Bailey's Story by W. Bruce Cameron

house.
    â€œSkunk!” Grandpa announced when I scratched at the back door to be let in. “Oh, you’re not coming in, Bailey!”
    Mom came to stand behind Grandpa on the other side of the door. “Bailey, did you get into a skunk? Ugh, you sure did!”
    Was that the name of the stinky cat creature in the woods? Skunk? Why was everyone just staring at me, not letting me in? I wanted to roll on the carpets and rub some of this awful smell off my fur.
    That didn’t happen, though. Instead, the boy came out, wrinkling his nose. He took me around to the side of the yard, where he wet me down with a hose. When I tried to lick his face, he pushed me away. “Yuck, Bailey. Skunk!” he said. His voice was so stern that I understood: the skunk had been bad.
    Then he held my collar while Grandpa showed up with a basket of tomatoes from the garden. Together, Grandpa and the boy squished the soft, warm tomatoes all over me, rubbing the tart-smelling juice into my fur.
    What a thing to do! I shook myself, sending water and juice and tomato pulp flying. “Bailey!” the boy yelped, and Grandpa laughed and groaned at the same time. “He needs a bath now,” the old man said.

    A bath? What was that? I couldn’t remember. Was it something to eat? That would help to make up for all this ridiculous treatment!
    But it turned out that a bath wasn’t something to eat. Mom brought out some soap that smelled a little bit (not very much, I thought) like roses. Ethan rubbed the suds into my fur until I smelled like a cross between Mom, a flower garden, and a tomato.
    I had never been so embarrassed in my life. And things didn’t get much better after that.
    Even once I was dry, I had to stay out on the porch. And when Ethan came out there to sleep, he kicked me out of his bed!
    â€œYou stink, Bailey,” he said.
    I lay on the floor and tried a whimper or two, but Ethan didn’t give in and let me climb up. So I just tried to sleep despite all of the strange, bewildering smells floating around.
    When morning finally came, I gulped down breakfast—Ethan brought my food bowl out to the porch for me—and raced outside.
    A good roll in the grass helped to rub some of those dreadful odors off of my fur. And when I checked out the pond, I got lucky. Something was lying on the bank—a dead fish! It was small, but the smell was good and strong. I rolled in it over and over, twisting my back to get the scent ground in properly. It didn’t help as much as I thought it would, though. Under the marvelous dead fish smell, I could still sense tomato and perfume and that horrible tang of skunk.
    I needed to figure all of this out, so I headed back for the woods. Sure enough, my nose led me quickly to that skunk. I sniffed at her, hoping that I’d pick up some information that would explain what had been going on.
    And the very same thing happened! She lifted up her tail, and from her rear end, of all places, another powerful blast of stink hit me right in the face.
    I yelped and backed away as quickly as I could. What was going on? Couldn’t that skunk tell I just wanted to play? And if she didn’t feel like playing, why didn’t she just run away or hide or jump up on something tall, like Smokey or the barn cat always did?
    Shaking my head, blinking, I stumbled back out of the woods. “Oh, Bailey!” Ethan moaned when I found him by the fence. “You’re kidding me!”
    I was put through the whole thing again—the water from the hose, tomatoes from the garden, and Mom’s horrible fake-flowery soap. Was this going to be my life now? Every day? Would I ever be let back into the house, where Grandma’s cooking smelled so delicious? Would I ever sleep in the bed next to my boy again?
    â€œYou are so stupid, Bailey!” the boy scolded as he scrubbed me.
    Grandma was watching this time. “Don’t call him stupid. It’s such an ugly