Dear Selina,
One other matter, which has been of unusually personal interest to me lately. You've worn purple since that first visit to Kittlemeier’s, never the hideous outfit the Post has tagged you with lately. But the Post has allegedly "photographed" you in alternate versions of your outfit in the past. Outfits which are no less flattering to your figure, but which are practical for the situation - white for snowy terrain, blue for underwater, green for the tropics, etc. I use the word "practical" even though I've been told that’s not a word that applies to cats, because we know about the time you dressed like a delivery person when it made more sense on an assignment than the purple. 

(Although when I hear people talk about how a zipper down the front is practical, it makes me wonder what how they're defining the word!) 

So my second question is, are these outfits buried in a closet somewhere? Or has it been "all purple, all the time"?

Sincerely, Allaine

Dear Allaine,
You refer, of course, to Cattitude for my first visit to Kittlemeier and design of the "Cat-Tales Classic" look.  As I've stated from time to time in the Tales, I did vary the outfit a few times over the years.  Sometimes a girl just wants a change.  It always went pretty much like the skirted costume I mentioned in Deja Vu All Over Again (and elsewhere):  I would try it for a few weeks, and go back to the original.   

Like Batman, I have occasionally commissioned special costumes for special circumstances.  When it is important that it be known "Catwoman" is in the area, or is the perpetrator of a specific job, or if I must meet with someone in costume.  At other times, I will simply forego the costume and persona, and use whatever jumpsuit or wetsuit gets the job done.  You mention the delivery getup in Fool for instance, and that is a perfect example of when "practicality" fits into Catwoman’s activities.  Put simply, time was short.  I wasn’t going to let babies drown because I had to wait for Kittlemeier to make me a special Catwoman-themed wetsuit.

The persons you reference applying that term "practical" to a zip-up bikerchick getup, however (Editor’s note, see String Theory) are simply ignorant of the rooftop lifestyle and, I imagine, of the basics of putting on a leotard or catsuit.  First and foremost, women disaccomodate themselves in any number of ridiculous ways to appear attractive to men.  Putting on a bodystocking is nothing.  Anyone who wears pantyhose can do that much.  Now a Brazilian wax, that’s getting into some serious pain.  But women do it, we do it all the time.  "Impractical" is it?  Well, I don’t know.  Consider…

Batman learns of a Catwoman crime in progress

Batman learns of a Joker crime in progress

Same principle applies to the heels.  *naughty grin*

Now then, because you mention the green, I should probably confess here in the less widely-read Ask Catwoman topic before Chris gets it into her head to tell the world… the fact is, I lost a bet once.  I was drunk, okay!  It was shortly after Bane, the real Batman was missing, there was no sign that that AzBat disaster was ever going away.  I was upset.  I went to the 'Berg, I had a few more than I should have, I made a bet with Eddie that I shouldn’t have and, yadda yadda yadda, I wore green. ONCE.  And there aren’t any photos, and if there are and they ever surface, then somebody is going to bleed.  That’s all I have to say about green.

As to your second question, I do have a few of the old costumes stashed away in the Hellmouth closet. However a sad fact of the Gotham lifestyle is that once a vigilante finds a lair, it’s lost.  Anything that was stashed there, lost.  I’m quite sure that’s how he got his hands on my skirted costume and the whip he has in the trophy room. 

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