Happy Halloween.

I have a bonus episode for you today, and it's a story about my grandpa Tom.

Today is Halloween, and I have to tell you a Halloween story because he did the craziest thing. Imagine the setting.

Should I tell you what the craziest thing is?

Yeah, he gave away kittens. Seriously, my grandpa Tom gave away kittens on Halloween. Like, what?

My kids love this story. My grandpa Tom he was quite the character, and when you live on a ranch, kittens are a common thing, right?

There's a barn cat. Every ranch has a barn cat or two or three, and every once in a while, a tomcat shows up and there are kittens.

One Halloween, Grandpa had a problem. There were kittens, and they didn't get a lot of trick-or-treaters. The Mills family came by, and all of their kids ran inside and did the trick-or-treat with their pillowcases. Grandma gave all the kids popcorn balls, Rice Krispy treats, and all the good stuff.

Grandpa had a different plan. As they were heading out the door, Grandma goes, "Wait, wait, wait, you guys want kittens?"

They freaked out!! What little 5- or 6-year-old kid doesn't want a kitten, and so he went and he got kittens, and he put a kitten in every single one of the kids' pillowcases.

They went out to the car with Mom.

Well, Mom was pissed, but what do you do, right? She's going to break their hearts? She was a single mom and she wasn't going to break her kids hearts on Halloween. So, they kept the kittens, and she took them home. I don't think she ever brought the kids back to trick-or-treat at Grandpa Tom's house.

I had to share that story with you because I've never heard of anything else like that. I've heard of fishing lures and just different stuff that people have around their house, kind of like Grumpy Old Man when he gets a stapler and different things from his house. But to give away kittens, it was like, "Oh, come on, Grandpa."

I wish I'd asked him why he did it. I think the thing that he was doing was problem-solving.

I think he thought, you know what? We don't need more kittens. We don't need more cats. It's an hour to a vet, and there's not a lot of neighbors. Everybody else already has cats, and so he just problem-solved.

Sometimes that's what we have to do: get a little creative and have a little fun. I think that's one of the reasons he was such a great storyteller: he liked to have fun.

He liked to push the boundaries a little bit on things like that. When you do that, life gets interesting, and the stories get better and better.

I'd love to hear from you if you have a funny story about Halloween or any of the holidays. Reach out to me.

You can contact me through my website. It is tellinggreatstories.com, and I'm Nate.

Happy Halloween. Peace!