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He leaned back in his chair and Guiseppe and Florcus could do nothing but gape at him. His skin blended in inexorably with the beige flowers of the cafe wallpaper. A row of baroque teeth beamed back at them.
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'Want some coffee?' he said suddenly, lurching forward and tossed a bag of what seemed to be frozen gravy onto the table. 'I brought it for sustainment on my journey.'

Florcus picked up the bag. It seeped gently from the corner onto the tablecloth. Florcus noticed a pattern appearing and moved the bag so that the pattern would be symmetrical.
'What's the matter with you? Cat got your tongue, sir? There is no generally agreed origin among etymologists for this bizarre expression, ha ha, although there does seem to be a broad view that the expression came into popular use in the 1800s, and first appeared in print in 1911!'

He took a breath.
'In my view the most logical explanation is that it relates to the 'cat-o-nine-tails' whip used in olden days maritime punishments, in which it is easy to imagine that the victim would be rendered incapable of speech or insolence. A less likely, but no less dramatic suggested origin, is that it comes from the supposed ancient traditional middle-eastern practice of removing the tongues of liars and feeding them to cats.'

The cafe door opened with a horrifying ting-a-ling, letting in a gust of wind which made the students dash around grabbing at pages with graphs on them. A lanky, curly-haired lad took advantage of the distraction to finish off the meatballs for the group.
The overall effect was that the stage was set for the entry of our new character. The hand that reached out obnoxiously into florcus's face, shiny, pink and overeager, belonged to....