Original Air Date: February 13, 1969

Directed by: Richard Michaels

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains spoilers for this episode!

Synopsis: Samantha Stephens’ (Elizabeth Montgomery) neighbor, Miss Parsons (Ruth McDevitt), is an elderly cat lover whose kitty gets stuck in a tree in the Stephen’s yard and Samantha uses magic to help the cat down. Later Samantha’s mischievous Cousin Serena (also played by Elizabeth Montgomery) comes to babysit and is home when Darrin’s mother, Mrs. Stephens (Mabel Albertson) comes to call. Mrs. Stephens manages to irritate Serena enough that she turns Samantha’s mother-in-law into a cat.

Cat Burglars (Scene Stealers): Miss Parsons’ cat Victoria, who gets stuck in a tree, is a lovely orange and white tabby wearing a bell around her neck. Samantha finds Miss Parsons calling for the cat to come down.

Samantha works her magic and Victoria disappears from the tree limb and appears at Miss Parsons’ feet.

Miss Parsons is amazed but even moreso when Serena appears out of nowhere.

In her typically witchy way Serena is snarky to Miss Parsons, who scurries back home with a less than favorable opinion of Samantha’s cousin while also questioning her own sanity.

After sitting with Samantha’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Stephens, and listening to her deride the family, Serena changes her into a ginger tabby cat with an odd black smudge on the top of its head. We assume this mark was added so viewers would be able to quickly identify Mrs. Stephens and also to make the different cats who play her look more alike (three or four cats play the part of Mrs. Stephens and they really don’t look anything similar at all).

Angry at being changed into a cat (and apparently a boy cat at that!), Mrs. Stephens runs outside and is chased by a dog. She quickly climbs into a tree. Hearing the commotion, Miss Parsons hurries outside and shoos the dog away before pulling Mrs. Stephens down from the tree and taking her inside.

Inside Miss Parsons’ home, Mrs. Stephens is sleeping comfortably in a cat bed.

Cat Cattle Call: There are numerous cats (all wearing bells) in the home and some of them are sitting around Miss Parsons and a door-to-door insurance salesman (Hal England). The creepy salesman, who earlier paid a call on Samantha and tried to hit on her when discovering her husband was out of town, roughly pushes aside Victoria as soon as Miss Parsons walks away. Fortunately Samantha enters and frightens him off.

Samantha tries to figure out which of the many cats might be Mrs. Stephens. She calls to her not realizing that she is asleep in the basket.

When Miss Parsons leaves the room, Samantha casts a spell to turn all the cats who are not Mrs. Stephens into dogs. This way she locates the correct cat easily.

Miss Parsons returns just after Samantha turns the dogs back into cats and is happy to see Samantha found her missing kitty.

Samantha returns home and is surprised to see her father-in-law (Roy Roberts) with Serena. The black smudge on this cat actor is even darker than before!

Mrs. Stephens runs to her husband who backs away, saying he’s allergic. Mrs. Stephens hisses at him.

Samantha sends Serena out to the yard to change Mrs. Stephens back to her normal self. The woman has no memory about what happened but when she sees the bell around her neck she somehow knows it is to keep her from chasing birds.

Final Mewsings: There are worse things one can be turned into besides a cat.

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