How to grade 70 midterms and 50 papers with 2 demanding cats...

Some of you know that I often make myself stay up in my office working until pretty late in the day. There are plenty of good reasons for this: I am less easily distracted here by TV or the phone, I feel better about myself if I get home later in the day having accomplished a whole lot, I keep a lot of my reference materials in my office at school. There is, of course, another reason that I am often much more productive at school versus at home: Bing and Wes. Whenever I have my work laid out at home, they are never far from it, reminding me of how I should be spending my time with them.

The photographic evidence:



Here's my oh-so-important, if-I-lost-it-my-life-would-be-derailed schoolbag. (Seriously, I keep everything from my wallet to my ipod to my flash drive to my datebook to stacks of important papers.) So, when I am working from home, I am always taking things in and out of it. It's no coincidence, then, that the boys often chose to cuddle up right next to it.



This shot (and the one following it) are from last weekend when I was switching back and forth between grading English 101 papers and making a study guide for my English 204 classes. I was sitting on the couch, with my legs stretched out in front of me on the coffee table. (Don't judge: it's my house and I can put my feet on my own darn coffee table.) I had my lap desk on my lap (duh) with the 204 anthology and some papers on it and my computer on the table. Next to me were stacks of 101 essays. Not exactly the kind of space that says, "You know what we've got room for here? A cat!" But that didn't stop Wes, who climbed right on that stack of papers and made himself comfortable. (Fortunately, I had my camera on the sidetable next to me, so I could capture these incriminating shots.) His face cracks me up here--I guess he doesn't like what he's reading: the Puritan poet Edward Taylor. That's too bad, although my students feel the same way.



Later that same evening, Bing also made himself comfortable on my work. Don't let his pose fool you here. He might look like he's being helpful and offering some proofreading advice, but just a few seconds later, he stretched out even more, displacing my neat stack of papers. He couldn't have been more pleased with himself.

Anyway, last night I was bound and determined to get some serious grading done from the comfort of my own living room while watching Thursday night TV. (By the way, anyone watch "Ugly Betty" last night? How awesome was it? That show just cracks me up--what a nice way to spend an hour after a long day.) I could tell, though, by the way the boys were circling, that I might be in for a repeat of last weekend's pleas for attention. My solution? Drug them up!

I whipped out the Cosmic Catnip. This stuff is amazing. At the very sound of the tub opening, the cats come charging over, like heroin addicts at a methadone clinic (or so I've heard). I gave each of them a little bowl of the sweet sweet nip, and let them go to town.



Now this is a pre-"ultimate drugged out craziness" shot (after all, my purpose in giving them the nip was to get work done, so hanging around and doing a photo shoot would have been counter-productive), but even still, you can see the effects starting. I love how Wes has his arms around the bowl. Bing is already doing that slightly-high "dude, what's that over there?" thing. (He's really staring at nothing.)

So off to work I went. And about 30 minutes later, I was still happily working while the fellas had worn themselves out.



Bing in a "cat loaf" position.



Wes all tuckered out. (I think he might be the cutest sleeping cat I've ever seen--seriously, he sleeps "cute"--all the time.)

So does this make me a bad cat-mom? Vogel said it's like giving a baby cough syrup to make it stop crying. Oh well. Mama's gotta make the money to buy the catnip, so I am sure Bing and Wes understand...