Magellan vs. The Little Kitchen Rug

The little rug on the floor in front of our kitchen sink is Magellan's enemy. And, almost daily, Magellan lets the rug know who's boss in the house. That the little rug has happy kitties on it may just be coincidence, but I like to think Magellan (as smart as she is!) knows she's picking a fight with other cats that can't fight back.

Yesterday, while I was petting Geni, my husband decided to chronicle Magellan's fight to the death with the rug. The rug didn't stand a chance.



After Magellan vanquishes the little rug, she walks smugly away, leaving the rug all scrunched up on the floor, as if to show us her prowess as a warrior kitty.

On Tuesday we took both Magellan and Darwin to their first visit to our new vet, and were relieved to find out that they're both doing very well, health wise. Magellan, we were surprised to learn, is not the fatso we thought, and is only overweight by about one pound.

She does have cataracts in her eyes, which the vet said might eventually cause blindness. He said there is an operation to restore sight for pets, which costs $3,000. As I told my mom, if Magellan se queda cieguita, cieguita se queda because we sure don't have that kind of money. Hopefully, she'll keep her eyesight for a long time yet. At 9 years old, Magellan is quite the dowager cat at the equivalent of sixty-odd human years.

Darwin, on the other hand, is in such great health that while he is chronologically 7 years old, his body is in the shape of a cat half his age. I'm sure Darwin would boast about this to his friends, if he could talk, and if he had any friends. He keeps trying to persuade Dr. S to pet him, by acting as cute as he can whenever she's around, probably knowing full well that she's terribly allergic to cats.

As for me, I'm done with the teaching and meetings part of this crazy busy semester, which ended Friday. I still have mountains of grading to get through, which I hope to at least get half done today so that the holiday week isn't consumed with work.

Last night, I was so intent on giving myself a break that when we returned from the big city, where we ran errands and had a short, if lovely, lunch with my friend KG, her husband and their new baby, I decided to make a meatloaf. That was around 8 o'clock at night. Then I decided to watch a rather silly movie I've seen about 4 or 5 times before, "Love Actually," which is set during the holidays. I pined for the A&E "Pride and Prejudice," which I had borrowed from the public library of the tiny town where my small college on the hill is located, but had to return unseen yesterday because someone else had requested it. That one, which runs about 6 hours, I've seen maybe 6 or 7 times?

After the meatloaf was done, around 9 p.m., I decided that my husband needed holiday cookies so I started the dough for those and will bake them later this afternoon. During breaks from cooking and from movie-watching, I graded one final paper, which left me with 24, 12- to 14-page papers, to start on today. Although grades aren't due until next weekend, I'm not one to wait until the last minute. Thus, since I have no other cooking projects to embark on, it's time to quit procrastinating and bite the proverbial bullet.

Although (for many reasons) I don't particularly relish the process of grading, I do enjoy reading my students' papers. I'm especially looking forward to these batches because they all worked hard on drafting and revising. That means I've seen previous iterations of most of the papers and am confident that they should be quite good in their final versions. That's a treat when you have so many to read.

Once I'm done, I'll be able to say goodbye to this craziest-busiest of semesters, and look forward to the break, as well as to whatever next year brings (even the unavoidable grading!). One thing I know for sure, come rain or come shine, Magellan today will have another fight with her version of Moriarty: The Little Kitchen Rug.