I'm Not Buying That Cat Sake Anymore

A re-post, for those of you who've not much background on Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys). This is one of the first full-blown stories I wrote about her, back in 2008 I believe it was, and is based on my own experience with a woman who told me to "go back to where I came from". Enjoy!


Saturday was Liza Bean Bitey’s birthday. My son spent much of Friday night abusing me for knowing such a thing – I should’ve never sent her a birthday card! – but how could I have not? She wrote it on the calendar months ago.

So we set our differences aside, Liza Bean and I, and went out for sushi. You know, you get a couple of glasses of sake in her, and that cat is hilarious!

Of course, there’s a fine line between enough sake and too much, but before the fist fight, we had a great time.

Wait – if you don’t have thumbs, is it still considered a “fist”?

We over-ordered, naturally. We both adore sushi, and it had been so long, with the scariness of the stock markets, the upcoming election in the U.S., etc., but how often does a kitty turn three?

Exactly.

What a great evening. By tacit agreement, no mention was made of the late-night calls from Kuala Lumpur or of the strange notebook (all in French, for some reason) I found hidden in the basement. If Liza is a spy or a smuggler of some sort, we both felt it prudent to pretend to forget, if only for the evening. Why ruin a good time?

Liza can’t hold her liquor, though. Oh, she thinks she can, but she started to slur her words half-way through the first bottle and in short order had her head in her paws, bemoaning the state of airline security.

“Take off your shoes,” she muttered. “Yeah, right.” She fixes her bright green eyes on me. “Do I look like I’m wearin’ shoes to you?”

She shakes her head in disgust and the bell on her dress collar – the one with the pink faux-diamonds on it – jingles merrily.

It is at this time that the man at the table next to us determines that our conversation, such as it is, is his business.

“Hey,” he says to Liza Bean, leaning into the space between the tables. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you go back to where you came from?”

“What?” Liza says, focusing on him. She frowns, looks at me, then back at him. “What did you just say?”

The man pauses. Hadn’t the cat seemed to have an accent just moments ago? He decides to stand his ground.

“You heard me,” he says. “If you don’t like it, you should go back to where you came from.”

Liza sits up on her back legs, placing both paws on the table in front of her. The end of her tail twitches dangerously.

“Back to where I came from?” she purrs. “You want me to go back to Brainerd, is that it? Maybe you” – and she jabs the gracefully curved claw of her right paw toward the man – “want to go back to Brainerd, too?”

And with that, she leaps.

What ensues is a melee of yowling and shouting, the sound of breaking glass and overturned chairs as restaurant patrons scramble out of the way of the belligerent man with a drunken, hissing cat clinging to his shoulders, clawing at his head.

I stand, down the last of the sake, and motion to our server for the check.

The police were called, of course; and I was forced to use the money I’d been saving for a flat-screen TV to bail her out.

I could've let her sit until Monday, but it was, after all, her birthday.

There’s another restaurant we can’t go to anymore.

Oh, well. Happy Birthday, Liza Bean Bitey.