trouble formatting post metadata in category.php

This is driving me insane and I’m sure there’s a very simple answer I’m missing. I’ve been searching diligently through the codex and the forums for two days now, argh.

Here is my category page: http://nandamai.net/fic/?cat=31. The category title and post title are fine. But I want the excerpt to a) be in italics, and b) fall on the next line after the title (i.e., no blank space). I’ve used existing classes, made new classes, tried div, p, span, and pre just in case, declared top and bottom margins and font-style in the style sheet. I even tried creating a new div in place of “post.” I’m pretty sure there’s nothing else in the style sheet controlling this style element.

My theme (anthurium) doesn’t have category.php so I created it using index.php and some code from Kubrick.

Here’s the relevant bit of my category.php, so you don’t have to look it up:

<div class="post">

<p class="catstory" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
" rel="bookmark">
<?php the_title(); ?>

<p class="catdescrip">
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

</div>

And here’s what I’m currently using in the style sheet:

.catstory {
font: 16px "Book Antiqua", "Times New Roman", georgia, times, serif;
color: #c00;
letter-spacing: .1em;
margin-top: 15px;
margin-bottom: 0px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
}

.catdescrip {
font: 14px "trebuchet ms", verdana, tahoma, futura, helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #111;
font-style: italic;
margin-top: 0px;
padding-top: 0px;
}

Help!

Thanks lots.