5294: Party Like It's 2008-11-14!

==Explanation==
The "do not attempt" warnings in both the strip and the author's notes are based on the fact that grape matter of all forms is known to be poisonous to cats. The warning in the strip itself implies a professional stunt animal is visibly standing in for Garfield in this scene.
The strip is designed to mock the prospect of lower-quality amateurish efforts, such as this strip itself, shooting for most major Square Root of Minus Garfield milestones; it should be noted that not a single contributor to Square Root of Minus Garfield is a professional in the strictest of speaking. The strip was submitted in late December 2022 (and, from a production standpoint, was the last one the author made and submitted while his mother was still alive; 5528: Azurafield and 5590: Linguistics with Liz: Hong Kong Fansub were designed before this strip but ran after, and one more strip the author made while his mother was still alive has yet to run), at which point the 5000th strip milestone had not yet been hit; however, the author knew said milestone was too close to make a reasonable target in the creation timeframe and thus opted to target a timeframe around Square Root of Minus Garfield's 15th anniversary instead. A coordinated effort saw this strip run the day after the 15th anniversary strip, that date being chosen to avoid overshadowing that strip's effort; the 15th anniversary strip itself was not linked to in the author's notes during submission just in case this strip ended up running before that strip (or if Square Root of Minus Garfield somehow suffered a schedule slip between submission and runtime), the link was added when it actually ran.
The bottle of "Japanese grape juice" (edited from the original strip's ketchup) has the kanji "葡萄汁" on its label. The kanji itself does, in fact, translate to "grape juice" (a wine would likely have a 醽 kanji somewhere on its label); the reference to Phoenix Wright in the author's notes is an allusion to a similar circumstance in the Ace Attorney video game series (what appear to be wine bottles, but the drink is stated to be grape juice in all languages). A link in the author's note brings up a trope known to pass bottles of one substance (typically an alcohol such as wine) off as another substance (typically a non-alcohol); the trope in question is usually a censorship trope, but in this case was merely a stylistic touch.
==The author writes:==
WARNING: Exposing your cat to grape juice, Japanese in origin or otherwise, will likely result in detrimental effects to your cat's health. Do not let your cat try this at home.
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled author note...
Major milestones. They're the time when we typically get the cream of the crop of high-quality celebratory material from the heart of the Square Root of Minus Garfield team. A low-rank amateur may hope to shoot for these milestones, but one who does is usually doomed to land far from their mark if it ever lands at all. About the only instances of an amateur potentially hitting a major milestone marker was at the 5th anniversary due to calculation error, and at strip #2000 as part of a coordinated multi-strip effort being one of 38 strips marking the milestone in question. Such a pursuit of shooting for and missing the milestones is in and of itself an excellent opportunity for being riffed with material clearly unfit to be major-milestone material. This particular piece was actually made and submitted in the lead-up to the major milestone of 5000 strips, but at that point strip 5000 itself and its surrounding strips have presumably already been queued up—thus my decision to aim at deliberately missing the 15th anniversary milestone instead (that should, at current pace, be strip #5293, which may very well have itself also been already planned at the point this strip was whipped up). Such a waste of Japanese grape juice...
And yes, I checked, that is indeed grape juice. Same kind Phoenix Wright has been known to chug. Never mind the fact it comes in a weird bottle...
Original strip: 
==Transcript==
{Garfield is holding up and peering into a bottle labelled 葡萄汁}
Garfield: In honor of the 15th anniversary strip of SRoMG!
Fine print in lower-left corner: Professional stunt animal. Do not attempt.
(Garfield pours grape juice onto himself)
SFX: SPLOOCH!
Garfield: What's the use...They never let amateurs do the milestones...
Category:shiningpikablu252
Category:Visual novel references