The most surreal dining experience I’ve had in donkeys’ years was lunch with our Siamese. In a restaurant. I won’t name it as “now serving cats,” given that the Health Department is on the warpath these days, but the staff deserves huge points for letting us bring Banshee in after we left the vet around the corner right at 12:30. They even chose the perfect table in the front, where we could stow his carrier and still have room to check on him to be sure he wasn’t having a coronary over this second out-of-apartment experience of the day. He seemed mellow despite having his 23-hour nap interrupted, but I was a wreck. For once I could understand those parents who bring babies into noisy restaurants at 10 o’clock at night. It’s totally inappropriate behavior, selfish to the max. But when you gotta eat, you gotta eat. And as Bob pointed out, at least we didn’t take him somewhere where his kind gets cooked.