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Trick or (Pet) Treat: A Halloween Costume Shopping Guide for Furry Friends

It’s almost Halloween, y’all! And as much as I do not enjoy this very day, despite an affinity for candy corn and also pumpkins, I do wait all year for it to come around so I can put Eli into costumes and thus fill him with contempt toward me over and over and over again. It never gets old! Like, it just never gets old. Have you ever dressed up your cat or dog for Halloween? I guarantee it will improve your quality of life.

To guide you and your pet through the upcoming spooky season, I’ve compiled this very post with some help from the fuzzy friends of Team Autostraddle, and also Stef, who loves putting her cat in costumes the way I love putting my dog in costumes. First, I’m gonna show you how cute all of the Team Autostraddle pets look when they’re dolled up as tiny characters, and then I’m gonna recommend some timely and also timeless costume ideas for you very own much-loved critters. Enter at your own risk! Things are about to get adorable.


Family Scrapbook: Team Autostraddle’s Pets Do Halloween

(Click to look through the gallery!)


Stef and Carmen’s Halloween Costume Picks for Pets

A note before we begin: Stef informed me in the process of putting this post together that she does not shop in the cat section for her cat’s costumes, because, and I quote, “these suck.” I have to agree. Most costumes that fit small dogs will fit a cat, so most of these are for dogs but really also for cats because honestly nobody is checking. As Stef so eloquently said, “the market’s fucked up but get your cat a good dog costume.”

halloween costumes for pets dogs cats

ROW 1: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle; Sailor Hat; The Hulk // ROW 2: Orca Costume; Octo-Hound; Cowboy Rider // ROW 3: Sushi Costume; Unicorn Costume; Zebra Costume // ROW 4: Raptor Costume; Ewok Costume; Lion Mane

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Carmen

Carmen spent six years at Autostraddle, ultimately serving as Straddleverse Director, Feminism Editor and Social Media Co-Director. She is now the Consulting Digital Editor at Ms. and writes regularly for DAME, the Women’s Media Center, the National Women’s History Museum and other prominent feminist platforms; her work has also been published in print and online by outlets like BuzzFeed, Bitch, Bust, CityLab, ElixHER, Feministing, Feminist Formations, GirlBoss, GrokNation, MEL, Mic and SIGNS, and she is a co-founder of Argot Magazine. You can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr or in the drive-thru line at the nearest In-N-Out.

Carmen has written 919 articles for us.

21 Comments

  1. my cat and i have a pretty good deal going where 364 days out of the year she doesn’t have to do anything but take naps and eat treats and play with catnip toys and get chin scratches, and then one day out of the year i make her put on a costume and take humiliating pictures for 10 minutes.

  2. Eli is the cutest li’l pumpkin EVER! <3 <3 <3

    Also, the ratio of cats to dogs is about what I would expect for this site. ;D

  3. Now this is the kind of content I want to see from Autostraddle!
    My cat is named Gandalf (he is both grey and white, but we call him Gandalf the Stray sometimes because he was a stray cat that adopted US) and I have been trying in vain for two years to find him a wizard costume to wear. I would make my own if I had the skills but alas, I do not.

    • aw my best friend had a gandalf (he was ancient and very wise). he was the best. surely someone on etsy makes wizard costumes!!

  4. I like that everyone has their fancy store-bought costumes while my cat is sitting there in a homemade cape that just says “queen”

  5. I’ve actually spent the last few weeks buying various costumes to torture Watson with. His favorite and mine is totally this dinosaur one:

    But I also think he needs the t-rex costume. Mostly because the t-rex is his spirit animal (big body, little legs/arms).

  6. All your animals are so adorable. Especially the grumpy looking ones.
    My dog has a skeleton tshirt which is as close as I can get to a costume, I swear she’d try and kill it. I so want to dress her as a velociraptor though.

  7. So I went into my iphoto to get a picture of the time I stuffed my very irate cat into a Christmas sweater meant for large small dogs, and instead I came across this photo set from the llama costume contest at the MN state fair. So not technically halloween, or my pet, but if you have a large pet and want to coordinate your costume with them, this is a pretty good idea (especially if your pet has the same attitude towards life as Eeyore).

  8. This kind of content makes me proud to be an A-plusser. Good job And thank you Stef and Carmen. I adopted a rescue dog 3 months ago, now I have some shopping to do

  9. This post makes me so sad my dogs won’t tolerate costumes… :'(
    I could see Mog being a great (but cowardly) lion, and Bonnie’d make a magnificent unicorn!

    Though on the plus-side I get to see all of Team Autostraddle’s cuties in their brilliant costumes so I suppose it all works out in the end. <3

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