“Catalina, it’s time to go to sleep,” her mother told her as she came out of the kitchen to find her.
“I don’t want to, give me some more.”
“Brush your teeth and go to bed, we have to get up early tomorrow.”
“Ugh, I don’t want to.”
“Go on. Go on. Let’s go.”
Catalina took all the time in the world; she wasn’t in any hurry to go to bed. She looked in the closet for her favorite pajamas, the ones with the cosmos, the ones that glowed in the dark and brought the most vivid universe into her room. She tidied the pile of pajamas, put on her unicorn slippers, not wanting to feel the cold bathroom tile. She yawned a couple of times and started brushing her teeth, brushing them from bottom to top without any rush. Suddenly, the door opened softly and quietly.
“Let’s see how clean they are,” her mother said, stroking her cheek. Let’s see… very well… Let’s go to sleep then…
Before Catalina got into bed, they hugged each other heartily, like every night. Her mom never missed the opportunity to tell her how proud she was of her and that she loves her madly.
“Mom, tell me Grandma Lola’s story.”
“Again… This is the fifth night in a row that I’ve told you.”
“Please, Mom! Please! I love it!”
“Okay, okay…”
A long time ago, Grandma Gregorio and Grandma Lola decided they would start celebrating Halloween with a costume party to which they would invite family, friends, and neighbors.
They would decorate the house and garden with all kinds of spooky pumpkins, spiders, the occasional creepy scarecrow, the living dead, and an endless number of terrifying decorations. For that, they would assign tasks.
Preparations began three weeks before, for your Uncle Alberto’s birthday.
The most anticipated moment for many wasn’t the cake, but rather when Grandma Lola called us into the dining room to draw slips of paper because your Uncle Victor and your Uncle Hugo couldn’t agree; they both always wanted to wear the same costume.
I was very attentive to your Uncle Luca; if he didn’t like the costume he’d been given, he’d try to cheat and change it, and that didn’t seem fair to me.
The costumes were incredibly varied: vampires, possessed angels, zombies, and endless other possibilities.
We all prayed and begged to draw the blank slip of paper because it was the only one that gave you the chance to use your imagination and create an original, unique costume, one to show off. We all wanted to have the cutest, most creative, and unique costume.
The year your Uncle Alberto turned twelve, Grandma set a goal for herself: in addition to the classic sweets, she wanted to make some kind of different candy or cookie, one with which she could tell terrifying stories.
The first thing she thought of was making some finger-shaped cookies. She would pour sauce on them and say they were bloody and that she took them from children who wanted to steal her candy. After a while, she dismissed it as a bit macabre to her taste.
Another idea was to make beet juice, dress up as a vampire, and offer it as blood—the most delicious and exquisite blood, but that wasn’t as terrifying.
She could decorate quail eggs as if they were real eyes and eat them in front of everyone, but she found it hard to believe.
While she was baking the dough for a delicious cake, Night, our cat, appeared purring into the kitchen. We had named him that because he was completely black.
“Did you come to keep me company or just in search of food?” she told him.
To which Night, shaking his back and jumping onto a high stool, said:
“Meow.”
“Okay, okay.”
I’ll feed you now, I’ll finish and give it to you.”
Grandma Lola continued concentrating on preparing dinner, until one moment she saw him lick himself, and then a light bulb went on…

“I know!” she said to herself. “I’m going to make some long cookies. I’m going to call them cat tongues. I’m going to make them so they look similar. I’m going to dress up as a creepy witch and tell scary stories about how I got them.”
That’s how Grandma Lola invented cat tongues.
By then, Catalina was sleeping peacefully. Her mother tucked her in, turned off the light, and went into the kitchen to enjoy some cookies.

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