A week or so ago I received an email from a reporter for a local paper. He noted he was doing an article on bloggers in our county and wondered if I'd be willing to answer a few questions. Since my online journal isn't something I've kept secret, I figured it might be fun.

Tuesday night he called to do the interview. I'm sure I came across as more than a little distracted – I'd just got home from work and was in the process of setting up food for the cats. Now that Allegra is on her special food, every time I open a new can for her, I have to give the other cats wet food as well, to distract them from the fact that she's getting 'the good stuff' on her own plate on the kitchen counter. So I was on the phone with this poor guy, cats hollering as if they've been starved for weeks on end at my feet, trying to pay attention to what he was asking me while simultaneously keep all the other (healthy) cats off the counter and out of Allegra's food. Still, I think it went fairly well and hopefully I managed to say a few vaguely intelligent things amid the cat food-induced excitement, and at the end he noted that he'd like to get some pictures and he'd have a photographer contact me.

They called to set that up the next morning, prompting me into a small bit of cleaning panic, since the desk where my computer lives tends to be a good place for piles of stuff to spontaneously generate. I figured there's no point in pretending I'm anal about cleanliness, because when one lives with pets there is no such thing as pristine in one's house. Besides, it was as good an excuse as any to do a little much-needed sorting and tossing and putting away.

The photographer came out this evening – a very nice guy with the sort of camera that thoroughly intimidates us 'point and shoot, dummy' types. He wanted pictures of me at my laptop, and naturally, since I was sitting at my computer desk, Allegra decided she needed to up and settle into her spot. I've had a folded towel next to my laptop for years now, for the cats to sit on, and also for my feet, since when I lean back and put my feet on the desk, I inevitably have at least one, if not three, cats on my lap and on my legs, and it's nice to have a little padding under the ankles while I'm sitting there, trapped under pounds of purring fuzz. The photographer actually wanted to get a few shots of me with one or more of the cats – although Allegra was the only one willing to be cooperative – so we posed her as much as one can pose a grumpy cat while he snapped lots of pictures with his intimidating camera.

Other than that, it's been a mostly quiet week. We're settling into a routine for Allegra's new diet. Richard finally succumbed to yet another bout of the winter ick that's been making the rounds – this one has had him out of work all week and glued to his nebulizer (oh, the joy of asthma). Richard spends his evenings (and his mornings and his afternoons) coughing and sniffling and waiting for the antibiotics to kick in. I spend my evenings frantically working on the doll for my niece – a doll full of far too many tiny knitted parts, which has necessitated more than one late night of work – and occasionally tracking down Allegra and plopping her in front of her food to entice her to eat, eat, eat.