I wanted to write about Gozo this morning, and Malta. Instead, I've spent far too much time chasing the cat around around the apartment in a futile attempt to rub foam into her bald spots without waking Elvis. I have discovered that you can do one, or the other, but not both.

Elvis is still sleeping.

Calliope remains unfoamed. I managed to slap some on, but not rub it all the way in as instructed.

When I get back from yoga, she had better watch out.

We had a good flight back yesterday as defined by my father as an equal number of takeoffs and landings. Wise man, my father. He knows what's important. And the forty minute trek through Fiumincino helped take our minds off the fact that you can no longer smoke in Rome's airport. Honestly, it's gotten worse than O'Hare. They must have someone working overtime to plan out which gates are the farthest apart for the widest number of transiting passengers. Why? Why, to parade them past the greatest number of shopping opportunities, of course.

We flew into Linate instead of Malpensa (lit.: bad thinking), so we were able to get our baggage and be back home in forty minutes flat, or the same amount of time it took us to travel between our two gates in Rome.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

As soon as we trudged through the door, we saw the cat. She has two bald patches with little scabs in them. Her fur is rough and dry, and she's leaving more and larger clumps strewn about the place than usual. Which meant that I scrambled around trying to find a place open late Monday afternoons, and where the vet had not gone on vacation along with all the other bridging Italians. I did, eventually, so it was taxi time. The cat looooves taxis. And the taxi driver loooved Calliope. I'm always amazed at just how much volume she can emit from that little feline body.

The vet said she had a necrotic infection, which frightened the crap out of me. Isn't ebola a necrotic infection, where eats your flesh until you die a horrible death? I think it is, but once I talked to my Italian teacher, she told me it was microtic (or something that sounds similar over the phone). In other, English words: the cat has fungus.

So, last night we held the cat down and gave her three squirts of a lotion-like medicine. Elvis holds the cat in these situations, and I force her mouth open and squeeze it down her gullet. She looooves that, too, as you might well imagine. The internal medicine part is done, thank God.

Only the foam left. Twice daily.