Shannon Phillips

Robin’s super excited about Hallowe’en this year. He saw a pirate costume for sale somewhere and for a few days he talked about being a pirate—an idea I was fully on-board with, because I figured I could make him a pirate costume pretty easily. But then, somehow, he got a new idea into his head. He was going to be a kitty cat. And no amount of pirate talk was going to change his mind.

For the past week or so he’s kept up a constant stream of kitty costume talk. “I’m a scary black kitty for Hallowe’en!” he’ll say, out of the blue. “I have kitty costume!”

I decided not to try to make the cat outfit myself. All the patterns I could find were for pajama-style onesies, and I had more of a “cat from CATS!” kind of thing in mind. (I also had a pang of jealousy when I saw the adorable punk-rock kitty tutu patterns you can buy; there’s nothing that good for boys.) So instead I assembled the costume from bits and pieces of things found from various sellers on Amazon—the hood and mittens from one store, the tail from another, the fuzzy boot covers from a third. The last piece of the costume arrived today so I let him try it on:

He’s thrilled. The challenge will be getting him to wear anything else between now and Hallowe’en!