23:30

There was an American comedian featured tonight. His act, basically, is to get drunk on stage and tell stories. He is all right, I suppose. There were not enough seats so I had to sit on the floor up front. Kchierath snuck into the room and was sniffing at everyone and batting playfully at people's ponytails and generally being cute. Eventually he spotted me and came over and stretched out on his back across my lap. I could not help but rub at his tummy, the way nobody can resist petting a normal animal, and he made all sorts of perfect happy-cat noises. We listened to the drunken comic's stories that way for about an hour.

Afterward there was a game show of some sort that I really did not have much interest in, so I sat Kchierath up, gave him a pat on the head, and then stood up to leave. As I did so I stepped right on the tail of his costume. He felt the tug and played along, letting out a loud hiss and jerking his head around with a snarl and with his ears tucked tightly back. I jumped off of his tail immediately; he curled up with the tail in his lap and whined and looked as though he were crying. Oh, it was enough to make me want to cry, too! Actually, I was more that I was worried that I had ripped the fabric of his suit. Fake fur that realistic cannot be very cheap. I panicked a little at the thought that I might have ruined such a magnificent costume, so I pulled out a fifty-Euro note and told him I would pay for any damage.

He stayed perfectly in character. He took the note from me and tilted his head curiously, ears going up and down as though he was not sure what he had, and then he put the note in his mouth and chewed on it experimentally. His tears flattened and he shook his head distastefully, spat out the bill and hissed at it. "No is good!" he said. "No want. You…keep?" What an amazing performer! Even if I had made no money on this trip, it would have been worth the expense just to have met him.