On Saturday night, we watched “The Cat from Outer Space,” a 1978 Disney movie my husband remembers fondly (I had only a vague memory of it). He’s been wanting to share it with our son, since Parker is the same age we were when the movie came out. It hadn’t been available through Amazon’s on-demand movie rentals the first few times we checked, but finally it showed up this weekend.
Parker, being a big fan of felines, loved it. By the time it was over, he already had decided we would “play” the movie, with each of us taking on different roles. He is now “Jake” (the cat), my husband is “Frank” (the scientiest who helps him) and I’m “the lady.” (None of us could remember her name. Google just reminded me that it was “Liz,” played by Sandy Duncan, who ends up dangling from a helicopter toward the end of the movie.) The next day, we went to the craft store and Home Depot and put together what ended up being a remarkably realistic kid-sized version of the cat’s collar.
We bought some 1/2-inch clear vinyl tubing at Home Depot and clear pony beads at Michael’s. (actually, I had to get a big tub of multi-colored beads and we picked out the clear beads. Anyone have suggestions for the pound of leftover beads?) We inserted a wooden skewer about halfway into the tube and then pushed the beads down into the tube. (The skewer makes it easy to slide the beads into the tube.) Then we repeated from the other end. We glued the brass connector (also from Home Depot) (the package says “barb splicer”) into one end of the tube, and put some glue in the other end to hold the beads in place. Voila!
(now if only it lit up like the movie version)