the cat who can trick-or-treat
Come, gather ‘round, dears, and hear the story about The Cat Who Came For… not that best-seller thing. No, something much cooler. This cat came for Hallowe’en.
Before packing in his cape and cowl for a while, Sidekick Man had one more public appearance to do. See, our street is a quiet little low-traffic backwater of suburbia, so a lot of parents go out of their way to bring their little goblins here for All Hallow’s Eve.
One such parent was the mysterious Greenmin, mother of Boss Boy and Schmockle (two of the “kids in the orphanage” from the Sidekick Man video). Naturally, her little Tigger and Ben Ten teamed up with our Batgirl (“No, I’m Bat-WOM-AN!”) for some costumed door-to-door zaniness. Between the three of us, we grown-ups covered the dual tasks of shepherding the pack (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?) and staying at home to dispense excessive quantities of sucrose.
I was on street duty first. Incidentally, when you’re planning your next Hallowe’en costume, make sure you take the 40-degree weather into account before donning a costume that consists basically of long underwear and a cape.
Anyway, as we set off to the southeast, we noticed a little grey shadow following us. Okay, a big grey shadow. It was our garage cat Harley, a.k.a. HarleyBarley, a.k.a. Harles At Large. Darned if he didn’t insist on coming along with us. He walked alongside or in front of us to each house, accompanied the kids up to the doorstep, waited patiently while they shouted “Trick or Treat!” and got their candy, and then rejoined us parent-types at the curb. He behaved so much like a more conventionally two-footed trick-or-treater that one homeowner even complimented my “son” on his “cat costume.”