Mom’s, and on the carpets that covered the floor.
    â€œBailey, I want you to meet Smokey the cat,” Ethan said not long after I’d gotten my new name.
    He carried me back inside the house, and, holding me tightly against his chest, he turned so that I could see an animal not much bigger than I was, sitting in the middle of the floor. He was covered in brown and gray fur and had tiny ears that looked like they’d be fun to bite. His eyes grew wide and dark when he spotted me.
    So this was a cat, was it?
    I struggled to get down to play with this new friend, but Ethan held me tight.
    â€œSmokey, this is Bailey,” he said.
    Slowly, he bent over to place me on the floor. I ran to Smokey. This new home not only had a boy, it had something furry and my size to chase and wrestle with! Things just could not get better!
    My tongue was out to give my new friend a greeting, but he pulled back his lips to show a set of teeth that were tiny but deadly sharp. Then he arched his back so that suddenly he looked a lot bigger. He let out a loud, sharp hiss. That didn’t look friendly at all!
    But at the same time, he was wagging his tail. I skidded to a stop, puzzled. Did this cat want to play or not?
    That tail puffed up wide as every single hair on it stiffened, and Smokey stopped wagging it and let it rise slowly straight up in the air. I tried to inch in and give him a friendly sniff right under the tail, to show him I meant no harm. But he must not have gotten the message, because he jumped away and spat at me, lifting a paw with very sharp claws spread wide.
    â€œAw, Smokey, be a nice cat. Be a nice cat,” Ethan coaxed.
    Smokey glared at Ethan. I gave his face a warm lick, still trying to be as friendly as I could, but all I got back was a bat on the nose from those sharp claws.
    Okay, well, that was that. I was more than ready to play with Smokey whenever he wanted, but I had more important things to worry about than a snotty cat. I had a new family to get to know and a new home to explore.
    The boy lived in a small room full of wonderful toys, very good for chewing. Mom and Dad shared a room that had no toys at all. One small white room had a big bowl of water I could drink from, if I climbed into it. There weren’t any toys there, either, unless you counted the roll of thin paper mounted on a wall. Once I got my teeth in some of that, I could pull it off in one long train that wound around me and followed me through the halls. That was fun, at least the first few times.
    But I liked other rooms better, especially the one that smelled like food. I couldn’t get at the food, though, which was frustrating. It was all locked up behind doors that I didn’t know how to open.
    Each time I needed to squat and relieve myself, everybody in my new family went crazy, scooping me up and racing out the door with me, plopping me down in the grass and watching me carefully until I’d recovered from the shock and could go about my business. When I did, they’d praise me so much that I wondered if this was why they’d brought me home. It seemed like what they were most interested in.
    The bizarre thing was, though, that if I did the very same thing on the carpets inside the house, nobody praised me at all! And if I squatted on some papers that they’d put down on the floor for me to rip up, I’d get a bit of praise—but not too much.
    It was all very bewildering.
    â€œNo!” Mom or Ethan would shout when I wet the floor. “Good boy!” they’d sing when I peed in the grass. “Okay, that’s good,” they’d say when I left a puddle on the papers. I could not understand what in the world was wrong with them.
    Mom laughed at me when I wrestled with Ethan’s socks, and she bent down to rub my ears when I fell asleep in a patch of sunlight. Dad didn’t pay me much attention, although