Yves

Dave came over last night to help me work on a Halloween costume. I don’t want to spend any money on one this year – in spite of my best-laid plans, the re-siding of my mother’s house, the repointing of part of the brickwork on my house, the replacement of several windows, and my yoga vacation with car trouble all happened at the same time. I considered using all the odds and ends of wrapping paper that I’ve collected over the years and turning myself into a badly wrapped present. I could then offer a special prize to anyone who correctly guessed what I was supposed to be. Or I could just run the brush through my hair several times and be someone having a bad hair day. But how many kids would I scare that way? Dave suggested that I make myself look like a dummy. You may be thinking that this wouldn't require much of an effort, but in fact you would be gravely mistaken. I put on some large black pants and a black sweater and gathered up lots of sheets and towels and pillowcases, and we stuffed the sleeves and pant legs and around my torso until the lumpiness of my body matched my hair. Then I put a black shopping bag over my head. The final touch was my skeleton gloves with the fake blood flowing through the veins. I’ve used these every Halloween since I bought them and they are always a hit. The blood no longer seems to be flowing in one of the gloves, but this only gives it a more skeletal appearance.

The plan was for me to slouch in a chair on the porch. When some adorable but incredibly naïve kids approached they would think I wasn’t a real person because of all the padding, and then when I jumped up it would scare them to death (but hopefully not to the point of falling backwards down the stairs). I wasn’t sure how successful this plan would be since I was too bulky to execute any quick manoeuvres. Although not a solution, I decided that it might be nice to slouch on the porch with a companion, so we created Mr. Dummy. We got my black rubber boots from the basement, put the ends of some black pants in them, used a candelabra for the torso, draped a black sweater over it, and stuffed everything full of t-shirts and whatever other bits of clothing I had that I wasn’t planning to wear before Saturday. Then Dave secured the ends of three wooden spoons and one skewer to the top of the candelabra, wrapped them with three washcloths and a shirt, and pulled a full head mask over the conglomeration. The mask looks like the face in The Scream, with the eyes and mouth painted a phosphorescent green. Unfortunately, it also has funny little ears that detract somewhat from its basic creepiness. So I pulled out a black hat that, while not a beret, nevertheless looks like something that a fashionable creepy lumpy thing might wear in Paris. In case there are any doubts about this, “Chapeau” is written across the front of the hat. We plopped it on Yves. It added a certain je ne sais quoi to his appearance. Instead of merely a creepy lumpy thing, we had a gay-looking creepy lumpy thing (my apologies for perpetuating any stereotypes based on sexual and fashion preferences). And now that the cats have discovered Yves and are trying to befriend him, we have a gay-looking creepy lumpy thing that appears to be in need of a good lint brush. It wasn’t quite the look we set out to achieve, but we were happy with the end result. I hope the kids are too, even the not-so-adorable cynical ones.

Spike

I got home from work and discovered Spike – who is a stray but is claiming squatters' rights – wandering around the house. It was the first time he had been in at this hour, maybe because it’s getting colder. So I ran down the stairs, got the cat carrier, and put a dish of tuna at the back of it. Spike isn’t completely stupid, nor was he overtaken by gluttony. He put three paws in and kept one out. His instincts were 25% sound but no match for my prefrontal cortex and protective gear. I shoved him in and locked the door. He started hissing, biting the bars on the door, throwing himself against the sides of the carrier. I called the vet and told him I was on my way with one crazed cat about to become a castrato.

The vet’s office was only ten minutes away. For the first eight or nine minutes Spike continued hissing, biting the bars, throwing himself against the sides of the carrier. But then the kerfuffle ceased. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Spike emerging from the side of the carrier. I’ve heard that bats can squeeze themselves through holes the size of a dime, and at first I thought Spike must have similar superpowers. My next thought was THE WINDOW. Fortunately, Spike's prefrontal cortex is less well-developed than I had thought, and he went for the passenger-side window first. That gave me time to roll my window up while swerving into oncoming traffic. In times of trouble I retain the ability to multi-task.

So there I was, stuck in a small car with a crazed cat, driving down a busy road. I started picturing Spike doing something similar to those octopi you see, possibly only in the National Enquirer, attached to divers’ faces and sucking out their prefrontal cortexes. And my next thought was that I was about to experience being flayed alive. But Spike crawled onto my lap and peered over the steering wheel instead. I heard a story about a car that was pulled over on the interstate because there were reports it was being driven by an iguana. It turned out that some guy had draped his pet iguana over the steering wheel and was somehow operating the car without being seen. I briefly considered doing the same thing with Spike, but realized I had forgotten to bring my periscope.

So Spike and I drove home. Unlike the cat carrier, we both survived the ordeal intact. Which means Spike won’t be singing in a sad falsetto anytime soon.