While You Were Out

Coming home at 4 pm on Saturday after a day at a Board retreat, I sat down at the computer and found this post-it stuck to the screen:


I thought this might have something to do with the bag of pistachios (p-i-s-t-a-c-h-i-o, yes, that's right) I found strewn across the kitchen counter next to two nearly-full cartons of milk, but I didn't really have the energy to investigate further.

A long hot shower drove this little mystery from my mind, while restoring enough mental acumen for me to inquire as to how everyone else's day had gone. A reliable source reported that Josie, Julianna, and Menna had spent the afternoon in the bathroom giving elaborate mani-pedis to... Ioan and Simon. Wait -- what?

My initial surprise was quickly supplanted by the preponderance of the evidence: bathroom floor a tangle of wet towels and Q-tips; acetone tang still lingering in the air; nail clippers and tweezers missing from bathroom shelf (later recovered, under threat of death); two boys with elegant fingers and spotless feet, both emitting a highly unusual floral scent.

It wasn't until this morning that I came across this, which somehow linked together all the loose ends into a kind of Mead Street String Theory:



For those of you with lingering questions, we were able to record the following semi-illuminating testimony from Josie:

J: A couple years ago, Ioan really loved mirror cats a lot.

M: Wait, you know it's really meerkats, right?

J: Yes, but we call them mirror cats. Anyway, one day, we really wanted to like, brush his hair and paint his nails, and do all these things, and pretty him up. He really didn't want to do it, because he said only girls painted their toenails red. So we told him that that's what every mirror cat does, and you can't be a true mirror cat unless your nails are painted red. So then he finally let us do it. So now we have the game where we pretty him up and send him off to Mirror Cat Land.

M: I remember; that's how you got him to agree to the faux-hawk last summer, right?


J: Right. We also convinced Simon to do get a mani-pedi. He didn't like mirror cats, but he decided he would do it. Why did you do it, Simo?


S: I don't know, 'cause Ioan did it?


J: So that's what we did yesterday. We just put clear coats of nailpolish on them, so they didn't really look like anything special, besides clean. Which is unusual for them. Once you get all done getting prettied up like a meerkat, then you go through the portal to Mirror Cat Land. But it's actually just the shower.


M: What exactly happens in the shower?


J: You get sucked into Mirror Cat Land! [Duh!] In Mirror Cat Land you get to do whatever you want. 'Cause otherwise Ioan wouldn't be willing to do it. Even though he does like mirror cats, that wouldn't be good enough to get him to let us pretty him up.


M: What's the deal with the pistachios?


J: Well, the reason you have to be so clean to go to Mirror Cat Land is that the mirror cats have very weak immune systems. So you have to take special medicine to keep from getting sick and spreading disease to all the mirror cats there.


M: Oh! Of course.