It isn’t easy to transform a bulldog into a leopard, but Joy Holt was trying. She was trying in broad daylight, in the middle of the sidewalk, with a small circle of people raptly watching. “He’s not afraid. Cosmo’s not shy at all about getting dressed in public,” Holt said as she struggled to give the dog a new identity. She carefully pulled the thin, spotted costume material over the stoic dog’s back legs, then slowly around the rest of his body I until the change was complete. “Two years ago,” she said, “I dressed him as a taco.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
But there were a few animals that just wanted to be seen as themselves. Sheila Fasang held up an albino rabbit in a yellow dress with white lace at the collar and cuffs. “She’s a bunny, a Beatrix Potter bunny. Rabbits are great pets to have, especially with other pets–like my two cats, who love to lick her clean. I bought her out of sympathy. I kept coming back to the pet store again and again, and she wasn’t being sold. So finally I bought her. Her name is Matthew, even though she’s female. You see, vets don’t know much about the sex of rabbits, and I took her to be neutered in case she was a male–otherwise they urinate all over the place–and she was put to sleep and cut open and then they found out she wasn’t male. So they just stitched her back up again. But I decided to let her keep her name as Matthew, since I’d been calling her that all along.”
Awards were given in a variety of categories, all of them completely improvised by the judges, who included Jane Sahlins, of the International Theater Festival. “We have as many awards,” she confessed, “as there are witty categories we can come up with. It’s all meant to be just good fun, although–believe it or not–some people get very upset when they lose.” The street was filled with friends and onlookers, many of them with pets of their own. One man told me he thought this year’s turnout was small compared to other years: “It must be the marathon and the cold temperature.” I asked him why he hadn’t entered his dog, a beautiful Alaskan malamute. “I did a few years ago,” he answered grumpily. “As a polar bear. But when he didn’t win, I just decided it wasn’t worth the effort anymore.”
Fortunately anthropomorphism didn’t run completely wild. Diana Bush, in a brown leather jacket and painter’s cap, went in a more conceptual direction, hanging a sign that said “Wet Paint” on her dalmatian. “I entertained the idea of bringing her as Dali–as in Salvador Dali–with a little mustache, and I would have come in a blue body suit painted with clouds. But it seemed like too much work.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Bruce Powell.
