Mittens

References

• Hermione Granger
• Three Little Kittens
• Hansel and Gretel
• My Neighbor Totoro
• Ransom
• The Shaggy Dog
• A Whisker Away
• Teen Wolf
• Turning Red
• Bluey
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Brave
• Almost Plausible: Birdhouse
• Studio Ghibli
• Why Do Cats Sit Like a Loaf?
• Cat zoomies: What are they and why do cats get them?
• Splash
• Coachella

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
What if he really likes cats?

[Thomas]
So he’s into it when she’s half cat?

[Emily]
That goes back to that weird inner species-

[Shep]
Oh, that’s right. No interspecies stuff. Emily decided.

[Thomas]
He’s like “Babe, have you been looking at my search history?”

[Emily]
(Laughs)

[Thomas]
“Thank you for doing this for me, honey. I’m glad that we can finally be our true selves in front of each other.”

[Shep]
He takes off his shirt. He’s got a dog collar underneath.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, Story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and trying to stay warm with me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
On this episode, it’s all hands on deck as we come up with a movie about mittens.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Thomas]
Now, I’m more of a glove guy myself. Emily, Shep, what are your feelings about wearing mittens?

[Emily]
I like mittens. Gloves are a little more useful as an adult, but mittens are cute, and I’ve made them before.

[Shep]
I don’t have any mittens right now, and I wish that I did.

[Thomas]
Like, right this moment.

[Shep]
Right this moment. I wish I had some mittens. No. When I go out and, like, run the snowblower, I have gloves, but my individual fingers get cold.

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Shep]
If I had mittens, my whole hand, all my fingers would stay warm, and I don’t need my fingers for anything. I’m just holding the handlebars on the snowblower.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Guess who’s getting homemade mittens for Christmas?

[Thomas]
I don’t know. In much the same way that toe socks keep all your individual toes separated. I like that for my fingers. It seems weird to me to have a whole bunch of them crammed into one big thing. I don’t know.

[Shep]
Yeah, it depends. So I exclusively wear toe socks, but they help keep my feet cool. I don’t want cold hands. The whole point of wearing gloves is to keep my hands warm.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I’ll wear gloves if necessary. I would prefer mittens if I could wear them, if I could get away with them. I like the ones that have one finger for your index finger and then mittens for the rest.

[Thomas]
AW.

[Shep]
I think that covers a lot of things that you’ll be doing in the snow.

[Emily]
Yeah. You get some dexterity.

[Shep]
Yeah. That’s the second best thing to mittens.

[Emily]
Oh and you can make camel puppets.

[Thomas]
What?

[Shep]
What?

[Emily]
Well, because I like mittens because you can make little mitten puppets. Right? You could have your mittens dog.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
So that it’s separated. It’s sort of like a camel because they’ve got that split lip.

[Shep]
I guess I’m completely ignorant of camel lip physiology. I didn’t realize there was going to be a quiz tonight.

[Emily]
You would think I was high. No, I’m still just recovering from COVID.

[Thomas]
All right, well, let’s see if Camels make any appearances in our pitches. I’ll pitch first. I have a few short ones here. A child loses one of their mittens, which comes to life and attempts to make its way back home.

[Shep]
I love it. Let’s do that one.

[Thomas]
I imagine, like, an animated thing. A rom-com about a couple whose hands get stuck in one of those holding hands mittens.

[Shep]
You had me rom-com. Which was the first thing you said.

[Thomas]
I have no idea how these two, probably strangers, get their hands stuck in holding hands mittens, but I assume there’s, like, a big discount bin of mittens and they both reach in. I don’t know.

[Emily]
It’s somehow like a Chinese finger trap.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
But mittens.

[Thomas]
Yeah. The more they pull, the tighter it gets.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
A girl puts on a pair of novelty cat paw mittens, which fuse with her hands and start turning her into a cat.

[Emily]
I like this.

[Shep]
And her name is Hermione.

[Thomas]
Those are my pitches. Emily, what do you have for us?

[Emily]
I have a handful here.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Emily]
Well, obviously. The first one is three little kittens have lost their mittens, and they begin to cry.

[Thomas]
Naturally.

[Shep]
Oh, mother dear.

[Emily]
Look here. Look here. Our mittens, we have lost. What? Lost your mittens, you naughty kittens. You shall have no pie.

[Thomas]
Truly, that’s a punishment. No pie?

[Emily]
No pie.

[Thomas]
Unacceptable.

[Shep]
But kittens love pie. Famously.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
A cat named Mittens seeks world domination. That’s it.

[Shep]
I’m sold.

[Emily]
An elderly widow loves to knit. It’s the one hobby that keeps her going in the lonely life. One day, she sees two small children huddled in an alley. She asks them where their parents are, and they say they have none and live together on the streets, saddened by these small, cold children. She knits them warm things, like a sweater, a hat, a scarf and some mittens. The children tell her the mittens are the warmest, softest things. And that brings her so much joy, she decides to start knitting mittens for everyone she sees that needs help. Slowly, the tale of her kindness and warm mittens spread, and she’s lauded as a folk hero, much like Santa. She becomes known as Grandma Mittens.

[Shep]
And then she shoved the boy into her oven to bake him into her pies.

[Emily]
But the cats can’t have them because they lost their mittens.

[Shep]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
That’s right.

[Shep]
They’re being punished.

[Emily]
All right. And it’s been a while, so here you guys go. I know you’ve been wanting one. A young man is mercilessly, berated and beaten by his uncle, who’s also his guardian. The boy ends up killing his uncle in self-defense one night, with the only thing he has on hand, a pair of mittens attached to one another with a string. When the murder is done, the boy feels relief, and… elation? He liked the way strangling the life out of his uncle felt. He wants that feeling again. We see from his point of view as he picks, stalks and kills his victims with his mittens. Will he ever be caught? Or will he string the detectives along, toying with them like a cat with a ball of yarn?

[Shep]
Classic Emily.

[Thomas]
She’s back.

[Emily]
Yay.

[Thomas]
All right, Shep, let’s hear from you.

[Shep]
Okay. I’m trying to do more of writing what you know, and I remembered an incident from when I was a kid.

[Emily]
Oh, God.

[Shep]
So here’s the premise. A man is visiting a pond in a park with his two children. While he’s briefly distracted, his young son disappears, and all that can be seen is one of his mittens floating lazily on the pond. Nobody else at the park saw the boy disappear. That’s the setup.

[Thomas]
I, too, have watched My Neighbor Totoro.

[Emily]
Yeah. It reminds me of the opening of Ransom because they’re, like, in a park in a crowded place in New York, and the kid just kind of disappears into the crowd.

[Shep]
So what I’m hearing is this one’s been done several times.

[Emily]
I’m still good with it.

[Shep]
It doesn’t guarantee that it’s a serial killer.

[Emily]
No, no. It doesn’t have to be a serial killer. It could be a kidnapping. He could have drowned. And now his ghost comes back to haunt his parents because of their neglectful ways.

[Shep]
Yeah. Based on an incident when I was a kid.

[Emily]
That makes me sad.

[Shep]
Sorry.

[Emily]
Lots of things make me sad, so it’s okay.

[Thomas]
All right, which pitch do we like?

[Shep]
Well, I like the cat ones.

[Emily]
Cat ones are good.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I like the rom-com. I like the animated one. We have an abundance of choice this week.

[Emily]
I kind of dig the girl turning into a cat and we could make it a rom-com.

[Thomas]
Like, there’s a really sexy Tom that lives in the alley and-

[Shep]
Oh, no, we’re not doing interspecies rom-coms. Emily told us earlier.

[Thomas]
No, she’s turning into a cat. She’ll be a cat!

[Emily]
We can! I mean… I shouldn’t kink shame, if that’s what the people want.

[Thomas]
Hashtag #Furry on this episode.

[Shep]
Right. Is she turning into a cat or a cat girl?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, I was thinking that she could be, it’s like The Shaggy Dog where she starts turning into the cat randomly and she doesn’t really have control over it and she’s trying to date this guy and she keeps turning into the cat. I don’t know the reason why she would keep turning into the cat.

[Thomas]
Feels a little bit like A Whisker Away.

[Emily]
Oh, I don’t know that.

[Thomas]
Basically, there’s a girl, and she likes this boy, and for some reason, she can’t talk to him. I forget. And she runs and she’s at a festival, and she runs into this, like, humanoid cat that it’s like, “Oh, you can have one of these masks, and you’ll turn into a cat, and then you can go and spend time with him,” or I don’t know if he says that, but that’s what she does. She turns into a cat, and she hangs out with him and learns about him and what he likes. But then because she’s wearing the mask, she starts turning into a cat, and she has to give up her face. And he sells human faces to cats so they can turn into humans, and he sells cat faces to people so that they turn into cats. It’s been a while since I’ve watched it.

[Shep]
Yeah, I remember the movie now that yeah, I haven’t seen it, but I do remember hearing about it.

[Emily]
Okay. So no new ideas, even really weird ones.

[Thomas]
Yeah. No, I mean, we just referenced two other movies that do this, and I’m sure they’re not the only ones.

[Shep]
See, I was thinking that it’s like an allegory for going through puberty, like Teen Wolf or Turning Red or yeah.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
There are an abundance of these movies, but they’re popular for a reason.

[Emily]
Yes, this is true. All right, let’s get back to focus on the mittens here.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
She could still turn into a cat. We just don’t have to make it a rom-com.

[Thomas]
If it’s an allegory for puberty, then there should be some sort of a romantic aspect to it, because I feel like that’s a normal, common part of puberty.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. Feel like that’s the essential part of puberty.

[Shep]
If you don’t want to make it an allegory for puberty, you just make her older. She’s in her 20s or something, and she puts on these cute cat Mittens-

[Emily]
For Halloween.

[Shep]
Or for just because they’re cute, you don’t need a reason.

[Emily]
Okay, you’re right. It’s snowy and she’s a college age or older girl-

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Finds some cute mittens, goes out of the town.

[Shep]
And maybe that could be like a big part of her personality, is being all cutesy and whatever. She has cat ears or whatever. She doesn’t want to actually be a cat, though, so when she starts transforming into a cat, that’s like, oh, no, too far.

[Thomas]
So is this similar then, in terms of, like those other ones are an allegory about puberty, and this one is an allegory about becoming a responsible adult. So she’s this, like, manic pixie dream girl type of person, and she’s trying to hold on-

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
She’s like in her late 20s. She’s not in college anymore. She’s trying to hold on to this personality that she cultivated.

[Shep]
Right. She’s got two kids. They’re like, “Mom, you’re not cool.”

[Thomas]
I like that she has kids. That’s responsibility that would be very difficult to take care of as a cat.

[Shep]
I didn’t think about that. Okay, I’m even more sold on this idea now.

[Thomas]
All right, let’s name her because we always forget to do this at the beginning. Oh, what’s a punny cat name. Mittens. No, shit.

[Shep]
_Kat_rina.

[Thomas]
Katrina. Okay. Yeah.

[Shep]
So is Katrina married? I would say yes, because it solves problems, but the problem is that it solves the problems.

[Emily]
Well, she could still be married, but her husband could be deployed or a traveling salesman or a pilot. So he’s not home.

[Thomas]
I thought you were going to say pirate. He’s out at sea all the time. Yar.

[Emily]
He could be a lobsterman or a fisherman.

[Thomas]
He’s got to be a fisherman, right?

[Emily]
Actually, he could be a fisherman.

[Thomas]
So he comes home smelling a fish, and she’s like extra-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
(Laughs)

[Thomas]
Like at the beginning of the movie, he comes home smelling a fish, and she’s like, “Oh, go take a shower.” But then later-

[Emily]
He comes home and he’s like, “I got to take a shower, babe.” She’s like, “No-“

[Thomas]
She’s like, “No, wait, before you do that…” She’s all rubbing up against him. Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. I’m sold, for that scene.

[Emily]
He’s a fisherman.

[Thomas]
Okay. He’s a lobster fisherman. So this is like northeast then, right?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Sure.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Maine. Massachusetts area.

[Thomas]
I feel like early on we need to see how she was, what things were like for her in college and how she had that fun. And so she’s wanting to recapture that. We’re sort of getting the comparison of that life versus her current life, where she has to be more responsible and maybe money’s getting a little tight. The fishing industry isn’t doing quite as well. Maybe there’s a big commercial fishery that’s honing in, and he’s not able to be an independent fisherman anymore, and so she’s going to have to go out and get a job. She has previously lived this really comfortable housewife life. Or maybe her kids are getting old enough to where she doesn’t need to be home all the time. So she’s kind of entering the workforce after a large period of time away from it.

[Shep]
Okay, how old is she? Because that’s way older than I had imagined. If her kids are old enough that she doesn’t need to be home, that’s way further out, I was thinking, not to be too specific, but she has kids Bluey and Bingo aged.

[Emily]
Like six and four.

[Shep]
Yeah, six and four.

[Thomas]
But I mean, she wouldn’t have to be home full time for them. They could be going to preschool or kindergarten.

[Emily]
Well, if she’s a manic, pixie dream girl, she’s clearly got some side hustle she’s trying to get up and running for when they are gone.

[Shep]
Before we get too far, I have to ask what the lesson of the movie is.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Is it, ‘you’re only as young-‘ or, ‘you’re only as old as you feel?’ Or is it ‘it’s time to put away childish things and be an adult?’ Which way are we going on this? Because they’re opposite.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You can’t do both.

[Emily]
I- (oof).

[Thomas]
Same.

[Emily]
Okay, so I’m going to make the argument for ‘it’s time to put away childish things’ because you can have her sort of pass on that quirky imaginative thing that she has to the kids.

[Thomas]
I like that.

[Emily]
That way it’s not ending. That magic, that youthfulness isn’t ending. She’s just passing the baton to the next generation kind of a thing.

[Shep]
I would advocate for you’re only as old as you feel and that she maybe was a manic, pixie dream girl when she was younger, but she no longer is. She’s an adult. She has responsibilities. She’s a parent. She doesn’t have that in her life anymore until these mittens show up and mess up all of her stodgy adulthood.

[Thomas]
I also like that.

[Emily]
Good argument.

[Shep]
But it could go either way, is what I’m saying.

[Emily]
It can!

[Shep]
See, I don’t like the idea of her having to have a side hustle, because I think that is a terrible thing in our modern economy.

[Emily]
Oh, no, I didn’t wasn’t thinking like true side hustle like we do now. But I was thinking of the monetizing of your hobbies, which I also don’t agree with in society.

[Shep]
Maybe she did monetize her hobby when she was younger, and now it’s just her business and she doesn’t enjoy it anymore.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Ooh. Yeah, I like that.

[Emily]
“I used to dress like a cat and go purr at the moon.”

[Shep]
What?

[Thomas]
Probably go to raves or something like that.

[Emily]
There you go. That’s better.

[Thomas]
EDM Festival.

[Shep]
Do cats care about the moon? I thought that was a dog thing.

[Emily]
I don’t know. I was never young.

[Shep]
(Haha)

[Thomas]
You’re like a Benjamin Button situation here? You’re just born.

[Emily]
I went from being mature, gifted kid to midlife crisis.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Like there was no in between.

[Thomas]
Third grade was rough.

[Shep]
Let’s set this shortly after or shortly around her ten-year high school reunion.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So maybe her childhood got interrupted by that pregnancy. Right? She’s happy. She loves her family. She married her high school sweetheart. But she did have to give up that manic, pixie life really early before it had run its course.

[Thomas]
So she feels that she didn’t get sort of closure to that aspect of herself or that there wasn’t, like, a natural transition, that she was forced into something, a way of life she didn’t want or didn’t feel she was ready for?

[Emily]
See, if she got pregnant right after college, then we’re not dealing with the whole like teen pregnancy youth promiscuity.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So instead she got pregnant right after college. She married the guy, her hobby started to make some money and it slowly became this business. And now she’s got these two kids. She’s 30. Maybe there’s a oh, dirty 30. She’s going to her friend’s dirty 30. It’s like a high school reunion. They’re all still young and don’t have kids and the same kind of responsibility. They have grown up jobs, but they still get to go and play.

[Shep]
Who’s the target audience for this movie?

[Emily]
Me.

[Shep]
Okay. I thought it was a kid’s movie. I was like, do we want to have a dirty 30 in a children’s movie? But it depends. We could change the demo. You definitely could have a lot more adult jokes if the target is not children.

[Emily]
Well, I thought because of the whole fisherman joke and her being all over her husband, I thought, I think that’s why my brain went to.

[Shep]
That one works all ages.

[Emily]
This is true. Because kids will just think it’s because she’s a cat and wants to eat fish.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
And moms will think it’s because she’s a cat and wants to eat fish.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Right. She’s got fishnet stockings. It all works.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And he’s got a rain slicker for protection.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Emily]
All right, so we should decide if, where we’re going to go direction wise, whether it’s a kid’s movie or a midlife crisis movie.

[Thomas]
I mean, I don’t think it’s something that kids are gonna get. I think midlife crisis movie makes more sense to me anyway.

[Shep]
Okay, so the reason that I was thinking the high school reunion was that she’d be around her high school friends that she hasn’t seen for a while, and they remind her how she used to be, and that’s why it comes back like she misses that part of her life.

[Thomas]
I think that dirty 30 still works because it’s, like, particularly for women, this is my understanding, aging. And that’s a very specific, like-

[Shep]
Milestone?

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Thank you.

[Emily]
I would agree.

[Thomas]
So I feel like there’s a natural moment of reflection.

[Emily]
Yeah. And she’s kind of like, she didn’t do anything for her dirty 30. Because she was already a mom.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She has a business, she had a husband, she’s got a house, she’s got shit to do. While these friends don’t have that. They just have grown up jobs and shit tons of disposable income, so they’re going to throw the wildest 30 they can. And that’s where she wants to go and kind of recapture this. She sees that they still have this youthful quality.

[Thomas]
They can all be college friends and reminiscing about “Oh, those crazy times we had in college.”

[Shep]
I have a trope, I’m going to mention it. We don’t have to use it.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
It could be her 30th birthday. She wishes when she blows out the candles that she had that youthful exuberance that she used to have, because she has a party and her friends come over, but then they leave and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we got to go. We have another party after this.” They’re still going out and she’s like, done for the evening.

[Thomas]
Right. Because her kids wake up at six the next morning no matter what time she goes to sleep.

[Shep]
Right. And they don’t have kids, so it’s it’s-

[Thomas]
Right. So they can wake up at, like, noon.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And the husband’s out because it’s prime fishing season.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s a combination of the wish that is causing this magical event to happen. The other thing I was thinking of, why does this happen? Maybe her grandmother, who’s, you know, old people are magical-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Of course.

[Shep]
Gave her a special ball of yarn. Her business is knitting stuff. By the way, did I never mention that?

[Emily]
I assumed.

[Shep]
That’s what she made her business out of. She’s knitting stuff and her grandmother gave her this ball of yarn and it’s like, “It’s special. Make something special with it.” And it was so special she never made anything with it and forgot about it. And it’s just in a box in the attic. And then she finds it sometime around her 30th birthday, and with that reinvigoration, she wants to make something silly and fun with it. And so she makes those cat paw mittens out of this special ball of yarn. So it’s like, was it the yarn? Was it the wish? That could be too many things, too much magic.

[Thomas]
I do like that idea of the special yarn that’s been in like, a memory box.

[Shep]
She’s looking for pictures from when she was in high school because her party’s coming up and she wants to bring out pictures to make a board with her friends, that kind of thing. And so it’s in that same box of stuff from that age.

[Emily]
Yeah. And she sees a picture of herself dressed as a cat for Halloween, and she had made kitten mittens.

[Thomas]
Right. And Halloween is coming up in a few months, and she thinks, “You know what? I’ll do that. I’ll dress up as a cat again, but like an adult version of that costume.”

[Emily]
A warm version of that costume.

[Thomas]
Right! Because I got to take my kids trick or treating and it’s frigging cold in-

[Emily]
In New England in October. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. How long would it take her to knit those mittens? Is this her full-time job?

[Shep]
Her full-time job is mom.

[Emily]
Yeah. So she’s got kids and she’s trying to deal with them, and her business is knitting, but she has specific orders she has to fill. So where would she get the time to knit these mittens? Really, you could knit a pair of mittens in a weekend if you wanted to.

[Thomas]
But, I mean, if we said it a couple of months before Halloween.

[Shep]
But then you have a big time gap between when she wants that youthful exuberance again and when the mittens become magical.

[Thomas]
That’s a good point.

[Shep]
I have an idea. She has an apprentice, and her apprentice wants more work. Her husband’s encouraging her to expand the business and give more work to her apprentice, and that would free up more time for her. But she’s so hands on that she’s afraid that her apprentice, who’s just a much younger girl, is going to mess something up. And it’s like that’s going to reflect on her and her business. And she’s established this name for herself. So her having her apprentice take over her orders temporarily while she makes the mittens is also her growing as a person and letting that part of her life take a step back from her business, maybe spend more time with her kids. I think this whole adventure is the mom and the kids. It’s like Brave, but with a cat instead of a bear.

[Emily]
I’m down for that.

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Shep]
Because now that we’ve set this premise up, I’m imagining she goes full cat. Right? And maybe she can talk to the daughters, but she can’t talk to anyone else.

[Emily]
Now. Is she cat sized cat or people size cat?

[Shep]
Cat sized cat.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
That’s why she needs the daughters to help her, even though they are aged four and six.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that.

[Emily]
I like this solely because I want the four-year-old at one point to dress her up as a baby and put her in a stroller and carry her around. And if they are caring for her, that is 100% going to happen because the mom cat’s not going to scratch them.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah, true.

[Shep]
She can’t she’s got those mittens on. So how does the magic work? Because she turns into a cat, but she’s not a cat the whole time because we want to see her still have cat tendencies as a woman.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So I imagine at some point, she gets the mittens off and turns back into a woman, but she’s not fully back. She can still accidentally turn into a cat. What is the thing that what was the movie that you were referencing where that’s the-

[Emily]
The Shaggy Dog. What happens in The Shaggy Dog that he keeps turning into the shaggy-? Oh, he gets cursed by some thing in a museum.

[Thomas]
Boy have not seen that movie in so long. I don’t remember that at all.

[Emily]
I’m pretty sure that’s how he… oh, no, it’s a spell. The kids turn their dad into a sheepdog when they mutter a spell, and the spell can only be broken by an act of bravery. So that’s how the magic in The Shaggy Dog works. How do you want our magic to work?

[Shep]
I think she gets one of the mittens off.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, it gets trapped in something sticky, so it comes off.

[Shep]
Well, if you can just pull it off, then just have the daughters pull it off.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So it’s gotta be really sticky, like tar. Like I know kids are sticky, but they’re not that sticky.

[Shep]
Yes. But they have hands and they can grasp the mittens.

[Thomas]
If she can tell them-

[Shep]
Right. So, yeah, I think we go back to how does the magic work?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What is causing her to be a cat and what causes her to stop being a cat?

[Thomas]
Well, at night, she can be a human.

[Shep]
(Laughs)

[Thomas]
No, wait, like we’ve done that.

[Shep]
That sounds familiar.

[Thomas]
So what I’m thinking is that when she’s alone with the kids, she’s a cat, but when her husband or somebody else is around, she’s a human. And so everybody thinks, like, “Oh, what active imaginations the kids all have.” This weird game that they’re playing where they all insist she’s a cat, but every time an adult comes around or some other person comes around, she’s human again.

[Shep]
I mean, that seems like it wouldn’t be that big of a deal then.

[Thomas]
Except that her kids are there, so she can’t take care of them or do her job.

[Shep]
Well, she’s got the apprentice to do her job. Does the apprentice find out that she’s a cat?

[Thomas]
I guess when the apprentice is around, that doesn’t cause her to be human because the apprentice needs to be looking for her and be like, “Oh, I didn’t realize they had a cat.”

[Shep]
So I would argue against the you turn human when there’s an adult around because I think it solves too many problems.

[Emily]
I think we have to establish, does she have to be wearing the mittens to be a cat and no mittens to be a person?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So what I was thinking was there’s some mindset or something that’s causing her to not be able to let go of the mittens. They won’t come off. They won’t come off. They won’t come off. So she’s a cat.

[Thomas]
It’s like the raccoon hand in a jar thing.

[Shep]
Yes. Except something, maybe she’s having a conversation with one of her daughters, and one of the mittens can come off and so she turns partly back into a woman. She still has the other mitten on, and she can’t pull it off because she doesn’t have that mindset anymore. She’s so excited about whatever, but she’s partly a cat. She’s still got cat ears that she has to hide under something. And maybe she has a tail, and that’s when her husband comes home and smells like fish. She wants to be with him, but also she wants to hide that she’s partly a cat right now.

[Emily]
Could she be startled by a dog? Could we just go that cliche with it? Dog barking makes her drop her mittens.

[Shep]
She only drops one, though.

[Emily]
See, explaining magic is hard. It’s easier to just be like, “Blah, blah, blah. That’s just how it works.”

[Shep]
That’s true. It definitely is easier to not explain.

[Thomas]
Well, why don’t we take a break here, and we can ponder this magical conundrum, and when we come back, the rest of our story about mittens.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. Do we have any clever ideas for how to solve this or just ignore it?

[Shep]
I want to argue further for there to be a segment of the movie where she has one mitten on and one mitten off.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because she’s hiding her hand that has the mitten on it. And, like, her apprentice wants her to show her how to knit a specific thing.

[Emily]
Oh, can’t knit with mittens.

[Shep]
And she can’t she can’t knit with mittens.

[Emily]
I like that. Okay, so we need to get her a half cat, half mom.

[Thomas]
Is the inciting incident she becomes a cat, or is the inciting incident she goes to the birthday party, I guess, and reminisces, and then, like, by the end of the first act, she’s a cat.

[Shep]
I know what it is. She misses her carefree life before she had kids, which is a very rough thing to say.

[Emily]
No, it’s true.

[Shep]
But is true.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And that’s what turns her into a cat. But while she’s hanging out as a cat with her daughters, and they’re like, “Is this our life now? Are you a cat forever?” And whatever. And they’re worried. And she is reassuring her daughters that she loves them and loves her life and whatever. And that’s when one of the mittens comes off, accepting her adulthood. Her motherhood is what gets the mittens off and turns her back into a human.

[Thomas]
Right. So, like, without even thinking about it, she takes her paw out of one of the mittens to reach out and caress her-

[Emily]
To comfort!

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Shep]
Yes. Yeah.

[Thomas]
But they don’t realize that that’s what it was.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So is that the mid second act turning point then?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And then the rest of the movie is trying to figure out, she spent with one mitten on.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Oh, gosh. Is there a point where she intentionally puts the other mitten back on because it’s-

[Emily]
Because she needs to do something.

[Thomas]
Well, because it’s too difficult to be a half human, half cat. She can be all human, and that’s easy. And she can be all cat and that’s easy. But how do you explain the middle bit to people?

[Shep]
I like the idea of her having to put or her choosing to put the other mitten back on in order to turn full cat again, even though she hasn’t solved the mystery.

[Thomas]
It’s an act of faith that it happened once, it can happen again.

[Shep]
So why does she turn herself full cat? What does she need to be small for?

[Thomas]
I think it’s more just avoiding suspicion.

[Shep]
I just let people be suspicious. I don’t care.

[Emily]
I would embrace it and just be like, “Look at me, I’m half a cat.”

[Shep]
Yes. I think, like, one of her daughters came out on the window ledge or something, and she needs to climb up real quick.

[Thomas]
Feels forced.

[Shep]
Yeah, I agree. Never mind.

[Thomas]
(Laughs)

[Emily]
Feels like a Disney movie. I’m okay with it.

[Shep]
Feels like a Studio Ghibli movie.

[Emily]
Again, I’m okay with it.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Emily]
Formulas work, people.

[Thomas]
Well, for now, we know that that’s a thing she does.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Do we like that idea of, okay.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
I like the idea that she purposely puts it back on and becomes a cat.

[Thomas]
How does she make that final connection that that’s what she needs to do is accept her responsible adult life?

[Shep]
I don’t think she does consciously make that connection. I think this is a thing that the audience can figure out by watching the movie, but she doesn’t necessarily even have to know why she’s a cat or not a cat, why the mittens stay on or don’t. She puts the mitten back on. I still think she should rescue her daughter somehow, because her daughter is more important than her being a woman. She would rather be a cat and rescue her daughter than have something happen to her daughter.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And it’s that love that makes the mittens fall off almost immediately after. That’s your finale.

[Thomas]
Right. “Why did they come off?” “I don’t know, but I’m not putting them on again.”

[Shep]
So who finds out that she was a cat or even partly a cat? Does her husband ever find out? Does her assistant or her apprentice ever find out?

[Emily]
Her apprentice could find out. I don’t think her husband should.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I agree.

[Emily]
I mean, he keep the dopey clueless husband-

[Shep]
Dopey and clueless.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What if he really likes cats?

[Thomas]
So he’s into it when she’s half cat?

[Emily]
That goes back to that weird inner species-

[Shep]
Oh, that’s right. No interspecies stuff. Emily decided.

[Thomas]
He’s like “Babe, have you been looking at my search history?”

[Emily]
(Laughs)

[Thomas]
“Thank you for doing this for me, honey. I’m glad that we can finally be our true selves in front of each other.”

[Shep]
He takes off his shirt. He’s got a dog collar underneath. Yeah. How do we set up a sequel?

[Thomas]
Oh, she donates the mittens.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
No, they’re magic. You don’t give away magic mittens. You save them for Halloween.

[Thomas]
But she doesn’t know how to get them off.

[Shep]
You just put one on. It’s fine.

[Emily]
Well, she puts them somewhere in a drawer, and then the kids will have to be teenagers, and one of them will find them and forget.

[Thomas]
She puts them in that box in the attic.

[Shep]
Right. The box of memories.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“Remember when I turned into a cat and nearly died? Good times.” So how much of the movie is her as a cat?

[Thomas]
Based on what we’ve said so far, it’s really just like the first half of the second act and then the climax scene.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, so what are the difficulties she experiences as a cat? She can’t take her daughters anywhere. She can’t go to the store.

[Emily]
Right. She can’t get them lunch.

[Shep]
I mean, what are even problems anymore? You can order groceries online and have them delivered right to your house. So what are modern difficulties? Well, she can’t dial a phone.

[Thomas]
No, but she could use a computer. She’s an expert with a mouse.

[Shep]
Ha ha!

[Emily]
I mean, if we’re going to establish later on that she has to rescue her daughter. So one of the daughters is just always getting into trouble, always doing something mischievous. The four-year-old, obviously, because they’re assholes.

[Shep]
Yes, obviously.

[Emily]
So in one scene, the four-year-old can lock herself in the bathroom, and she hasn’t got opposable thumbs. And the six-year-old doesn’t understand how to get her sister out of it. Like, they have those little keys that you can have for the interior doors, and she’s trying to get the daughter to get the little key.

[Thomas]
Yeah. The key is on top of the-

[Emily]
The door jam.

[Thomas]
Door jam. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She could just go up and knock it off. She’s a cat.

[Emily]
How’s she going to get up the trim?

[Shep]
Climb it. Have you not seen- Oh, she can’t use her claws! She can’t climb without her claws. Stupid mittens.

[Thomas]
I feel like right away when she first becomes a cat, I mean, there’d obviously be the initial shock, but she’s kind of getting what she wanted. She can kind of like, run around and be free for a little bit. Maybe the kids are at school or daycare when it first happens. And so at first she’s like, “This is great.”

[Emily]
And then she tries to take them off and realizes she can’t.

[Shep]
I don’t know if she knows that it’s the mittens. She does maybe try to take off the mittens so that she can use her claws, but can’t and then she knows that she can’t take the mittens off. I think the scene when she takes one off accidentally and turns partly back into a human, that’s when it becomes clear that it’s the mittens that are keeping her a cat.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So when she’s talking to the girls and she takes the one mitten off, she’s like sitting in that cat loaf position. So that way the one mitten just gets caught under her when she pulls her paw out.

[Emily]
Okay. I like that.

[Shep]
The cat loaf position. The thing is, we all know exactly the position you’re talking about. Okay. What does she do before the kids get home? Because she’s wild and free for some time.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
The whole day until after school.

[Emily]
Naps.

[Thomas]
Yeah, nap for sure.

[Shep]
She finds a sunbeam and just collapses into it.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m a cat. I can do all these things.” And then you see the clip of her just in the sunbeam sleeping, and then you hear the door slam and it’s her daughters.

[Thomas]
That’s pretty funny.

[Emily]
I mean, if I was a cat, napping in a sunbeam would be top priority,

[Shep]
Yes. Is there an annoying neighbor dog or something? Like, she’s like, “Oh, I’m going to scare that dog,” or whatever. “I’m going to do all these things.” And then she takes a nap, and then it’s afternoon. Although now it’s just a very limited amount of time of the movie that we’ve taken up.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So we need to spend the majority of her time as a cat with her daughters.

[Thomas]
I wonder if there’s like a neighborhood cat that sees her and knows immediately, like, “You’re not a cat.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Just gives her this look like “Hmmm.”

[Shep]
That could be like one of the things that she does first before anything else is runs outside and sees the neighborhood cats and is all excited, like, “I’m going to play with the cats.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And they’re like, “Nope.” When she turns back into a woman, does she have trouble keeping her balance without a tail all of a sudden?

[Thomas]
I mean, she spent 30 years as a woman.

[Shep]
You get adjusted, brain plasticity, you adapt real quick.

[Emily]
Yeah, for like, a little bit she might, but it wouldn’t take that long for her to readjust because it’s muscle memory, too.

[Thomas]
Maybe she just normally is a little bit klutzy.

[Emily]
I mean, she is a manic pixie dream girl.

[Thomas]
Right. But when she’s half cat, she’s like totally on top of it. That tail keeps her super balanced.

[Shep]
I like it if she’s a little bit klutzy, because we know the youngest daughter is also very klutzy, so that fits really well.

[Emily]
Oh, she’s got to get the zoomies.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s got to start with the zoomies.

[Thomas]
When she’s half cat, half woman, does she wake up at two in the morning and just run around the house for no reason?

[Shep]
Yeah, she’s in that manic pixie dream goal phase.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She just goes out for a run down the neighborhood.

[Thomas]
She sees the cats, neighborhood cats. They give her that look again.

[Shep]
She squints back at them like “Grrrr!”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Is her husband home for part of the time when she’s half cat, half human?

[Shep]
Yeah, we have that-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s there that night for sure.

[Emily]
Okay, so she going to sleep in the same bed with him? How’s she going to hide her tail and her ears?

[Shep]
Keep the lights off.

[Emily]
Okay, so then the other thing, at, like, four in the morning, she’s got to be like, “Hey, I’m hungry.”

[Shep]
(Laughs)

[Emily]
“Could you go make me some breakfast?”

[Shep]
Yep. Yep.

[Thomas]
He wakes up and her face is right by his face.

[Shep]
We should do more movies with cats. We could do all the cat tropes. I like it because he doesn’t know she’s a cat, but we, the audience, know why she’s acting this way.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He wakes up, her face is right there. She’s hungry. He gets up and he makes her food. She takes one bite and then goes back to bed.

[Emily]
At dinner time? She takes two bites, gets up and goes, put more on the plate, comes back, eats two bites, puts more on the plate.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Ha. Right. The plate is overflowing.

[Thomas]
There’s like a ring of food on the outside of the plate, but the middle is bare and so-

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Her husband’s like, “What are you doing?” She’s like-

[Shep]
No, you don’t call attention to it.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Nobody comments on it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s just the audience watching.

[Emily]
She just does it.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
What else do we need to figure out for her? I feel like overall, we have the story.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I mean, you could just fill in events for we have the beats of this is what happens at the beginning.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
This is why she feels this way, and this is why she turns into a cat. And she’s a cat for this section. She’s a half cat for this section. She’s back to a cat again at the very end, and then you have the climax.

[Thomas]
I think the two things I’d like to know more about are what goes on during the second part of the second act, the beginning of the third act, like that time where she’s a cat hybrid. What is happening then? And then what is the climactic event where she decides to go full cat?

[Emily]
Well, the second half she’s kind of got to adjust to- She’s got to figure out a way to adjust. Right?

[Shep]
Right. She’s trying to cover the fact that she’s half cat, but she still has to do all of her parental responsibilities.

[Thomas]
With one hand.

[Shep]
With one hand.

[Emily]
She can hold things.

[Thomas]
Right. She could kind of hold things sort of.

[Emily]
She has an arm, right?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
She can hold things against her body.

[Thomas]
But she can’t use the fingers on that hand.

[Emily]
No. Again, just tropey and cliched. I just imagine her trying to make, like, cookies or muffins or something for a soccer game or ballet recital.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Something.

[Thomas]
There’s, like, a bake sale or there’s some something that before she turned into a cat, she had signed up for.

[Emily]
Yeah. So she’s got to try and do that and hide from the other moms.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And she tries to get out of it by calling and being like, “Well, I’m sick.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And they’re like, “No, you’re not.”

[Shep]
It’s the one really mean mom that’s always carrying around a teacup poodle in her purse. She doesn’t get along with that mom on the best of days.

[Thomas]
They’re real catty toward each other. What’s the lowest low? I feel like if she’s been trying to hide her new self, I guess then the lowest low could be being found out.

[Shep]
Yeah. All I can think of are cliche lowest lows.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like that. That’s, Splash.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Teen Wolf.

[Thomas]
I suppose the other thing is that she’s trying to relive this past. She has these responsibilities, so maybe losing one of those things. Are these kids her husband’s kids, or are they her ex-husband’s kids, and he’s trying to take them and get custody, and so she loses her kids, and she has to get them back. Too complicated?

[Emily]
Yeah, I don’t like that. That’s too much going on. If we went with the losing the carefree lifestyle thing, what if-

[Thomas]
I mean, ultimately, that’s kind of the end of the story, too, is she loses the carefree lifestyle.

[Emily]
Right. But she doesn’t care. I think that’s really the end, is that she doesn’t care that she lost it.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a good point.

[Emily]
I think at this point we could make it to where the women invite her on a girl’s trip for something because she was so much fun the other night or whatever.

[Thomas]
Well, because they all kept going and partying, and she couldn’t, and they’re like, “Girl, you need a weekend.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Oh.

[Thomas]
They’ve organized something where she doesn’t have responsibilities.

[Shep]
The bake sale thing. I want to tweak that slightly.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
Whatever it is, it’s not for the school, which represents her children and responsibility. It’s for her friends that are still having that carefree lifestyle. So they asked her-

[Thomas]
A GoFundMe for their Coachella tickets.

[Shep]
To make flyers for something, their new band, whatever. She wants to be part of their lives, come and help out and do whatever. And she turned them down at the time, but now she’s back in her manic pixie dream girl phase. She calls them up, and it’s like, “Oh, yes, I’d love to (do whatever).” And she’s trying to do all that one handed, as she is a half cat, half woman, and it’s a huge hassle. She thought that she could recapture this thing that she did when she was younger, and she can’t. She’s trying to do that and also take care of her kids at the same time. And also, she’s only got one hand. It’s too much. It’s too much. I think letting go of that is at the end, she’s like, “I can’t do both.”

[Emily]
“And I don’t want to.”

[Shep]
“And I don’t want to.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“I choose my daughters.”

[Thomas]
Is there a line earlier in the film where her husband or her assistant or somebody says, like, “I think you might be stretching yourself too thin?” And she goes, “I could do this with one hand tied behind my back?”

[Shep]
Yes, absolutely.

[Emily]
Of course.

[Shep]
You got to have that line, Much earlier and never mention it.

[Thomas]
Yeah. No-

[Shep]
It’s just on a second watch.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You go, “Oh, I see.”

[Thomas]
Whatever her friends are doing, her showing up with cat ears and a tail coming out from under her skirt would be like, “Cool, fun. You dressed up for it.”

[Shep]
Right. That’s not the lowest low. That’s like, the highest high.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s early on, when she’s hybrid, she’s like, “Great.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
She still has the energy and whatever that she gets from being a cat.

[Emily]
Yeah. This can be where they make the plan for her to do whatever the thing she needs to do is.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They’re like, “Oh, you’re out. It’s fun. You should totally do this,” or “We are going to do this.” And then she volunteers and says, “Oh, I can do this for you.”

[Shep]
What is the thing? It’s got to be some crafting thing or something.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s got to be a crafty/baky thing.

[Shep]
Right. She’s very crafty. That was her thing in high school. That’s what turned into her side business or her business.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s not a side business. It’s her only business.

[Emily]
And she was always, like a party planner, group mom type thing. So she’s like, “This was my heyday, this is what I always did.” And then maybe that’s part of her realization of I was always kind of a mom or I was always a homemakerish.

[Shep]
OOH, I like that a lot.

[Thomas]
In that early flashback scene. Or not a flashback, necessarily, but that scene where we’re seeing how the past was, we see her taking care of her friends at the party, or she’s still having managing to have fun.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s fun to her.

[Thomas]
Right. But she’s making sure everyone’s safe.

[Emily]
Yeah. Everybody’s got food. Everybody’s got something.

[Thomas]
Everyone’s staying hydrated. When she first becomes hybrid, surely the first thing she would try to do is take the other glove off.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
But it doesn’t come off because magic.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
My next step would be to go get a pair of scissors and attempt to cut it off.

[Emily]
Again, magic.

[Thomas]
Right. So do we see her trying to nothing’s happening.

[Shep]
Yeah. You can see her try several things. What else could you try?

[Thomas]
They can get increasingly desperate. She could be, like, holding it over the open flame of the, of the stove.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Just short of doing a saw. Like, she has it set up, the table saw, and she’s like, “No, even I can’t do that.”

[Shep]
Ha. It’s just her with a running table saw and her two daughters standing next to her, and one of them goes, “Mom?”

[Thomas]
All right, well, at the end of the film, she decides to turn into a cat. Fully into a cat. Why does she need to be a cat?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
What is going on that being a cat is advantageous.

[Shep]
Her youngest daughter has gotten herself in a pickle.

[Thomas]
Definitely. Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s either up high and the cat needs to climb up there, or she’s someplace that it’s hard to get to unless you’re small. So either a treehouse, but you could climb up a treehouse, like an old treehouse. Maybe she had a treehouse when she was a kid, and it’s the same. She still lives in the same house, but it’s all old, rotten stuff. And, like, the youngest daughter climbed up there and the boards are breaking like the daughter’s foot’s coming through.

[Thomas]
There’s also the trope of cats getting stuck in trees, so maybe you want to avoid trees.

[Shep]
Or you could have her daughter playing by the river and steps on a log and the log falls in the water. But then being cat’s not advantageous.

[Emily]
What if her daughters climbs over the neighbor’s fence for some reason with the dog and is going to get attacked, but the cat can slip underneath and the girl can’t get out, but she can slip underneath and get the gate open?

[Thomas]
Or draw the dog’s attention.

[Emily]
Yeah. Or something like that. Yeah. Vicious dogs are always a good sell.

[Shep]
Right. Let’s get that trauma early.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
I mean, we might be overthinking it. The daughter could just be locked inside the house and is too short to reach the lock to let herself out. But there is a second-floor window that’s open.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
The daughter’s life in the house. The house is on fire.

[Shep]
Oh, golly.

[Thomas]
No. The daughter was fucking around in the abandoned house in the neighborhood.

[Shep]
No.

[Thomas]
Playing with matches.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
As you wont to do as a child. Yes.

[Shep]
See, I know that, like, tomorrow I’m going to think of the perfect situation.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s hard to write all of these on the spot.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, we definitely know that this is the situation.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And there’s peril, and the only way to save her from the peril is to be a cat.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
She becomes a cat. This is a problem for the writers, I’m going to say that.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I think I might agree with you. Yeah. As much as I would like to know-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
We know the basics.

[Shep]
If you know the right situation, write it in the comments.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Definitely.

[Emily]
Let’s get the audience to participate.

[Thomas]
All right. Well, is there anything else that we would need to figure out for this story? I feel like we have the framework. We know what happens. And why.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Does she fuck her husband when she’s half a cat? I gotta know.

[Emily]
Heavy petting.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
Emily. I love you, Emily.

[Shep]
All right. Emily wins.

[Thomas]
Well, we would love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about Mittens. Are you feeling warm and fuzzy, or did it leave you out in the cold? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com, where you can also find complete transcripts for every episode, as well as links to the many references we make. Come back again when Emily, Shep, and I get together for the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Emily]
Okay, well, I have a premise for a sequel, but let’s concentrate on finishing this one, because my premise is good. But it would be that the older daughter’s away at college and the younger daughter finds the box of memories, finds the mittens. She’s going to be a cat for Halloween and she puts them on, and then she becomes a cat. She doesn’t remember that that really happened because she was only four.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So goes through the whole story again. There’s your sequel. Now let’s finish this one.

[Shep]
Okay.