We came home surprised to find the cats taking turns racing up the wall and Donkey Kong posted at the top tumbling barrels down toward them! Not knowing exactly how to help, we decided to just take pictures of the event.
Ok, that's not 100% what happened here. This was a fun project we did with my sister, Kate Wilson who is a behavioral expert/ animal trainer. Over the years I've heard a lot of negativity about dressing a cat up in a costume. We wanted to do a Donkey Kong photoshoot but were uneasy about introducing a Mario outfit to either cat. After speaking with my sister about this, I was surprised to hear her say that her cat Lumi is completely fine with dressing up and that she trained her since she was a kitten. By using posative reinforcements, she's warmed Lumi up to this slowly and in stages. The reason for this was because she's very active outdoors and wanted Lumi to be comfortable walking in a harness and lifevest. I never thought of the fact that a harness is very simular to a costume. Of course not every cat will be fine with wearing gear, she helped us put together a page walking through the steps of properly introducing a cat and warning signs to watch out for along the way. If you would like to have a look, here's a link to the article: https://www.catastrophicreations.com/blogs/articles/dressing-up-cats-in-costume-cute-or-cringe
