7 November, 1998

The Sweetest Furball in the Whole Wide World

He has lain now, for the better part of three hours, cradled in my arms, draped across my wrists, cuddled between my body and the edge of the desk ona spur of the comforter which is wrapped around.

His name is Mephisto, and he is the only lap-cat in the bunch of 3 kittens who stayed with us.

He looks like a Siamese, in term of body construction and the way he yowls and talks in the early morning or when being transported by car, he sounds like one too. But he is a little black and white tuxedo cat with big green eye, a huge purr and and a tender disposition which makes him, in my book, the sweetest little furball in the whole wide world.

He keeps me company when I read through massive tomes of history for my grad school classes. He sits on my lap while I type up HTML, and he sticks his cool nose in my face, when I break down and cry in frustration over getting it all done, as if to say, "Hey what's wrong? Hey it's okay ... I love you."

The others are all sweet and cute too, don't get me wrong, but Sasha as princess of the bunch is a bit too full of herself. Tiger while adorable as he lies there curled up with tail over nosetip, is very whiny and is often ungentle with his claws. I love their mother, Shara, the puzzle who came home with us back at the end of May, shy, but willing to give us a chance. But she's only now beginning to come out of the shell of abandoned cat behavior and then the mommacat phase which began in July. So in some ways I feel like we barely know her, though she's inhabited our lives for almost 6 months.

She's become more playful in the past few weeks, joining her babies in their kitten-chase games. She's also become more overtly affectionate: she knows we're not going to dump her anywhere and she's started curling up in my lap when we watch TV now, but not as often as Mephisto does on just about any occasion.

It makes me happy to sit here, with his silky length draped across my midriff, purring for all he's worth into my chest. There's just something inherently relaxing about cuddling with a small, happy kitty.

And boy do I ever need the relaxation. I have too many balls up in the air right now. Papers for Irish Studies, a presentation for another class and all too soon a lecture-paper for my third class. Then there's trying to get something set up for Mindspace and continuous uploading for Metajournals. I'm frightfully behind there, and it's my own fault too. I should have known better. I am not Gabby and can never aspire to be. I'm just too busy to put in the kind of effort which MJ needs. But what that means, I don't know, since so far, my attempts to get some backup crew to help me out have failed.

The simple truth of the matter is that I don't know what I'm doing and I'm trying to do too much at once.

Of course, it would also help if I felt justified about this whole grad school thing. It's what I wanted, it's what I'd dreamed of. And now that I've got it, it's not all it was cracked up to be.

I just want to sit here and cuddle my cats, bake cookies and go back to reading in my spare time.