Happy Halloween!

 

Never before seen..until now...our 2016 Wildcat Woods Halloween costumes!  First is me...Countess Tabitha the Severer, known for carving her victims into tiny pieces.

Seductive Callie is dressed as a Hawaiian Hula Girl with flower lei and grass skirt. hoping to win over some handsome mancat out there.

For the ladycats is hunky Punk Rocker Mr Kitty with his spiked orange hair, leather wrist cuff and chain collar (hidden in his long sexy fur.)

And then for the cats who won't let mom dress them up and have to be tricked to get costumed... the tongue in cheek, punny and silly costumes ... 

Snowball as the suave yet laid back Buccaneer (buck-an-ear, get it?) resting on his hammick

Our Eddie Haskell cat, Only posing for the Cat's Out of the Bag costume..

And dark evil Mamacita as sinister villain BlackMail

Hope you enjoyed our line-up for this All Hallow's Eve. We will be back shortly for a combo Gotcha Day for Callie and Snowball on Nov. 2 just in time for El Dios de la Muerte.  Y'all come back!

Getting Ready for Halloween

Me

 Callie here today -You guys know how much Mom loves Halloween!  We are helping her get ready by wearing our special Halloween themed bandanas by Jodi, our IG friend.  Each one is reversible and attaches to your collar.  We don't wear collars so Mom used a ribbon.

Only models the other side of mine - spooky black with spider webs

Mr Kitty

The shop is BellaLovesAlex and features hand made kitty bandanas and bow ties for all seasons and holidays. They are purrfectly made and easy to wear.  If you are too late for this Halloween, then check out her fall and Christmas ones. Anything from this shop would make wonderful gifts fr your family and friends. Follow BellaLovesAlex on Instagram @bellalovesalex or on Facebook 

Jodi's cat Gizmo from her Etsy page with her orange bow tie.

(Mom didn't get anything for writing this - she just likes Jodi's hand made items for cats. Mom only buys American hand made!)

Tabitha wears the flip side of Mr Kitty's bandana

Mom also put up some Halloween decor at the base of our driveway.  A scary witch with a gravestone, with pumpkins and mums.Have you put any Halloween decorations up at your house?  

Our cat shelter is in the  left corner

We will be back with a special Halloween post with us in new never before seen costumes.  Before that we will remember our dear Minnie who left us last year on Oct. 29.  My Gotcha Day and Snowball's comes up right after Halloween so we should be online quite a bit for a while! Hope to see you all then!!

P.S. An update on us.  Normie was at the vet's twice this month for constipation.  It turns out the culprit was his Greenie dental treats.  Don't use those. We threw ours away. Then Sweetpea had a sore paw - her dew claw had grown in again so they had to cut all the claws way back.  We will have to keep an eye on her claws. She is doing well on her herbal thyroid and kidney meds.

All Hallow's Eve's Eve

Vampire Cat Tabitha

Another blast from our Halloween past!  Some years Mom would use online programs to do our Halloween costumes rather than try to fight with us to get and keep costumes on!.  As you can see, these are way scarier than us wearing something silly like a witch hat!

Mamacita locked inside the crystal ball!

Al made to look like a ghost!

P.S. If you guessed that Woody was a "quarterback" you were right.  Get it - a quarter on his back!  Come back on Thurs for the big Halloween post with this years real costumes!  And some local  spooky decorations too. Even Mom is dressing up - her pic will be posted later when she gets ready for work!

The Day Before The Day Before Halloween!

Can you guess what Woody is here?

Mom is very busy this week but doesn't want to miss out on her annual Halloween posts.  We are reminiscing about some of our unusual (or lame) costumes from years past.  Since we don't do costumes, Mom has to be very creative with us to do something with as little as possible on us or use the photoshop thingy.

Can you guess what Woody is in this pic?  More Halloween to come on Wednesday!

Snowball as "Kitty Bank"

Angel Joey as "The Candy Man"

A Pink Lady Ghost Story

You know how much Mom loves Halloween so here is a good ghost story.  The ghost resides at the legendary Grove Park Inn - a very haunting looking building itself, dating from the early 1900's.  The rock building glows at night in stark contrast against the sky. Let's go inside shall we?


The main entrance is decorated festively for the season with  huge pumpkins, gourds and corn stalks. Straight ahead is the Great Hall anchored at both ends by two massive fireplaces—each large enough to burn 12-foot long  logs and each containing an elevator.  These  hand-operated wonders run alongside the chimney shafts within the rock work of  the great fireplaces and transport guests and luggage to the upper floors.  To our left is the Front Desk where guests register. As you can see, at night the flicker of lights add to the eerie look of the place.  People say they have seen the Pink Lady in various places in the hotel. Seems fitting to see a ghost in a place like this.

Now that we are inside, let me tell you about the Pink Lady, a young lady in a diaphanous pink gown. The story goes that she was having a rendezvous at the hotel during the 1920's with a gentleman, most likely married.  It seems her heart was broken at a debutante ball and she either fell or jumped to her death from the fifth floor of the Palm Court Atrium.  Some say that she was pregnant and her lover found out, pushing her to her death rather than face a scandal.


To get to the Palm Court we go up in the old elevator built inside the rock fireplace to the fifth floor overlooking the atrium.  The elevator is old, creaky and has one of those old fashioned gated to close. The room most associated with the Pink Lady is room 545, two stories above the Palm Court Atrium floor - probably the room she and her lover stayed in.

Elevator to the Palm Court Atrium.

Room 545.

Palm Court Atrium today.

Do feel cold air on you?  Is your hair standing on end?  With no one around, this place is very creepy.

A painter from the late 1950s or early 60s and the hotel's current  engineering facilities manager have reported strikingly similar tales about room  545. Both got cold chills on their way into the room so severe they never again  attempted to enter. Interestingly, neither employee knew of the other's  experience, or about room 545's connection to the Pink Lady.

Another employee  who has seen the Pink Lady several times over the past five years describes the  apparition as "a real dense smoke - a pinkish pastel that just flows. It's a  real gentle spirit, whatever it is."  Guests who have seen her say she is a beautiful girl with long dark hair.  She is mischievous and turns off lights, opens closet doors, and even pulls the covers off sleeping guests.

Well - Mom didn't see or feel anything unusual on her visits but others say the air feels heavy and their hair stands on end when in the Atrium alone late at night.  If you look real close I think you will see the Pink Lady.....

Boooooo....heehee.  Got ya didn't I? It's me Ivy!  More ghost stories coming this week so stay tuned.



We want to send our prayers and purrs for all those in the path of this horrific storm Sandy.  Be safe - humans and critters alike.

Weekend Wanderings - Halloween

Grove Park Inn, Asheville

It has been a busy few days at our house - Pop was away, Chica, Yoko and Joey were sick and Mom was handling it all by her self.  Everything is fine now so better late than never for our weekend post - just tin time for Halloween.

Mom works at an art gallery inside this hotel.  The Grove Park Inn was built in 1913.  Perfect for spooky occasions like this.  They go all out for Halloween with a pumpkin carving contest, Trick or Treat and a party!

Flower display in Great Hall

Pumpkin spider

 Some of the entries were very creative this year - lots of fun checking them all out.  Do stop back each day before Halloween and we have special posts planned!  What are you dressing up as for Halloween?

Kitty pumpkin

Green man pumpkin

Blue octopus pumpkin

Mummy pumpkin

Devil Cats and Shape Shifters....

Georgie and friends

Bats, cats , spiders and pumpkins..Halloween is filled with scary things..so how about one more scary story to top off our week long Halloween celebration?

Chica here, in my She-Devil outfit trying to lure Joey into my deadly clutches.  I will do the honors of the tale today! 

You have all heard of shapeshifters - witches who were believed to be able to shift their shape into that of an animal, usually of a cat, to carry out their evil deeds.  Well...at the Tomb of Lady Ann Smith of Edmondthorpe, Leicesterhire, who died in 1652, her statue bears a strange red stain on its wrist.  Tradition says she was a witch who turned herself into a huge black cat. One night her butler struck a black cat on the paw with a cleaver. It vanished but the next day, Lady Ann displayed a wounded wrist.  The cat's bloodstains remained on the kitchen floor until 1920 when the flagstones were taken up. In her tomb, Lady Ann's wrist mysteriously bleeds under the right circumstances!

Lady Ann's tomb

Seventeenth century Scottish witch  Isabel Gowdie revealed the magic formula  she used to turn herself into a cat which was to repeat this verse:

"I shall go intill an catt,

With sorrow, and sych, and a blak shott;

And I sall goe in the Divellis nam,

Ay will I come hom againe."

Be careful out there on this night when the veils are thin between worlds!  And watch out for black cats...it could be someone you know!!!  Happy Halloween from all of us!

Cousin Itt (Aka Sweetpea)

Ivy checks out Sweetpea's costume!

Mom grew up loving the TV show The Addams' Family so when she found the wig at the thrift shop, Cousin Itt came to mind!  For those not familiar with the show, Cousin Itt is the diminutive, hairy gibberish speaking cousin of Gomez who often comes to visit the Adams family.  Sweetpea was asleep on the chair and Mom dropped the wig and sunglasses on her before she woke up.  This is the usual way to get us to wear any form of costume!  She got a couple of shots in before Sweetpea made her escape!

Sweetpea backing out from under the wig!

The TV show which ran during the 60's for a few short years was very poplar and based on the New Yorker cartoon by Charles Addams.  His work was called many things - bizarre, demonic, humorous and enchanting.  People loved his take on life and death with a very black humor.

New Yorker cartoon by Charles Addams

Addams passed away in 1988 but in a style uniquely his:
Charles Addams died on September 28, 1988 outside his home.  As a lover of cars, Charles went out and sat in his car.  After a long cruise, Charles put his head down on the steering wheel, and passed on to the other side as his heart gave out.  

He wanted to be remembered as a fun loving artist and had requested a party instead of a wake.  At the New York Public Library, a party was thrown complete with a banquet and jazz bands.  In a Boston newspaper, a cartoon was depicted in which the cartoon Addams family looked sadly down at a grave, while Charles crawled out from the other side.

The real Cousin Itt.

Happy Halloween!   We leave you now with a clip from the Addams Family with Cousin Itt.  If you can't see the clip below go here.

Camera Critters

We're Off to See the Wizard....

Help! It's me, Mamacita, trapped inside the Wicked Witch's crystal ball!  The Witch and her her Flying Monkey will keep me in here forever!

I know the Wizard of Oz is not a Halloween movie but wasn't the part at the Witch's Castle scary?  When Mom was a kid she would hide when that part came on!  For work, a couple of Halloween's ago Mom and her friend Sallie dressed up as a flying monkey and the Wicked Witch respectively.   Mom made a great flying monkey and even had wings altho they don't show up in the pics too well.  Sallie's witch was scary! Pretty cool huh?

Mom on left and Sallie on right.

Now for some Wizard of Oz trivia.....

Did you know that Margaret Hamilton's portrayal of the Wickedest Witch of the West was so frightening that most of her scenes were edited out?  We only see the softer side of her witch!!!  Yikes!!!!

Did you know that the head winged monkey was named Nikko after the Japanese town that is home to the shrine for Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil?

Did you know that the crystal ball in the movie was also used as a prop in the movie The Mask of Fu Manchu and Chandu the Magician.  The 25" diameter ball sold at auction in May 2011 for $126,500!

Did you know that Hamilton's green make-up was copper oxide and was poisonous?  Since it took hours to put on, Hamilton had to be very careful not to ingest it while eating.  She mainly lived on a liquid diet while in make-up.

Did you know what words the castle guards are chanting in the scene with the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion watching from the rocks?  Some people think they say things like "Allwe own, we owe her."  Mom thought they were saying "Or-e-o, oreo."  Actually, she was close.  They say "O-ee-ya! Eoh-ah!"

Here is the scary clip from the movie.  Sit back (or run and hide) and enjoy. (f you can't see it below, click here.)

Demon Cat Wants Treats

Just put the treats in the bag, walk away slowly 

and no one gets hurt!

It's just little ole me, Minnie, helping Mom unload the groceries - not really demon.  But have you heard the story of the the demon cat in the Capitol in DC?  

There are many stories circulating about a black cat who appears in the building as an omen before national tragedies like presidential assassinations.  As the tale goes, the cat appears as a normal sized black cat to either a night watch person or security guard and grows right in front of them into a large creature with glowing eyes.  The legend of the demon cat states that the cat made an appearance before the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, before the 1929 stock market crash and on 9/10/01.  It seems there are even cat paw prints in the cement at the Capitol!  So is there a demon or is this just another black cat story gone wild?


We like the idea of a demon cat - stay posted for more spooky stories and photos this week through Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

We have had fun all week with our Halloween posts - hope you enjoyed them too. The Witching Hour is upon us - a time when the veil between worlds is thin; when witches, demons, ghouls, and other creatures walk walk among us; 

and when front porches look more like pirate ships and graveyards.

It is that magical time of year when things are not what they seem....

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!
The moon is full and bright
And we shall see what can't be seen
on any other night:

Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,
Grinning goblins fighting duels,
Werewolves rising from their tombs,
Witches on their magic brooms. 

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!

Have a spooky, fun, treat filled magical time!

Happy Halloween from all of us Cats of Wildcat Woods.