Halloween report

You never know what you're going to get.  Previous paucity on Halloweens had caused us to give up making a jack-o-lantern for the last couple of years, though this year B. got a few small pumpkin gourds for outside harvest decoration, and we left the outside light on.  This year the local kids of Indian descent, who have just gotten off from celebrating Diwali - which from a secular Western perspective appears to function as a kind of combination of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas - have discovered Halloween, and came around, some without costume but with bags, collecting candy.  About 15 trick-or-treaters altogether, most of mid-childhood age, all well before 8 pm.  No overaged teenagers this year.

The other good news of late is the discovery that Pandora's internal distress, which had expressed itself in irregular emissions from both ends only barely controlled by various regular shots from the vet, appears actually to have been an allergy to the dry cat food she was scarfing down to add bulk to her diet.  (You are mercifully spared the graphic description of how we discovered this.)  Now that she's on canned food only she's eating it a lot more heartily than before - there'd been times she'd gone off it altogether before, though she'd always eat the dry food - and indeed she now demands feeding every 3 or 4 hours.  We can't give her larger helpings, because either she won't eat that much at once, leaving it at risk of being eaten by Pippin who, unlike Pandora, does not need the fattening up, or else will eat that much and make herself sick again.  Despite the near-constant begging - and oh, she can make her displeasure known if it's not responded to - it's relieving to see her enjoying and not picking at or going off the canned food.