Bailey and the Underworld
In which my beloved mother commissions a pet detective, and Bailey could not be less helpful.
“Bailey didn’t come home,” my mother said.1
“Not Bailey! You must be joking,” I deadpanned. It was the middle of June, and the long summer twilight was ending. I’d spent a sweltering day cleaning cages at a local rescue group, and I was sticky and exhausted. I needed an ice bath and an early night. “You’re not really worried, are you? Bailey always come home when he calms down.”
“I see. You’re turning down a case. You can find cats in outer Mongolia and you refuse to find Bailey.”
“I’ll find him tomorrow morning. He’ll be right in the middle of the living room.”
“Please, CatProfiler daughter? Can’t you just come and check?” she begged.
I hate to sound unfeeling here, but Bailey not coming home wasn’t exactly hold-the-presses news. Bailey was one of those scaredy cats who give other cats a bad name. He showed up at my mother’s house at Kitty Club Med several years ago. He was strangely androgynous, with a sherbert melon -colored coat, pale gold eyes, and a pear-shaped figure. Other cats seemed to see a permanent “kick me” sign taped to his shoulders. He wasn’t popular with humans, either, other than my mother’s cat sitter, who spent countless hours lying on the floor, crooning him out from hiding under my mother’s bed.
The list of things that frightened Bailey included (but was not limited to) boots, coats, sweaters, scarves, slippers, robes, nightgowns, clothes that make noise, strangers, people who talk, and people who move. Getting Bailey inside before curfew was always tricky, especially if there were guests over. My mom would make everyone hide out in the garage and stay completely silent while she shook the catnip snack packet. When you’ve spent several hours of your life sequestered in a stifling garage so that you don’t inadvertently trigger the cat’s neuroses, you start to wonder who’s really running the house. Not that my mother would make me stand in a garage for hours at a time. But ten minutes out of every evening starts to add up over time. Those are hours I’ll never get back.
“Why do you insist on keeping him an indoor-outdoor cat?” I grumbled. “How many times have I told you this is just going to keep happening?”
“He hates being stuck inside!” she told me, and I rolled my eyes. My mom had strong opinions about keeping cats indoors. She thought that all cats need to feel the wind in their whiskers and the grass under their feet. I suspected that Bailey got triggered by both the wind and the grass. He was happiest in my mother’s room, where he had a food bowl to himself and no other cats around to laugh at him.
I can’t really blame the other cats for laughing. Bailey was a weirdo. He wouldn’t drink out of a water bowl without standing in it first, then using both his front paws to go paddling. There were heavy water stains all over the kitchen floor. Bailey asking for affection was an even more disturbing affair. He would sidle past your ankles (only if you were sitting down), chirrup at you, and turn away. Then he’d look over his shoulder and chirrup again, quivering his hindquarters against your leg in excitement.
Bailey liked butt scratches. He wanted you to give him light spanks, slap his flanks, and scratch the base of his tail while you told him he was a pretty boy. I really try not to judge, but Bailey’s generous physique made it challenging for him to clean himself. His twerking habit could be a little disgusting.
“I’m not coming over this time,” I told my mother as I pulled on my boots and grabbed my keys.
“I’ll call him. You listen and see if you can hear anything.” We were standing on her back deck. It was about 9:30 pm on a soupy South Texas summer night. It was impossible to hear anything over the chorus of cicadas serenading each other.
“Bailey!” she called, gently. She shook his treat packet. Like a dutiful daughter, I listened.
“I can’t hear a thing.”
“No, I hear something!” my mom insisted. My mother is almost deaf. “What is that?”
“It’s a billion cicadas looking for true love. He’s probably safely tucked somewhere where he can hide from the bugs.”
“That’s just it,” my mother said. “I’m afraid he’s under the deck.”
“He probably is. Just leave the door open and he’ll come in by himself when he’s ready,” I said with a yawn. “I’ll come over again in the morning if he doesn’t come home.”
This wasn’t the first time. Or the third. Or the tenth. Bailey never came when he was called. I wasn’t worried; his anxiety kept him alive. He wouldn’t go near another animal, and he’d rather dissolve than cross a road. He had the neurosis of Piglet and the constitution of Pooh. The only real risk was if he hid somewhere complicated and got locked in. That was hugely unlikely, though, because his bunker of choice was always under my mother’s back deck.
“I had the deck closed off today,” my mother told me as I was turning away and preparing to leave. I turned back to her, completely awake.
“You did what?”
“There have been so many skunks setting up shop under there that I had workers come today and wall it off.”
“Without locking him up in your room first?”
“Maybe,” my mother said, not meeting my eyes. “I need you to be a pet detective right now. Don’t pull any punches. Is he under there?”
I looked over the expanse of the wooden deck. It wrapped around two sides of my mother’s California ranch house. For 50 years it had been a refuge for wildlife as well as every cat we’d ever owned. Katka had once spent an entire summer hiding there, coming out only for steak dinners. I remember seeing her tail disappear as she slithered between the wooden planks and the concrete base that supported them. For as long as I could remember, periodically my mother worried that a possum had died under the deck, and we’d systematically pull up the wooden boards to check. The underside of the deck was a complicated maze of concrete sections and cubby holes where animals felt completely safe.
I thought about how likely it was for Bailey to hide out in the greenbelt where the deer herd grazed and the neighbors walked their dogs.
There was nothing for it. We’d have to pull up the deck. Tomorrow.
“Yes. He’s under there.” I said.
The next morning, I held my brother’s legs while he lay on his stomach and waved a flashlight through a hole. We had pulled up two of the wooden planks to create a hole about a foot wide.
“I don’t see anything,” my brother announced, lying on his stomach as he waved a flashlight under the deck. “Are we even sure that he’s under here?”
“No one has seen him in 24 hours. Where else could he be?” I looked around the greenbelt behind my mother’s house. Was I missing something? I went over the Bailey’s possible risk list in my head. No, I knew he was under the deck, probably less than ten feet away from us, buried in leaves and shivering with terror.
“There’s all these piles of leaves and things. Could he be under those? BAILEY! Here boy!”
“You know you probably just gave him a heart attack,” I said.
“I don’t understand why he doesn’t show himself!” my brother said. “Doesn’t he want to be rescued?”
I sighed. No matter how many times I explain cat logic, people still get a surprise when their own cat hides from them.
“He’s doing his ‘under the bed’ routine. Not going to the vet, and you can’t make him,” I explained.
“It’s impossible to tell where he is. There are too many sections. Should we pull up all those planks over there?” My brother twisted on his side.
“What if he isn’t okay?” My mother worried. “He’s not making any noise. Is he dead?”
“Bailey would die before he’d make any noise. He’s like the offspring of Garfield and Boo Radley.”
“This is ridiculous! This was a totally preventable disaster!” my brother exploded at my mother, hauling himself up.
“I know, I know,” my mother pulled at her hair. “I really did think he’d run away from the workers.”
“He’d rather entomb himself like the pharaohs.” A hundred years from now, renovations to our house would reveal his mummified body, and the new owners would think we were insane. I shook the thought away.
“His ancestors were Egyptian gods,” my mother said. “He just doesn’t brag about it.”
“Okay, none of this is a big deal. If we walk away and leave the planks off, he’ll come out on his own.” I put my arm around my mother.
“Can he jump out by himself?” My mother peered down the hole. “It’s got to be four feet deep in there.”
“He might be able to use the planks as a ladder,” my brother slanted one of them into the hole so that one end rested on the ground. I shook it. It seemed pretty stable. I was pretty doubtful that this would actually happen, though. I pictured a seesaw with Bailey on one end of it.
Even if Bailey possessed the strength or the balance to haul himself out of this hole, did he have the nerve?
“Just to be on the safe side, let’s make a bigger hole,” I said.
My mother went to bed early that night, exhausted from the sleepless night before and deck laboring in the hot sun. As I was cleaning the kitchen and turning off the lights, I heard scratching at the door. Bailey stood on his hind legs, waving both his front paws in the universal sign for “help”.
I opened the door. He hesitated, looking at the threshold doubtfully.
“Best do it at a run,” I advised him.
He galloped in, leaping over the doorframe. I shut the door gently behind him. He slammed his body against me as he chirruped away like he hadn’t seen me in years. The scent of cobwebs, dust, and rotting leaves rose around him.
“Where you been, Bailey boy?” I dropped to my heels and rubbed his cheeks. He knocked his face against my hands, purring with enthusiasm. His tail twitched with excitement and I scratched his back.
“You really scared us, Bailey. You’re not to do that anymore. Maybe you could come to live with me and be an indoor cat. You’ll live in luxury and not have to be afraid ever again.” I looked around. We were alone. No one was listening. “Who’s my little weirdo baby boy?”
He flopped on his side and purred with extra enthusiasm. I called up to my mother. “Guess who’s here?”
As my mother came running downstairs, Bailey leapt to his feet and disappeared underneath the couch.
“Mom! You’re wearing pajamas! You know he hates that!” I yelled at her.
This chapter is from a book I’m allegedly writing. No, Bailey has not been paid for his involvement.
"The Cat Who Feared Pajamas," would be a great kids' book title, hahaha.