Cat N’ Fiddle owner ‘lived her own life,’ says brother

By KURT NESBITT Journal Staff Writer
MANKATO — The woman behind the Cat N' Fiddle, who died Friday at a Mankato nursing home at the age of 92, “lived her own life”, said her brother.

That woman, Irene A. Seppmann Fayn Peterson, died of heart failure at Sunrise Cottages in Mankato.

“She was different. She lived her own life. That’s all I can think of,” said brother Lyle Seppmann.

The death was not a shock to Lyle Seppmann because his sister was in the home for 10 years before her death.

“It’s a blessing because she didn’t know me for a couple years,” said her brother, who served as her guardian after she was placed in the home.

Irene Seppmann was born May 4, 1916, and grew up on a farm outside Mankato. She started her first beauty salon in Mankato in 1934. She started Iryne’s Hair Design in New Ulm in 1958 and owned it for 27 years.

She started another New Ulm business, Famous Floats, with her first husband, building and selling custom floats for parades, in the 1950s.

Peterson was most famous for the restaurant, supper club and dinner theater she started outside New Ulm in 1955 — the Cat N’ Fiddle. The restaurant was decorated with Tiffany lamps, miniature white lights, antiques, reproductions of statues, artificial flowers and ceramic cats that customers would give Seppmann.

The restaurant grew out of Famous Floats, which moved out of the city to a new building just off what is now State Hwy. 68 just south of New Ulm in order to expand its production facilities.

Cat N’ Fiddle took its name from one of Famous Floats’ creations, which was built to represent the famous nursery rhyme by the same name. Its color code — and Irene’s wardrobe — were also taken from the colors of the float.

Lyle Seppmann said he doesn’t know where or how his sister developed her sense of style, but he suspects that perhaps Irene’s flair came from her background working in a beauty shop.

He said Irene once spray-painted a French poodle pink and wore pink clothes that matched the dog.

Cat N’ Fiddle closed in 1998, and the building was sold afterwards. Two businesses moved in and out of the building until its present occupant, Earthworks Landscape Supply, moved into the space in February of 2006.

Cat N’ Fiddle was the site of many high school proms, wedding receptions and high school class reunions during its 40 years of existence. It held stage plays from the time dinner theater was added in 1973 until the death of Seppmann’s first husband in 1978.

Peterson was not the first member of her family to make a mark. Her grandfather built the historic Seppmann Mill, which is now a part of a rural Mankato park along with some acreage the family donated.

Aside from her roles as a beautician and restaurant manager, she was an airplane pilot in the Civilian Air Patrol during World War II. She was once also Princess Hiawatha on a Land O’Lakes butter float.

She was buried in Minneopa Cemetery outside Mankato following a funeral service Wednesday at Mankato Mortuary.