Something that has become abundantly clear to me since I moved in with my significant other is that pranks are wonderfully fun. Not cruel pranks of course, not the type where you prop a bucket over a door or draw naughty shapes on people’s faces as they sleep. I’m talking more of the random pranks you play on each other or more specifically the running gag. Measles has become the running gag in our house since Christmas.

So Jeremy and I are both keen to get a cat of our very own someday. At the moment we aren’t really allowed to have one in our flat and so our hopes of a furry companion have been put off. That is…until the day I visited Shoreditch just before Christmas.

::insert wavy dreamlike transition here::

Shoreditch is a pretty eclectic part of East London, and area I fell in love with almost as soon as I stepped foot there. It’s perhaps a bit hipsterish of me but it was really the Boxpark that did it. Someone came up with the idea of putting a bunch of empty shipping containers together to create a shopping center. Each shipping container is a store and there are restaurants on the second level. I had finished most of my Christmas shopping by this point but felt compelled to enter a few of the shops just to see what it was like. It was then that I saw…Measles.

This is Measels.

So Jeremy and I have been talking about what we’d name our cat for about a year. We’ve run the gamut from Utini to Bastion to…well, Measels. It’s not that I like measels as a disease but it occured to me one day how nice the word is from a sound perspective. It’s a nice sounding word and so as a joke we said we’d name our cat Measles.

When I saw this cardboard cat staring at me from the display shelves, I knew then and there that I had found the very best Christmas gift of all time. I gleefully purchased and wrapped it and then waited for two long weeks until the moment Jeremy opened it. Oh man was it worth the wait.

We put Measles together as soon as we got home. Since then, it’s become a bit of a running joke between us. One of us hides him in some spot and then waits for the other to stumble across him. He’s ended up in some pretty great spots. On chairs, on shelves, in cabinets, in boxes…anywhere and everywhere.

In the kitchen…

Behind the dresser…

On the bed…

In the bathroom…

On the shelves…

So until we get a real, live Measles…Cardboard Measles is keeping us well and truly entertained.